Surrogate motherhood: the bill by Bonino and Magi

The Demos poll published in this newspaper on Friday 21 July on the opinion of Italians regarding gestation for others demonstrates once again that the country is ahead of its political class: half of Italians, especially the younger and more educated ones, are in favor of surrogacy.

In the coming days, Parliament will vote on the draft law of the Brothers of Italy, first signed by Varchi, aimed at making Gestation for Others (GPA) a “Universal Crime”, i.e. punishable by law even if implemented by Italian citizens in countries where it is fully legal and regulated.

So let’s start with two facts.

First of all, the countries that have legalized gestation for others are mostly democratic countries, and often among the most attentive to people’s rights: United States, Canada, Portugal, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Greece, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, just to name a few.

How can one say yes to the Universal Crime of Gestation for Others, when this bill is in contrast with international and European law, configuring itself as a real legal shame?

Furthermore, not everyone knows that 90% of GPA is practiced by couples of people of different sexes: often these are women who do not have a uterus, who are born without it, or women who have had it removed due to very serious pathologies.

Here, then, is that the proposal that wants to make the GPA a Universal Crime takes the form of yet another outrage against women, which does not protect them or their children.

First of all, it does not protect women, since prohibition on women’s bodies – abortion teaches us this – has always produced clandestinity, suffering and exploitation, especially in the case of less well-off people.

Only legalization, with rigorous regulation, can guarantee full dignity to all the people involved.

This bill doesn’t even protect children: what protection would it be to throw parents in jail?

Would putting them up for adoption or foster care really be the most dignified solution?

We have gone from “children of sin” to “children of crime”.

Here then is the amendment by +Europe, which arises from a bill elaborated by the Luca Coscioni Association, goes in the direction of dismantling this hypocritical state homophobia passed off as the defense of women, and aims to regulate GPA only in an altruistic and supportive way, without economic and commercial purposes, putting an end to useless and painful persecutions.

Stringent rules that prevent the marketing of bodies serve to prevent pregnancies from being carried out by the most economically fragile women, establishing the obligation to take out an insurance policy in their favor that covers all medical expenses relating to the risks of pregnancy, as well as a national register at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, whose registration would be mandatory precisely in order to guarantee compliance with these guarantees.

Starting from this proposal, we appeal to all the parliamentarians of the progressive and liberal forces present in Parliament. It is not enough to oppose the Varchi proposal. Saying no to the Universal Crime while maintaining the national one is a great hypocrisy. It means inviting couples to continue to go abroad, once again discriminating against those who do not have the economic means to undertake this journey outside Italy, without protection in their own country.

+Europe has clear ideas on this, but we understand that in the other opposition parties, starting with Schlein’s PD, the debate is heated and complex.

However, our hope is that dissenting voices will find the strength to make themselves heard, leaving the pre-established alignments, to fight a battle of legality with us. Against a right that would like to sterilize all diversity, in its conception of the gray and dull world.

We do not accept compromises with this right. The oppositions must be ready to build a completely different country from the one the government imagines.

A country that guarantees dignity to everyone, in everyone’s diversity, and that leaves no one behind. Regardless of how you were born.

Gestation for Others may or may not like it, but “I wouldn’t do it”, for us it cannot mean “You don’t have to do it either”.

We say to liberal and progressive parliamentarians that it is precisely on these battles that a difference can be made, on these battles the alternative is built.

The time has come to choose: with the Brothers of Italy or with the Sons and Daughters of Italy.