The Senate of the Republic gave final approval yesterday to the bill banning surrogacy, making it a universal crime in Italy. 84 senators from the center-right majority voted in favor, while 58 voted against. The measure had already been approved by the Chamber of Deputies in July 2023.

Amendment to Law 40: Extension of Punishability Even for Crimes Committed Abroad

With this decision, Parliament amended Article 12, paragraph 6, of Law 40 of 2004 by extending the punishability of the two criminal offenses concerning the commercialization of gametes or embryos and surrogacy to acts committed abroad by Italian citizens. The penalty under the new rule is imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to 1 million euros.

Pro Vita & Famiglia Onlus: “A Historic Day for Italy”

Pro Vita & Famiglia Onlus welcomed the approval of the law, calling the day “historic”: “The approval of the law that qualifies the uterus for rent as a universal crime makes this a historic day, because it strikes a very hard blow to the obscene international market of children fueled by surrogacy. From today, Italy will no longer be complicit, even indirectly, in a practice that exploits women’s bodies to produce custom-made children, as if they were objects to be sold and bought. It is clear that from today, even more so than before, Judges will have to reject requests to transcribe birth certificates submitted by couples who have rented wombs abroad into the registry offices.”

Pope Francis Condemns Surrogacy As Offense to Human Dignity

Pope Francis also spoke out on this issue, in his address to the diplomatic corps last January: “The path of peace demands respect for life, for every human life, beginning with that of the unborn child in its mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed, nor become an object of commodification. I consider deplorable the practice of so-called surrogacy, which seriously offends the dignity of the woman and the child. It is based on the exploitation of a situation of material need of the mother. A child is always a gift and never the object of a contract. I therefore call for a commitment by the international community to universally prohibit this practice.”

No comment after the Senate vote instead came from the Italian Bishops’ Conference.

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This article was previously published by acistampa.com