Italy Criminalizes Universal Surrogacy
Georgia Meloni’s government wins significant victory in the battle against “procreative tourism,” ends baby trade long favored by homosexual couples
In a historic first, Italy has made it a criminal offense for its citizens to seek surrogacy abroad. Italy’s Senate passed the bill on an 84-58 vote Wednesday after an acrimonious seven-hour debate.
The bill, which is the most stringent legislation thus far outlawing surrogacy in the West, has outraged gay activists who have been seeking to normalize it as an alternative route to parenthood for same-sex couples, who cannot adopt children under Italian law.
Surrogacy has been banned in Italy since 2004, punishing anyone who “carries out, organizes or advertises the marketing of gametes or embryos or the subrogation of maternity” with “imprisonment from three months to two years and with a fine from 600,000 to one million euros.” But for the last 20 years, Italian couples have circumvented this prohibition by obtaining a surrogate child from countries that permit the practice, like the U.S., Canada, Ukraine, Georgia, or India.
Problems arose because Italian authorities are not permitted to process the applications of intended parents to register the foreign birth certificates which would recognize them as the child’s parents.
The new law closes the regulatory loophole feeding a $6 billion per year global industry and addresses the problem of pro-LGBT registrars who defied the law.
The universal surrogacy legislation consists of a single sentence modifying Article 12 of Law No. 40 (2004). It states: “If the facts referred to in the previous paragraph, with reference to surrogacy, are committed abroad, the Italian citizen is punished according to Italian law.”
Meloni’s Victory Over the Commodification of Children
The campaign to criminalize renting uteruses abroad is the brainchild of Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, and was introduced by Carolina Varchi, a member of the House of Deputies, Italy’s Lower House of Parliament.
After the vote, Meloni, who identifies as a Christian, called the law a “rule of common sense against the exploitation of the female body and children.” She said, “Human life is priceless and is not a commodity.”
Meloni has previously labeled surrogacy “the third-millennium form of slavery, which humiliates women’s bodies and turns children into a commodity.”
“Babies are not over-the-counter products, and they can’t be bought,” she said. Alluding to gay couples who want to be surrogate parents, she added, “On adoptions, we also reiterate that for us, the State must guarantee the right of a child to have a father and a mother.”
The bill passed Italy’s Lower House, the Chamber of Deputies, in July 2023 on a 166-109 vote. Currently, an estimated 250 Italian couples a year go abroad to obtain surrogate children.
Homosexual Activists Protest Legislation
Italy legalized same-sex civil unions in 2016, but stopped short of allowing homosexual couples to adopt children domestically or from abroad. A 2023 edict by Meloni’s government barred Italian cities and towns from registering birth certificates listing parents of the same sex.
Alessia Crocini, president of Rainbow Families, a group that supports LGBTQ+ parents, said in a statement that the new law is part of “a right-wing crusade against diverse families.”
During Wednesday’s debate, Ilaria Cucchi, a senator for the Green and Left Alliance, blasted the bill as “an inhumane act against parents and children, which only fuels stigma and discrimination.”
Democratic Party member Filippo Sensi, who identifies as a Catholic, spoke of “legislative fury” against children born from surrogacy, arguing that even Catholics can support medically assisted procreation “because at the heart of the Christian message there is only love.”
Conservative Legislators Stress Women’s Rights
But Lucio Malan, a senator for Fratelli D’Italia, equated surrogacy with “child trafficking” in which “rich families take advantage of women in need.”
“We think that the worst thing that can be done to a child is to deprive them of their mother,” he said.
Senator Elena Murelli, a member of Matteo Salvini’s Lega (League) party, slammed surrogacy as a form of “baby trading,” stating flatly, “You can’t buy children at the supermarket.”
“It is nature that decides this, not us,” agreed Senator Susanna Campione, a member of Fratelli d’Italia. “We wish for this example to be followed [by other countries]. This is a civilized law that safeguards the child [and] also the woman, since we believe that surrogacy essentially reduces a woman to a reproductive machine.”
After the vote, Salvini triumphantly announced: “The practice of ‘wombs for rent’ becomes a universal crime. Another commitment kept. A victory against the squalid millionaires’ business that exploits women and commodifies children.”
Carolina Varchi, who introduced the bill, wrote on Facebook this summer that with it, her party was working against LGBT “ideology.”
Pope Francis Urges Universal Ban on Surrogacy
Addressing members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See this January, Pope Francis called for “an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice [of surrogacy] universally.”
“I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs,” he said, decrying surrogacy as “womb renting.”
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract. The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking.”
However, Pope Francis has been accused of sending out mixed messages on homosexual parenting.
In 2020, he affirmed a Catholic homosexual couple who hired a lesbian surrogate to bear three children. Andrea Rubera and Dario De Gregorio of Rome, who are credited with convincing the pope that “homosexuals have the right to have a family,” were “married” in Canada in 2009 and had three children in Canada through a surrogate .The couple first arranged for Rubera’s sperm to first be used to create daughter Artemisia. This was followed by De Gregorio’s sperm in the reproduction of twins Chloe and Iacopo.
Catholic Teaching on Surrogacy
Catholic associations like Alleanza Cattolica, Family Day, Medici Cattolici, Movimento per la Vita, Nonni 2.0, Pro Vita, and Steadfast supported the bill, along with the Lega Party headed by populist leader Matteo Salvini.
A Vatican document on the “Instruction On Respect For Human Life In Its Origin And On The Dignity Of Procreation Replies To Certain Questions Of The Day” (1987) prohibits artificial insemination, surrogate pregnancy, and the intentional deprivation of the conceived child’s right to his married biological mother and father, stating:
Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.
Major Problem in Ukraine
Ukrainian companies have taken control of more than a quarter of the global surrogacy market since multiple human rights violations caused India, Thailand, and Nepal to slam the doors on foreigners seeking surrogates. Same-sex couples comprise about 40% of surrogacy clients, according to a 2020 study in the Journal of Public and International Affairs.
More than 150 Ukrainian women apply to be surrogates every month. Most contracts require them to give up all rights related to controlling their pregnancies.
According to the study, surrogate mothers also report that clients sometimes force them to abort the children. They also suffer from financial exploitation, unsafe and oppressive living environments provided by surrogacy agencies, poor health care for birth- and pregnancy-related complications, and long-term physical and psychological damage due to the surrogacy process.
Butince the industry brings over $1.5 billion to Ukraine annually, lawmakers have resisted attempts to regulate it, leading to abandoned children being left stateless because they are technically not Ukrainian.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.