Maria Sole Giardini was campaigning outside the Italian parliament in 2021 for surrogacy to be legalised when she encountered Giorgia Meloni.
The current prime minister’s Brothers of Italy party, in opposition at the time, was frantically drumming up support for a bill to extend Italy’s outright ban on domestic surrogacy by making it a universal crime that transcends borders.
This would have put people like Giardini, who was born without a womb and whose only means of having a baby was to access surrogacy abroad, on a par with terrorists, paedophiles and war criminals.
Meloni, who refers to surrogacy using the derogatory term “utero in affitto” (womb for rent), had described it that year as an “abomination” that sought to reduce human life “to a bargaining chip”.
Still, she took a moment to speak to Giardini, who is among the estimated 6,000 women in Italy with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, a condition that affects the female reproductive system.
“When I explained the condition and asked her ‘Why won’t you let me become a mother?’, she seemed open to wanting to evaluate surrogacy in certain situations, and we both agreed that women shouldn’t be exploited and that the service should be voluntary,” Giardini said.
Last week, almost two years to the day that Meloni’s far-right government came to power, parliament approved the west’s most restrictive law against international surrogacy. Under the terms of the law, which makes surrogacy the universal crime Meloni had campaigned for, couples who go abroad to have a baby via surrogacy risk up to two years in jail and fines of between €600,000 and €1m.
“The moment she became prime minister [in 2022] she pushed ahead with this inhumane and wicked law without any consultation with the people it affects,” Giardini said.
The measure, which is expected to be enacted in November, is among several socially conservative policies pursued by Meloni’s government in its quest to promote traditional family values. However, the law has been ill-thought out, with little clarity on how it will be applied.
Meloni, a self-described Christian mother who believes that children should be raised only by heterosexuals, has previously spoken out against surrogacy involving same-sex couples. But while critics argue that the law unfairly targets this cohort, especially gay men, the reality is that nine out of 10 of the estimated 250 couples a year who seek surrogacy overseas are straight.
“The majority are heterosexual couples, who for health reasons turn to surrogacy,” said Filomena Gallo, a family lawyer and national secretary of the Luca Coscioni Association, which is campaigning for the decriminalisation of altruistic surrogacy, where women offer to be surrogates without being paid.
Giardini had tried through a Rome court to be granted permission to proceed with an altruistic surrogacy after several women volunteered their services. But the request was rejected, and so she and her husband found a surrogate mother abroad. They now have a daughter, aged 14 months.
Giardini did not want to share the details of the surrogacy, in order to protect her child, but she has otherwise spoken publicly about her case.
It is a lonely battle: most straight couples conceal the fact that they have had a child through surrogacy due to fear of their children being taken away and a deeply entrenched social stigma. Same-sex couples, who are banned from accessing IVF in Italy and from adopting, have, on the other hand, been more vocal in their campaigning as they have no choice but to resort to surrogacy abroad, even if they too live in fear of the potential consequences.
Those fears have been amplified now that surrogacy is a universal crime.
Gallo said she had received messages from 30 extremely worried couples, 26 of them straight, who had already begun the procedure, some of whose children were about to be born, and who now risk being criminalised.
Surrogacy is legal and well regulated in 66 countries, although most Italian couples access the procedure in the US or Canada, where surrogacy is not specified on the birth certificate and where their child can obtain immediate citizenship.
In countries that do not grant citizenship at birth, parents must seek a temporary passport for their baby before returning home, and if the Italian embassy suspects surrogacy then it must report the case to Italy’s public prosecutor’s office. Until now, any reported cases have been shelved because no crime was committed in Italy.
“There are lots of question marks over how this law will be applied,” said Gallo. “Italy can pursue the crime but how will it proceed? How will couples be identified? Will they carry out investigations? Will there be different processes for heterosexuals and homosexuals? It will be extremely difficult to apply, hence why it seems more like a way to terrify people – the declarations made so far depict a police state in our country.”
Eugenia Roccella, the families minister, provoked fury on Monday after suggesting that doctors should be obliged to report surrogacy violations. In response, Filippo Anelli, president of the Italian order of doctors, said. “Our job is to heal, not to denounce.”
Riccardo Magi, president of the leftwing party Più Europa (More Europe), described the law as “a big operation of propaganda”.
“Like a good deal of the bills passed by the Meloni government, it is fragile from a judicial point of view,” he said. “Moreover, we have a superordinate EU norm which clearly states that no citizen can be indicted for an act which is not a crime in the country where it occurred.”
Although the law will not apply retroactively, Giardini worries about raising her daughter in a country where she will be considered “the product of a crime”.
“Italians have bigger concerns, such as work and healthcare, and instead of focusing on these issues the government has targeted a small group of people with a law which, more than anything, is spiteful towards children. I’m afraid to be governed by these people.”
