(by Stefania Fumo)
A civil court on Friday turned
down a child custody suit filed by the biological parents of
twins born in an assisted fertility case where embryos were
mixed up in a Rome hospital last December.
"The case cannot be appealed to the (supreme)
Constitutional Court," the judges wrote in their 16-page
opinion.
The babies, a boy and a girl, were born August 3 in the
city of L'Aquila. In an interview with La Stampa newspaper, the
birth parents said they want to keep the babies even though in
biological terms, the twins belong to another set of parents.
"We are happy, very happy. Our children are born and
they're well," the birth mother told the newspaper, adding that
the births have already been officially registered with
authorities.
"No one can take them away," she added.
But the biological parents asked the civil court to act
quickly in awarding them custody of the babies, who were
delivered more than one week earlier than expected by caesarean
section, according to the newspaper report.
The biological parents were quoted as saying they have
asked to meet the birth parents, but so far haven't had a reply.
"We recognize their suffering and this makes us feel
badly," the biological parents were quoted as saying.
"We need peace, we have already suffered a lot in recent
months, for us it's finally time to be a family," the biological
parents told the newspaper.
Michele Ambrosini, lawyer for the birth parents, said that
as far as he knows, the mother and babies are doing well.
In late July, Italian prosecutors concluded that the embryo
mix-up that occurred in December 2013 at Sandro Pertini Hospital
in Rome was not a felony and asked that a criminal case in the
affair be dropped.
A complaint had been filed in April 2014 to prosecutors by
one of the couples involved in the case.
Police have said the embryos were mixed up because the
surnames of the two couples involved were very similar.
Following the discovery of the mix-up in April, the
assisted-fertility clinic at Pertini hospital implemented new
procedures to prevent such errors from repeating, including
assigning each patient an ID code and treating no more than
three aspiring mothers on the same day.
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