Italy on Wednesday passed the West’s most restrictive law against international surrogacy, threatening would-be parents who use birth mothers abroad with jail time and severe fines in a move that critics say will chiefly target same-s3x couples.
Domestic surrogacy was already banned in Italy, as it is in some other countries, but the amended Italian law goes further, classifying surrogacy as a rare universal crime that transcends borders, like terrorism or genocide.
The measure marks the strongest salvo yet in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s bid to put a conservative stamp on Italian society, and it elevates surrogacy as a hot-button issue in the West’s raging culture wars.
The law, passed last year by the lower house and effectively ensured by the Senate vote Wednesday, also criminalizes work by Italian citizens employed as doctors, nurses and technicians in foreign fertility clinics that facilitate surrogacies.
That and other aspects of the amended law may be hard to enforce. Even backers of the legislation concede that heterose3xual couples may face few questions when returning to Italy with an infant, or when registering their child’s birth certificate with local municipalities. Who is to say that the woman in that couple didn’t deliver the baby while abroad? By contrast, an infant in the arms of same-s3x parents — particularly two men — would amount to an obvious red flag.
“The people who can’t hide this are gay couples,” said Alessia Crocini, head of Rainbow Families, a group that opposed the law. “This is about [targeting] gay fathers.”
Same-s3x couples are already barred under Italian law from domestic or international adoption. Thus, the new law effectively cuts off the last, best route for g@y male couples residing in Italy to start families.
“It is nature that decides this, not us,” said Sen. Susanna Campione, from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, who voted in favor of the law.
“We wish for this example to be followed [by other countries],” she added. “This is a civilized law that safeguards the child but also the woman, since we believe that surrogacy essentially reduces a woman to a reproductive machine.”
After an intense seven-hour debate, the measure passed the Senate by a vote of 84 to 58.
