When labor began, Valentina Bagnara, 36, was with her partner, Daniela Ghiotto, 45, in a car that was speeding from Vicenza, her city of residence, to Padua, where she had to give birth. The two professors would have saved the trip of about forty kilometers between the two Venetian cities. But only one of the municipalities, thanks to a committed mayor, would allow them to be equally recognized as mothers of their daughter. Conceived in Denmark through medically assisted procreation (MAP), Caterina was born on May 19, 2022 and her birth certificate certifies that she is indeed the daughter of Valentina and Daniela.
However, a year later, in June 2023, the Padua prosecutor’s office questioned the validity of the document and, like thirty-six other children of same-sex couples registered in the city, Caterina was sent back to legal limbo. Because in the meantime, the far-right dominated government of council president Giorgia Meloni has been installed in power and, in an Italy already far behind in terms of LGBT rights, the balance of same-sex families is become even more precarious than it already was. “Now we are political targets” summarizes Daniela Ghiotto.
The judicial battle opened by the Padua prosecutor’s office, and in which Caterina’s mothers and thirty-two other families are involved, still continues. Their issue is the simple right of homosexual people to found a family. Initially, it was a circular from the Ministry of the Interior, directed by Matteo Piantedosi, a senior official close to the League (far right), which ordered the prefects to remind the mayors of Italy not to register the names of the two fathers of the children. same sex on birth certificates.
Victories…and more appeals
In fact, the text was directed at municipalities such as Padua, where this practice had been established thanks to a legal loophole and the discretion of the progressive councilors, which Daniela Ghiotto describes as“conscientious objectors”. With the new instructions in force, the city prosecutor’s office stood out for its zeal in demanding the cancellation of birth certificates dating back to 2017. “We found out from the press that perhaps I would no longer be recognized as the mother of my daughter, that perhaps I would have to show power of attorney to pick her up from school in the future…”says m.me Ghiotto.
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