A lesbian couple with a
six-year-old daughter on Thursday hailed yesterday's court
ruling recognizing their child's adoption by her biological
mother's partner.
"We trust this ruling will serve as a useful precedent to
ensure justice to so many other children, their mothers and
fathers, who are in the same situation," said the two Rome-born
mothers.
The couple, who has been living in Rome since 2003, was
married and conceived their baby abroad thanks to donor gametes
- a technique that was banned in Italy at the time.
Their daughter was born in Italy six years ago.
The little girl "has been informed of the situation and
she's very happy," said the couple's lawyer, Maria Antonia Pili.
Her mothers "are happy they now have full custody of the
child and wish for this ruling to be stimulus to lawmakers on
the eve of parliamentary debate on (the government's) civil
unions bill," she added.
The Rome court of appeals on Wednesday upheld a landmark
August 2014 juvenile court ruling recognizing a child's legal
adoption by her mother's lesbian partner.
"The ruling confirms that it's possible in Italy for a
partner in a homosexual couple to adopt," Pili said yesterday.
Italy still lacks a civil unions or gay marriage law, so
births to same-sex married couples are not officially
recognized.
On December 10, a Milan appeals court ruled valid a lesbian
woman's adoption in Spain of her ex-wife's daughter, and ordered
the adoption transcribed in Italy.
The two Italian women started a relationship in 1999, then
one of them had the child through a donor in 2003. They married
in Spain, and the spouse who did not give birth legally adopted
the child before the couple divorced two years ago.
In July, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy
for failing to provide legal "recognition and protection" for
gay couples, and said it must remedy the situation by changing
its laws.
Premier Matteo Renzi's government is preparing a civil
unions bill that would give same-sex couples many of the same
rights and responsibilities as straight married couples,
including the right to adopt their spouse's children and for
widows to receive their deceased partners' pensions and inherit
their property.
However, the traditionally Catholic center-right, as well
as Catholic elements within the center-left, are not happy with
the billn, and are against recognising the rights of gays in
committed relationships to be parents.
This, they argue, will inevitably usher in the legalization
of surrogate motherhood, which is illegal in Italy and which the
Catholic Church condemns as a sin.
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