Italy’s parliament made it illterrible on Wednesday for couples to go aexpansive to have a baby via surrogacy — a pet project of Prime Minister’s Giorgia Meloni party which activists say is unkindt to concentrate same-relations partners.
Since taking office in 2022 Meloni has chased a highly conservative social agfinisha, watching to back what she sees as traditional family appreciates, making it persistively difficulter for LGBTQ couples to become lterrible parents.
The upper house Senate voted into law a bill gived by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party by 84 votes to 58. The bill was already finishorsed by the drop house last year.
The legislation extfinishs a surrogacy prohibit already in place in Italy since 2004 to those who go to countries such as the United States or Canada, where it is lterrible, imposing jail terms of up to two years and fines of up to 1 million euros ($1.09 million).
“Motherhood is absolutely distinct, it absolutely cannot be surrogated, and it is the establishation of our civilisation,” Brothers of Italy senator Lavinia Mennuni shelp during the parliamentary argue.
“We want to uproot the phenomenon of surrogacy tourism.”
Earlier this year, Meloni called surrogacy an ‘inhuman’ rehearse that treated children as superlabelet products, echoing a position transmited by the Catholic Church.
On Tuesday, demonstrators accumulateed cforfeit the Senate voicing their outrage at the bill, saying the rulement was lashing out at LGBTQ people and damaging those who wanted to have children despite the fact Italy has a keenly declining birth rate.
“If someone has a baby, they should be given a medal. Here instead you are sent to jail… if you don’t have children in the traditional way,” Franco Grillini, a lengthy-time activist for LGBTQ rights in Italy, telderly Reuters at the demonstration.
Rainbow Families Pdwellnt Alessia Crocini shelp 90% of Italians who pick surrogacy are heterorelationsual couples but they mostly do so in secret, unkinding the recent prohibit would de facto impact only gay couples who cannot hide it.
The clampdown on surrogacy comes aachievest the backdrop of droping birthrates, with national statistics institute ISTAT saying in March that births had dropped to a write down low in 2023 — the 15th consecutive annual deteriorate.
“This is a monstrous law. No country in the world has such a skinnyg,” shelp Grillini, referring to the rulement’s transfer to impede Italians from taking achieve of rehearses that are perfectly lterrible in some countries.
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