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The new law punishes those who travel outside the country to make surrogacy arrangements, even if they travel to places where the services are legal.
Italy has implemented an even stricter ban against surrogacy, criminalizing traveling to another country to seek the services.
The new law, passed Wednesday, punishes those who travel outside the country to make surrogacy arrangements, even if they travel to places such as the United States or Canada where the services are legal. Those found to be in violation could face up to two years in prison and up to 1 million euros ($1.1 million) in fines.
While surrogacy was already illegal in the Italy, conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has pushed to further criminalize it in the past year. The nation's senate voted in the Spring to raise the fines from €600,000 to €1 million ($640,290 to $1,067,150) and to increase prison sentences from three months to up to two years.
Meloni herself believes that "surrogacy is an inhuman practice,” saying in April that she "support[s] the bill that makes it a universal crime." Her views are in line with that of the Catholic Church, as Pope Francis also recently said that he believes surrogacy “violates” the dignity of women, who “become a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”
While the ban applies to all couples equally, advocates have decried the disproportional effects it will have on LGBTQ+ and infertile couples, who are unable to have children on their own. Michela Calabrò, head of the Transfeminist Women’s Network at Arcigay, Italy's leading LGBTQ+ nonprofit, called the law a "serious denial of individual freedoms and self-determination" that "not only limits the possibility of choice, but also feeds a patriarchal vision of the women’s bodies."
"Every woman must have the right to decide how, when and whether to want to carry on a pregnancy, and gestation for others can be a conscious and altruistic choice. This measure highlights the inability of the Government and Parliament to deal with other important and urgent issues in our country," Calabrò said in a statement.
"The parliamentary majority in fact chooses once again to demonstrate its strength mainly on ideological topics, while on pragmatic issues it confirms its total inability," Calabrò continued. "In this context, ideology becomes not only a rhetorical weapon, but also a way to mask the catastrophic horizon that awaits us."
