ROME — The Italian parliament has made surrogate motherhood a “universal crime,” to the joy of many feminists and pro-lifers and the chagrin of the LGBTQ+ lobby.
Parliamentarian Carolina Varchi, who proposed the measure, said this week’s final approval of the law making surrogate motherhood a universal crime “puts an end to a barbarity that exploited the most vulnerable women and converted children into a commodity.”
The Italian Senate approved the law Wednesday by a vote of 84 to 58 after the legislation had received prior approval from the Chamber of Deputies in July 2023 with a vote of 166 to 109.
The new law, the result of a long public and parliamentary debate, “represents a historic moment for our nation,” Varchi stated, establishing that in Italy “the practice of renting a womb is a crime wherever it is committed.”
Varchi went on to explain that the crucial aspect of the new law is the extension of the prosecution of the crime of surrogate motherhood to include actions committed abroad by Italian citizens.
It thus creates a deterrent against a practice that has never been tolerated in Italy but has unfortunately seen “the development of an aberrant market in the very few nations in the world where it is permitted,” she said.
“Motherhood cannot become a market,” she said, and children “cannot be bought.”
Varchi’s words were echoed by Eugenia Roccella, Italy’s Minister for Family, Equal Opportunities, and Birth Rate.
“Those who hide behind the rhetoric of ‘rights’ to justify the practice of surrogate motherhood should ask themselves why there is a global network of feminism that supports Italy’s initiative and considers our country an example to be followed everywhere,” Roccella said.
Fratelli d’Italia senator Lavinia Mennuni similarly praised the law as a means of eradicating “the phenomenon of procreative tourism.”
Fellow party member Lucio Malan added that the new law defends “the dignity of mothers and children, who have the right to know who their father is, who their mother is, and the right not to be merchandise.”
Representatives of pro-LGBTQ+ organizations were swift to condemn the legislation as anti-gay.
“The criminalization of gestation for others is one of the ways in which the Italian far right is trying to erase homo-parenting in our country,” said Alessia Crocini, president of the LGBTQ+ group Famiglie Arcobaleno.
The law hides behind “an alleged defense of women whose self-determination for this political party has never been a priority, as demonstrated by the battles and continuous attacks on the right to abortion,” she added.
As Rainbow Families, we “will not stop and will continue our battle in the courts and in the streets,” she said. “We will fight every day to affirm the beauty and freedom of our families and our sons and daughters.”
Pro-life groups praised the new law as a needed defense of the dignity of women and children, the exploited victims of the international surrogacy market.
“The approval of the law that bans renting wombs as a ‘universal crime’ makes today a historic day,” said Jacopo Coghe, spokesman for Pro Vita & Famiglia, “because it deals a very hard blow to the obscene international market of children fueled by surrogate motherhood.”
As of today, “Italy will no longer be an accomplice, not even indirectly, of a practice that exploits women’s bodies as an ‘oven’ to produce tailor-made children as if they were objects to be bought and sold,” he added.
For the pro-life movement, “this day crowns years of cultural and political battles, made up of dozens of conferences, street posters, meetings with citizens, demonstrations, flash mobs and a popular petition signed by more than 60,000 citizens,” he said.
For its part, the Vatican has called for the universal prohibition of the “deplorable” practice of human surrogacy.
In a declaration titled Dignitas Infinita, released last April, the Vatican’s doctrinal office (DDF) said that surrogacy reduces the child to the status of “a mere object.”
The text went on to denounce “so-called surrogate motherhood,” which disrespects human life, turning the unborn child in the mother’s womb into “an object of trafficking.”
Surrogacy “represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child,” it asserted, and relies on “the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” the declaration stated, citing Pope Francis.
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