In a square in Milan a mural has appeared these days that portrays the leaders of the first two Italian parties, the Prime Minister and head of the Brotherhood of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and the General Secretary of the Italian Democratic Party (PD), Elly Schlein . Both appear naked and pregnant. One of them, Schlein, carries an LGTBI flag on her arm. The other, Meloni, the tricolor flame that characterized the Italian Social Movement, the party founded by Mussolini’s heirs, a controversial symbol that Brothers of Italy maintains in its logo.
The work aims to reflect on motherhood and freedom of choice over the female body, especially on the issue of surrogacy, a highly controversial issue in the country at the moment. Now, Brothers of Italy, the party that leads the government coalition, has taken the first step to penalize the use of surrogacy abroad and sanction as a “universal crime” Italians who resort to this reproductive practice in countries where it is legal.
Surrogate motherhood is already banned in Italy. A 2004 law punishes anyone who “performs, organizes or sponsors the commercialization of gametes or embryos, or maternity surrogacy” with penalties of between three months and two years in prison and fines of between 600,000 and one million euros. But now, an amendment approved in the Justice Commission of the Chamber of Deputies to a bill that received the green light from the Meloni Government in February wants to extend these punishments to all Italian citizens who carry out this reproductive practice in other countries and that they then return to Italy with the child conceived through a surrogate.
The objective, says the amendment, is “to hinder any practice that could be configured as commercial child trafficking.” It is the first parliamentary procedure pending the bill reaching the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies on June 19. Then it must be definitively approved in the Senate, something that is taken for granted given the vast majority of the right-wing coalition in the Italian Parliament. “The Government’s position is one of absolute condemnation of all forms of maternity surrogacy, as a form of commercialization of paternity, harmful to the dignity of women and the rights of children,” said the Minister of Family, Equality of Opportunities and Italian Natality, Eugenia Roccella, a veteran anti-abortionist who is admired by the so-called pro-life movements.
The law does not formulate differences between heterosexual or homosexual couples, but it puts another obstacle to LGTBI couples who wish to be parents months after this Italian Executive limited their rights by prohibiting municipalities from registering minors born by surrogacy or artificial insemination abroad by homosexual couples, who until now could register both parents as parents in some progressive municipalities thanks to a legal loophole.
The question of surrogacy is also uncomfortable for the left, which is divided on the issue. Schlein, for example, is personally in favor of this path, but not everyone in his party thinks so. Riccardo Magi, from the progressive formation Europa, regrets that with this law there will be consequences for the children, who will remain in limbo without recognizing it. The 5 Star Movement thinks the same, which has voted against it because it believes that children should be able to have “both parents” and their guardianship should be favored.
The issue of motherhood is a central pillar in the electoral program of the Brothers of Italy, which defends that the family should be made up of a father and a mother, and conceived by traditional ways. It is something that also affects the Prime Minister in a very personal way, who does not hesitate to always define herself as a mother, and whose personal history is marked by the abandonment of her father when she was just a child. “Maternity surrogacy practices constitute an execrable example of the commercialization of the female body and of the very children that are born through such practices and who are treated as merchandise,†said Meloni herself.
