Italy expands ban on surrogacy to citizens going abroad

Italy has expanded a law prohibiting surrogacy, extending it to Italians who travel abroad for the practice.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the passage of the law on X, calling it “a common sense rule against the commodification of the female body and children. Human life has no price and is not a commodity.”

The law, which passed with broad support in an 84-58 vote, classifies surrogacy as a universal crime, which the Washington Post characterizes as one “that transcends borders, like terrorism or genocide,” which are all threats to human dignity. The 2004 law banning surrogacy had penalties from three months to two years in prison, and €600,000 to €1 million.

The practice of surrogacy is inherently exploitative and unethical, as it purposefully creates children to traumatize them by separating them from their mothers. Additionally, it treats those children and often their mothers as commodities to be bought and sold, which even leaders in the abortion industry have recognized. The entire industry is poorly-regulated worldwide, and largely unaccountable to anyone. The practice often preys upon poor women who use surrogacy as a source of income.

“It is nature that decides this, not us,” Sen. Susanna Campione, who voted for the law, said according to the Washington Post. “We wish for this example to be followed [by other countries],” she added. “This is a civilized law that safeguards the child but also the woman, since we believe that surrogacy essentially reduces a woman to a reproductive machine.”

“People are not objects, children cannot be bought, and you cannot sell or rent human body parts. This simple truth, already contained in our legal system, that punishes as a crime the aberrant practice of surrogacy, can no longer be circumvented,” said Families Minister Eugenia Roccella, according to RTE.

Critics of the law have pointed out the difficulty in its enforcement, and also claimed that it will disproportionately affect the LGBTQ community, who would be more visible than heterosexual couples using a surrogate for fertility issues. Same-sex marriage is also illegal in Italy. Other critics have leaned on Italy’s declining birth rate, saying that this law will not help the matter. But surrogacy is not an infertility treatment, and harming children is not an answer to that problem.

As more countries recognize the serious problems caused by surrogacy, an international movement to rein in the practice has been gaining momentum in recent years. In June, the Vatican organized a meeting at the United Nations titled “At What Price? Towards the Abolition of Surrogacy: Preventing the Exploitation and Commodification of Women and Children,” as Live Action News reported. The meeting was held at the 56th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council and featured, among others, Olivia Maurel who was born via surrogacy but has advocated for outlawing the practice, which she calls “cruel” and marked by a “traumatic legacy.”

Surrogacy is illegal in most European countries. In a few countries, like the UK and the Netherlands, so-called “altruistic” surrogacy is legal.

Pope Francis spoke about human dignity to world ambassadors in January of this year, calling for a global ban on surrogacy in lieu of the inherent human rights violations.

“The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking,” he said, according to CNA. “In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

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