Surrogacy abroad, Fdi resubmits bill

“Amendment to article 12 of law no. 40 of 19 February 2004, concerning the prosecution of the crime of surrogacy committed abroad by an Italian citizen”. Brothers of Italy with the signatures of the senator and undersecretary of defence Isabella Rauti and of the group leader in the Senate Lucio Malan resubmitted the bill against surrogacy to Palazzo Madama. In the last legislature, in April, the Justice Commission of the Chamber had adopted the basic text of the law which proposes the prosecution of surrogacy as a universal crime, even if committed abroad. As a basic text was adopted that of Giorgia Meloni combined with the pdl of Mara CarfagnaFI and Lega had voted with the Brothers of Italy, the 5 Star Movement and the Democratic Party against.

On 27 January, among other things, the second plenary session of the new National Bioethics Committee was held at Palazzo Chigi, chaired by Professor Angelo Luigi Vescovi which has decided to open a table on surrogacy as well.

Surrogacy in Italy

Surrogacy is prohibited in Italy, the penalty for those who violate the law is imprisonment from 3 months to 2 years and a fine from 600,000 to one million euros. As in the Meloni text, the Rauti-Malan bill also underlines that “the penalties apply even if the crime is committed abroad”. The spotlights are on those countries, both European and non-European, such as India and the United States of America, where the practice of surrogacy is considered legal.

Giving rise in recent years – reads the foreword to the bill – “to the spread of so-called procreative tourism, i.e. the phenomenon whereby Italian couples who cannot have children make use of the technique of surrogacy in a foreign country where the same is allowed”. “The practices of surrogacy constitute an execrable example of commercialization of the female body and of the children themselves who are born through such practices, who are treated as goods”, the bill points out. “Nevertheless, the use of these practices is rapidly increasing and surrogacy is becoming a real business which, just to give an example, is worth over 2 billion dollars a year in India”, underline the two FdI senators .

In India

In India, in particular “the ‘volunteers’, recruited in the poorest areas, ‘produce’ more than fifteen hundred children a year to satisfy the demand that comes from abroad, attracted by low prices, ‘just’ 25,000/30,000 dollars compared to the 50,000 that is spent in the United States of America.

In India, volunteers who enter the legal circuit of surrogacy clinics earn between $8,000 and $9,000 per gestation, a figure that corresponds to ten years of work by an unskilled worker, while those who stay out are recruited from real ‘scouts’, active in the poorest areas, they are paid much less – from 3,000 to 5,000 dollars – and are forced to sign contracts that do not provide for any post-natal medical support”.

In the USA

Also in the United States of America “the surrogacy business is increasing exponentially, with a number of births exceeding two thousand every year, with respect to which the aspiring parents are even given the possibility to choose some basic characteristics of the unborn child”. Rauti and Malan point out. It is “a trivial commercialization of mothers and children”, hence the need “to condemn the spread of such practices”.

“In recent years, Italian judges have had to deal with the phenomenon of recourse to surrogacy abroad”, remarked the exponents of FdI. And again: “It appears evident that it is no longer possible to leave the courts alone in the face of the problems that are increasingly arising due to the recourse by Italian citizens to surrogacy practices carried out abroad, and how appropriate it is that national legislation sanctions similar practices, exactly as they are sanctioned if committed in Italy, thereby clearly reaffirming our opposition to the de facto exploitation and commercialization of women and children”. The goal, therefore, is to fill “a regulatory gap”, introducing “the punishability of the crime even when it has been committed in a foreign country”.