What excess, what madness. The party of Giorgia Meloniwith the support of the extremist Brothers of Italy, wants to make surrogacy a universal crime, with years in prison and fines of a million dollars.
But it is not innocent that Meloni brings back to the exasperated international agenda one of the most controversial and divisive issues of recent times. Almost as militant as abortion.
Surrogacy disturbs, irritates, obscures, confuses and locks itself into the thorniest barriers of the exacerbated identitarianism of the 21st century.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during the summit between the EU and the Gulf countries held this Wednesday in Brussels.
Alienated politics (and the social unrest in its service) unscrupulously throws and mixes human trafficking, sexual violence, exploitation and poverty, feminism and homophobia into the same pot, to make it impossible to rational analysis and make us forget the underlying question: if the desire is there. having children is a right, if the State invades individual freedom and, above all, if there is an ideological or religious argument that justifies not regulating a reality that endangers thousands of minors every year.
An objective demand for harmonization of family law, public health, reproductive practices and legal protection of minors.
Pragmatism with principles, once again.
Work with institutions and civil society, debate, reflect, write and propose solutions in this regard. For over a decade, I have tried to contribute to the greater good of surrogacy: the protection and benefit of the lesser fruit thereof.
The European institutions should have long ago fulfilled their obligation, which is none other than to assume a leadership role and provide a common framework that provides legal security to families (straight or same-sex parents) who wish to use surrogacy or surrogacy to have children.
A common legal framework that gives these children the recognition and legal coverage required. Because let’s remember: much closer than the United States, Canada or Australia, we have in Europe a large number of countries such as the United Kingdom, Holland, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal or Czech Republic where GPA is authorized under certain assumptions, while in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, there is no.
How can there be this abyss between equals?
A few years ago, Brussels seemed determined to tackle the problem. The Community institutions recognized that, although family law was the responsibility of Member States, especially when it came to regulating reproductive technologies, it was necessary to at least harmonize laws affecting cross-border recognition. children.
The commissioner Vera Jourova assured me in a parliamentary response that “the best interests of children born to surrogate mothers must be a primary consideration”. It is for this reason that he admitted to closely following the work carried out in The Hague so that the Commission can address the debate and decide whether or not to legislate.
But then came the pandemic, and the invasion of Ukraine, and so many things that groups like the one promoting the so-called Casablanca Declaration took advantage of to revitalize a reactionary involution, without rational brakes and with the support of the Pope and a good part of the extremist forces, irresponsibly encouraged by the domestic fires of conservatives, social democrats and liberals.
And here we are with a new prohibitionist impulse, with strange statements from another era and, what is worse, with all the rational safeguards destroyed.
I defend a European regulatory framework for surrogacy that guarantees the health and well-being of the child and the surrogate mother, based on the free decision of a woman who generously agrees to carry a baby with whom she does not has no genetic link, and on the commitment of attention and respect towards the future parents.
No room for commercialization or abuse.
I advocate altruism, I guarantee the conditionality and legal certainty that we apply to adoption and organ donation, as a legislative basis in the European Union to prevent any discrimination, exploitation or lack of protection on European territory .
Because even though the demand for families resorting to surrogacy is increasing, there are still disparities within the EU between Member States on how to legally resolve this problem, leave children thus born in a situation of legal insecurity and discrimination.
The vast majority of Europeans envision a wide and rich variety of families, based on the freedom of citizens to found them within the current legal framework.
The defense of rights and freedoms must remain an essential characteristic of the Union. Because families, all European families, are the raft that allows millions of people to make the long and painful journey of the crises that we are experiencing during this century.
And I want Europe to place families, all families, at the center of its policies.
