The Italian Senate voted Wednesday to punish couples who use surrogacy to have a child outside the country, extending a ban on the practice inside Italy that has been law since 2004.
The law, applicable only to Italian citizens, makes the use of surrogacy — in which a woman agrees to give birth for another person who wants to be the baby’s parent — a crime in Italy.
Violators of the law could face imprisonment for up to two years and a fine of up to $1.1 million. The measure was a priority for the right-wing Brothers of Italy Party headed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and fellow party members called it a triumph for rights.
About 250 Italian couples use surrogacy to have children each year, with 90% of them being heterosexual, according to the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Italian Sen. Lucio Malan, a Brothers of Italy member, said that “the opposition accuses the center-right of ideology. And we agree, if by ideology we mean defending the dignity of people, mothers, children, who have the right to know who their father is, who their mother is and have the right not to be merchandise,” according to the ANSA Italian news agency.
In April, the Vatican put out a document that said surrogacy “violates the dignity of the child” and turns women into “a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”
Opposition members and activists, however, see the law as government interference in women’s bodily autonomy and a targeted measure against the gay community. Some hope that the country’s highest court will overturn the law.
“This is a measure that is enormous in its gravity. … The birth of a child and parenthood are equated with ‘universal crimes’ such as pedophilia and genocide … a legal monstrosity that we hope will be swept away by the Constitutional Court. … Women’s bodies, uteruses and freedom belong to women. Not to Giorgia Meloni. Not to this government. Not to any government,” Riccardo Magi, secretary of the liberal More Europe Party and a member of the Chamber of Deputies, wrote on X as translated from Italian.
Alessia Crocini, president of the Rainbow Families group, said in a release, “The criminalization of gestation for others has become law in Italy … one of the ways in which the Italian far right is trying to erase homoparenting in our country, hiding behind a supposed defense of women whose self-determination has never been a priority for this political party, as demonstrated by the battles and continuous attacks on the right to abortion,” as translated from Italian.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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