The Vatican has praised a pledge by two newly elected Italian regional governor to halt the distribution of the abortion drug RU-486. The decision by the two regional governors from Italy’s resurgent right-wing Northern League to ban the abortion pill, just days after it was finally made available to Italian women, has opened again in Italy the debate over RU-486, which was legalized last years. The drug can be administered by doctors in hospitals but can’t be sold in pharmacies.

Italian newspapers said that the first batches of the pills were being distributed this week.

The pill allows women to have a chemically induced abortion, instead of a surgical procedure, within the first seven weeks of pregnancy. In France, where it was developed, RU486 has been in use since 1988, but staunch resistance from the ever-influential Vatican had kept it out of Italy until now.

Monsignor Renato Fisichella, the Vatican’s top bioethics official, said the officials’ move was “in defense of life and therefore it has my praise.” Pope Benedict XVI during a Holy Thursday Mass urged Christians not to accept “a wrong that is enshrined in law — for example the killing of innocent unborn children.”