Italy Blocks LGBTQ+ Couples From Becoming Parents

After banning couples from having a baby through a surrogate, Italy is taking the further step of banning couples from traveling abroad to do the same thing. Though experts say 90% of couples who use surrogacy in Italy are heterosexual, the law proposed by Italy's far-right governing party, which passed in a 84-58 Senate vote on Wednesday, is seen as a further attack on LGBTQ+ couples, who aren't allowed to adopt or use in-vitro fertilization in Italy, per the BBC. "This is a monstrous law," carrying a potential fine of more than $1 million, plus up to two years in prison, activist Franco Grillini told Reuters. "No country in the world has such a thing" where "you are sent to jail ... if you don't have children in the traditional way."

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy party has said she believes children should only be raised by a man and a woman. Last year, her government instructed Milan's City Council to stop registering the children of same-sex parents, depriving them of Italian citizenship. According to the BBC, she's described surrogacy, in which a woman carries a pregnancy for another person or couple, as "a symbol of an abominable society that confuses desire with rights and replaces God with money." "We must have the courage to say that money ... cannot buy a woman's body, it cannot buy a human life," said Carolina Varchi, the MP who drafted the bill, per the BBC. The Catholic Church, which has much influence in Italy, also opposes surrogacy in Italy and abroad, per the AP.

Yet for many LGBTQ+ couples in Italy, surrogacy abroad is the only option to have a family. These couples are already barred from adoption and in-vitro fertilization, in addition to marriage. The new law essentially takes a practice that's legal in the US and Canada and puts it in the same category as pedophilia and crimes against humanity, Angelo Schillaci, a professor of comparative public law at Rome's Sapienza University, tells the BBC. "It would be like prosecuting someone for smoking weed in Amsterdam after they've come back home." A gay couple in Italy who are expecting a baby through a surrogate living abroad tell the outlet they fear "our child won't have his parents because we will be in jail." They say they're planning to seek political asylum elsewhere in Europe. (More Italy stories.)