From now on, children born in Italy to female couples thanks to heterologous fertilization, done in countries where it is legal, will immediately have two mothers. Article 8 of law number 40 of 2004 is therefore constitutionally illegitimate
For the many rainbow families in Italy, today is a historic day: sentence number 68 has been filed, with which the constitutional judges open a way where the Meloni government had closed every door. Children born to two lesbian mothers, conceived with PMA abroad, will be able to be recognized by both from birth. In 2023, a circular from the Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi had taken away one mother in two from the children of lesbian couples (as in the case of the mothers of Padua ). This court sentence gives her back.
Life has not suddenly become easy for homosexual couples, on the contrary. In a subsequent ruling, the 69th, also published today, the judges established that precluding assisted fertilization to single women is not unconstitutional. In short, it can be done. It would eventually be up to parliament to decide to make it possible for them too.
Life has not suddenly become easy for homosexual couples, on the contrary. In a subsequent ruling, the 69th, also published today, the judges established that precluding assisted fertilization to single women is not unconstitutional. In short, it can be done. It would eventually be up to parliament to decide to make it possible for them too.
In Italy, until yesterday, it was not permitted to register two parents of the same sex at the registry office
This is the fifth time that law 40 has been repealed in part because it is unconstitutional: the constitutional judges have therefore not opened PMA to lesbian couples in Italy but have definitively and historically sanctioned the recognition of their children.
For lesbian couples as well as heterosexual couples undergoing heterologous fertilization
In other words, if lesbian couples undergo heterologous insemination abroad, the same thing that applies to heterosexual couples must also apply to them. If the “second mother” gives consent to PMA, she is immediately the second parent of the child born in Italy. Exactly like the father of a child born from heterologous fertilization. Therefore, she must be recognized as such at the registry office, immediately and without having to resort to stepchild adoption (as has happened up to now).
For the Constitutional Court, stepchild adoption is discriminatory towards the child born
Stepchild adoption requires lesbian couples to go to court to have their parenthood recognized: this is discriminatory towards children. Failure to recognize the status of child of both mothers from birth in fact violates the right to personal identity of the minor and jeopardises both the effectiveness of his “right to be supported, educated, instructed and morally assisted by his parents, respecting his abilities, his natural inclinations and his aspirations” and his “right to maintain a balanced and continuous relationship with each parent, to receive care, education, instruction and moral assistance from both and to maintain significant relationships with the ascendants and relatives of each parental branch”.
