Italy passes anti-surrogacy law, effectively bans gay parenthood

Italy has approved the most stringent law prohibiting international surrogacy, threatening would-be parents who utilise birth mothers overseas with jail time and steep fines in a measure critics say would mostly target same-sex couples.

Domestic surrogacy was already illegal in Italy, as it is in certain other nations and states of the United States, but the amended Italian law takes a step further, categorising surrogacy as a rare universal crime that crosses boundaries, similar to terrorism or genocide.

The bill which became effective Wednesday, is the most powerful shot yet in far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s attempt to instill conservatism in Italian society, and it raises surrogacy to the forefront of the West’s raging culture wars.

The law, passed last year by the lower house and effectively ensured by the Senate vote on Wednesday, also criminalises 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 heterosexual couples may face few questions when returning to Italy with an infant, or when registering their child’s birth certificate with local municipalities.

Same-sex couples are already barred under Italian law from domestic or international adoption. Thus, the new law effectively cuts off the last, best route for gay male couples residing in Italy to start families.