Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin
on Wednesday signed new guidelines on assisted fertility
bringing Italy more into line with other advanced countries. The
norms, introducing sperm and egg donorship, will become active
once they are published in the Official Gazette.
Selection of physical characteristics has been ruled out.
The guidelines effectively supersede an assisted-fertility
law that was among the most restrictive in Europe and whose
constitutionality has been repeatedly challenged in the courts.
In the last challenge, a couple of months ago in Milan, a
court sent the law to the Constitutional Court for a ruling in a
case involving a couple concerned about the likelihood of
transmitting a serious genetic disease to any offspring.
For that reason, the couple - which is fertile - wanted to
have access to forms of genetic screening despite Law 40's
restrictions.
Other courts have previously sent the law's measures on
genetic screening to the Constitutional Court for review.
Polls have shown the law is not popular with Italians.
Lawyer Gianni Baldini told ANSA that the latest case
demonstrates how Law 40 is "dangerous and discriminatory"
because it would prevent a couple from learning if they have
passed on genetic diseases before a fertilized egg is implanted.
Baldini said that is dangerous, while at the same time
discriminatory against couples already "struggling with illness"
but who want children without burdening them the same problems.
Pre-implantation screening would "in fact, offer women the
only alternative of abortion," he said.
The law had already been rejected by the European Court
of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 2012 which said that Italy had
infringed upon two provisions of its convention for the
protection of human rights.
Elements of the law have been previously put before the
Constitutional Court, to rule on access to sperm donors for
"heterosexual sterile or infertile couples" who, petitioners
said, were denied "the fundamental right to the full realisation
of their family life" by Law 40.
The issues surrounding reproductive rights and laws is a
hot political potato in overwhelmingly Catholic Italy.
Opinion polls have said that most Italians think the law is
too harsh and forces too many people, at least the ones who can
afford it, to resort to foreign clinics.
The bill was originally passed by a cross-party alliance of
Catholics in a battle which also pitted male MPs against female
MPs.
The 2003 law forbids the screening of embryos for
abnormalities or genetic disorders, even for couples with a
history of genetic disease, and women are denied the right to
refuse implantation once their eggs have been fertilised.
As well, single parents, same-sex couples and women beyond
child-bearing age are banned from using assisted-fertility
techniques, which are limited to sterile heterosexual couples
who are married or live together.
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