People hold banners reading “we are families not crimes” during a pro-surrogacy flash-mob in Rome. Photo — Alessandra Tarantino
Italians who go abroad to have a baby via surrogacy will face jail terms and fines of up to €1m. The Italian parliament has now made it illegal for couples to go abroad and seek surrogacy as a way of having a baby. The prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, has been pushing for this for a long time and LGBTQ activists claim it is a means of targeting same-sex partners.
Italian Prime Minister pushing for ‘traditional family values’
Since taking office in 2022, Meloni has been considered highly conservative in her social agenda policies and is looking to promote what she sees as traditional family values, making it progressively harder for LGBTQ couples to become legal parents. Meloni’s far-right ‘Brothers of Italy’ party has pressed to promote what she sees as traditional family values, and this latest law is just one step further from a previous law passed in 2004 to those who go to countries such as the United States or Canada, where surrogacy is legal. The Brothers of Italy senator, Lavinia Mennuni, said during the parliamentary debate “Motherhood is absolutely unique, it absolutely cannot be surrogated and it is the foundation of our civilisation. We want to uproot the phenomenon of surrogacy tourism.” Earlier this year, Meloni called surrogacy an “inhuman practice” that “treated children as supermarket products and should not be allowed under any circumstances.”
The Italian birthrate is at an all-time low
Alessia Crocini, who is the president of ‘Rainbow Families’, said “90% of Italians who choose surrogacy were heterosexual couples but they mostly did so in secret, meaning this new ban would de facto affect only gay couples who could not hide it.” Recent statistics have shown that Italy has a declining birthrate and in 2023 it was announced that the birthrate in Italy had reached an all-time low. LGBTQ activists in Italy are not only angry that the law is preventing same-sex couples from becoming parents but also because it is not helping the birth decline issue, either. Demonstrators protested outside the Senate as the bill was passed, making their feelings clear, as they waved placards with statements such as ‘We are families, not crimes.”
