Italy’s leader takes aim at surrogate baby ‘tourism’

ITALIANS who travel overseas to arrange surrogate pregnancies face two years in prison or a €1million fine as their prime minister attempts to eliminate “procreative tourism”.

Employing surrogate mothers has been illegal in Italy for almost 20 years, but proposals outlined by Giorgia Meloni, the country’s Right-wing prime minister, would extend the prohibition to couples seeking to have a child in countries where the practice is legal, such as the US, Canada and India.

“The penalties should apply for offences committed abroad,” the proposed law says because babies were being treated as “merchandise” in what was an “execrable example of the commercialisation of the female body”, backers of the legislation said.

The law has been promoted by politicians from Ms Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, including Isabella Rauti, a senator whose father was a prominent member of Italy’s Fascist movement. They said there had been a dramatic increase in recent years in “procreative tourism”, in which straight couples unable to have children, as well as gay couples, had resorted to looking for surrogate mothers abroad.

“The recourse to this practice has dramatically increased and surrogacy is becoming a veritable business which, just to give an example, is worth €2billion a year in India,” they said as they presented the draft law. Surrogate mothers in India charged $25,000 to $30,000 while those in the US charged around $50,000, she said.

One of the main planks of the Meloni government, which came to power in October, is an emphasis on traditional families. Her Brothers of Italy party, which traces its roots to Italy’s post-war Fascist movement, governs in alliance with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s Lega party. Together they won 45 per cent of the vote at the general election in the autumn.

“A uterus for rent is a commercialisation of women’s bodies and human life,” Ms Meloni tweeted in April before she became Italy’s first female prime minister.

A campaign group representing same-sex couples said the proposed law was retrograde and unjust. Alessia Crocini, president of Rainbow Families, said the proposal was “not worthy of a European country in 2023” and if the law were passed, couples with babies born to surrogate mothers could be arrested at airports when they returned to Italy.