Photo Credit – Ansa
We lined up the facts, as it is given to know them, limiting the data from reality, and thus making the effort to go beyond the usual smoke of claims and instrumental controversy. Saturday is a child born in California anagrafe state was registered under the name of Tobia Antonio.
he knows that his father is Ed Head, 38 year-old Italian-Canadian, and mother an American woman with whom you do not know the identity and who sold their oocytes with a speech in anesthesia. Yes, because Tobia – which goes all the most affectionate welcome – was conceived in a test tube with the gametes of Ed and the woman who made them available.
The procedure was carried out by one of the numerous specialized structures not only in California but also in artificial procreation surrogacy, and therefore has also made available another woman – a US passport but Indonesian origins , it is given to learn – that in exchange for a sum of money (consistent, according to the American market standards) has signed a contract by which the embryo is committed to be implanted in the uterus and lead the entire pregnancy respecting stringent clauses: it is the practice, for example, that the surrogate mother will guarantee to have an abortion if the fetus reveals an anomaly.
The main task, of course, is to give in to the moment of birth the child to those who commissioned it and that it paid the clinic, the provider of gametes and the surrogate mother, in addition to the lawyer who drafted the contract between the parties. But what does all this Vendola? The national president of the Left ecology and freedom, until 2015 and for ten years governor of Puglia, is the companion of Head and lives with him for some time in Terlizzi. Although media reports describe it as a “father” of Tobias, from the genetic point of view with the child she has nothing to do. Of course, with his companion Vendola wanted the whole operation and paid what was agreed upon with its various American counterparts, but to do so he went where the uterus practical to rent – because, beyond sweeteners definitions and elusive as “gestation for others”, this is all about – is considered legal and is regulated by law.
In Italy instead applies a rule – 40/2004, the same one that provides rules on artificial insemination – which prohibits surrogacy and, indeed, submit it to severe penalties. Thus a man of the institutions and leaders of a party represented in Parliament and its mission is deployed in defense of legality and the weaker voices of society, violated a state law.
It is not true what you heard, which is that, “in the absence of a law” in Italy, and Head Vendola had to go abroad to fulfill their desire of dual authorship. The law is there, and paragraph 6 of Article 12 textually says that “anyone who, in any form, creates, organizes or advertises the sale of gametes or embryos or surrogacy is punishable by imprisonment from three months to two years and a fine ranging from 600 thousand to one million euro “.
The problem is that it is not enforced by the courts, so that now systematically legalize surrogacy absolving couples who return to Italy with the child in her arms, provided it is practiced abroad, in countries where lawful. It should be remembered that, although ill-treated by appeals and by the actions of the Constitutional Court, the legitimacy of the law 40 on this point has just been confirmed by the Constitutional Court in the judgment by which opened in April 2015 to heterologous fertilization.
in summary, in the case of the child came into the world in California there are a biological mother (the one that sold the eggs), a gestational mother (the one who conducted the pregnancy), a genetic father and finally another man for the law of some state (eg Canada, to which it is said that the Italian couple could ask why Vendola could adopt the child of his companion, and then open the game with the Italian civil status) could become legal father. Four “parents” for a child. The anomaly of a practice that makes it possible situations like these – and other even more extreme – is not noticed only in Italy. It’s a month ago the forum at the Parliament of Paris for the international ban on surrogacy, to consider the equal of slavery and to be pursued by appropriate legal instruments. Proponents of what has been dubbed “Charter of Paris”? Feminist groups and the association of French lesbians.
Because the surrogate mother’s son knows who to call “Mom”, regardless of laws, contracts and bank transfers. And esserle snatched just after birth remains a violation of its natural right to a mother and a father. Unless only for the fact that belongs to the most fragile part of the match does not consider a law less worthy of others, real or presumed that they are. (Francis Ognibene – Avvenire)
Online Editor
