The Italian Government’s ban on international surrogacy has been welcomed by women’s rights campaigners in the UK who are calling on the UK Government to do the same.
On 16 October, the Italian Government passed legislation making it a crime for Italian citizens to travel abroad to undertake surrogacy. The move has been praised by a broad coalition around the world, ranging from left-wing feminists to Catholics and children’s rights campaigners, who view surrogacy as inherently exploitative towards women and cruel to the child.
“We strongly welcome Italy’s international surrogacy ban and call on the UK Government to implement the same,”<strong> </strong>says Helen Gibson, Founder of Surrogacy Concern, a centre-left feminist campaign group run by volunteers.
“Over half of surrogate-born children living in the UK are born following exploitative commercial surrogacy arrangements undertaken in foreign countries, before being brought in to the UK.
“Parents are circumventing Britain’s ban on commercial surrogacy arrangements by going abroad to buy babies off women living in poverty: this is unacceptable and must end.
“The UK Government does not centrally record the number of children born each year in commercial surrogacy arrangements and is turning a blind eye to a practice we consider to be no more than child trafficking. Surrogacy can never be pursued safely or ethically.”
She notes that surrogacy is illegal in all forms in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, emphasising that “it’s high time that was the case in the UK”.
The new Italian law extends a ban on surrogacy that is already in place in Italy to include those who seek surrogacy out in foreign locations where it is legal, such as Georgia, Ukraine and parts of the US.
Those who break the law could face up to two years in prison and fines of up to €1m (£835,710). The law passed by 84 votes to 58 in Italy's senate on 16 October.
The news follows <a href="https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/abs/10.7326/M24-0417"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">research</mark></a> published in September in <em>The Annals of Internal Medicine</em>, which had looked at 860,000 births in Canada over a ten-year period. The research showed that gestational surrogacy carries a threefold risk of severe pregnancy complications including sepsis, postpartum haemorrhage and pre-eclampsiaario.
Surrogacy around the world is booming as a business: the industry is globally valued at $14 billion, projected to rise to $133 billion by 2033. These figures are alarming women’s rights campaigners, who fear the practice endangers children and women and reduces both to tradeable commodities.
“International surrogacy sees babies removed from their mothers at birth, often never to be reunited, with low-income women in developing countries paid as little as £11,800 to risk pregnancy and childbirth on behalf of wealthy, western couples," says Lexi Ellingsworth, co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK.
"It is an unacceptable abuse of both woman and child; it is not a progressive way to have a family, or a solution to infertility: surrogacy in all forms must be banned.”
Surrogacy Concern and Stop Surrogacy Now UK are both members and supporters of the International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood and of the Casablanca Declaration for the Abolition of Surrogacy.
In a recent <em>Herald</em> column, Gavin Ashenden discussed what happens to society and children if you break the link of biological parenthood, and endorse the social re-engineering of the role of mother and father.
This has had the effect, he says, of placing post-Christian secularism in direct opposition to Christian faith and the Biblical message.
He says that what began as the commercialisation and commodification of children through the business of surrogacy turned out to be only the beginning of a process that would eradicate the value, integrity and identity of not only fatherhood and motherhood, but of marriage and of the family as we have always understood them.
"If you remove the glue that holds everything and everyone together, it should be no surprise if things and people fall apart," Ashenden says.
<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/gay-marriage-and-surrogacy-buying-children-and-destroying-society/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><strong><em>RELATED: Gay marriage and surrogacy: Purchasing children and eradicating society</em></strong></mark></a>
<em>Photo: A man takes a picture of a mural painting made by Italian artist Alexsandro Palombo, depicting Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (right) and Democratic Party Secretary Elly Schlein (left) as representative of the two sides of the debate over surrogacy in the country, Milan, Italy, 22 May 2023. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
