The Italian Parliament definitively approved this Wednesday the bill that makes surrogacy a “universal crime”, which will allow imposing penalties in the country for this practice even if it is carried out abroad.
The law, presented by Prime Minister Giorgia’s party Melonithe far-right Brothers from Italya, has been approved in the Senate by 84 votes in favor and 58 against, after receiving the approval of the Chamber of Deputies in July 2023.
Surrogacy or “surrogacy” has already been punished in Italy since 2004, but The new text also makes it “punishable” if it is carried out abroad.
Specifically, the 2004 law punishes in its article 12 with fines of between 600,000 and one million euros and up to two years in prison to “who, in any way, carries out, organizes or advertises the trade in gametes or embryos or maternity surrogacy.”
The new legislation provides that the same article also applies to Italians who resort to this form of pregnancy outside the country.
Although statistics indicate that the majority of couples who go to ‘surrogacy’ are heterosexualLGTBI groups feel that they are the target of this norm after a wave of legal changes, such as the prohibition of registering children born through assisted reproduction of female couples.
The law approved this Wednesday has the full support of Meloni, who on several occasions has described the ‘wombs for rent’ as “inhuman practice.”
Your Family Minister, Eugenia Roccella, He even joked about the children resulting from surrogate motherhood, assuring that those from “third world” mothers cost less, and deputy Federico Mollicone assured that this practice was “more serious than pedophilia.”
From the opposition, the spokesperson of the Democratic Party, Alfredo Bazoli, considered this law the result of “a state paternalism that transforms Italy into an ethical judge of morality of its own citizens against the principles of political liberalism”.
He also noted that it “threatens to undermine relations” with countries that do allow this practice and asked how a person who, for example, has dual nationality will be punished.
“Act of disproportionate inhumanity”
The senator of the Greens and Left group Ilaria Cucchi sees it as “an act of disproportionate inhumanity” against the parents who resort to that pregnancy that they are, he said, 90% heterosexual.
The one of 5 Star Movement (M5S) Maria Domenica Castellone warned that the Meloni Government “is getting used to prohibiting” and called the measure “propaganda at the expense of people and children born from an act of love.”
The spokesperson for Italy Viva (center, opposition), Ivan Scalfarotto, warned that “this rule is made to hit parents” that they have resorted to this practice and that “the collateral victims” will be their children whose birth certificates will be “proof of a crime.”
On the contrary, the parties of the government coalition voted in favor: the conservative Forza Italia and the far right Leaguewhose spokesman, Massimiliano Romeo, stated that surrogacy “is not a question of solidarity.”
The senator of the Brothers of Italy Domenica Spinelli justified the measure to “disincentivize” this practice but maintained that Its ultimate goal is to say “no to violence against women.”
In any case, after this approval, it remains to be known what recognition the children resulting from surrogacy already present in Italy will have.
The Meloni Government has clashed over this issue with municipalities such as that of Milan (north), whose mayor, the progressive Beppe Sala, has civilly registered children of homosexual couples, alleging a “legislative vacuum.”
He Italian Supreme Court ruled in December 2022 that children born through surrogacy must be recognized through the adoption process and with the approval of a judge.
This offensive against surrogacy occurs in a context of drop in birth rates: The national statistics institute ISTAT said in March that births had fallen to a record low in 2023, the 15th consecutive annual decline.
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