Italian fertility clinics forced to go abroad for donor eggs

(ANSA) - Rome, January 14 - Italy's fertility clinics lack a sufficient supply of donor eggs to match current demand, which has led many of them to search for donors throughout Europe, a national expert said Wednesday.
    "In Italy at the moment there aren't voluntary egg donors," said Elisabetta Coccia, president of Cecos Italy, an association of 21 national public and private fertility clinics.
    "So the choice to go abroad is the only possible way at the moment to guarantee fertility treatments in our country," Coccia said.
    In April, Italy's Constitutional Court ruled that a couple's right to have a child was inviolable even in the case of sterility, overruling a 2004 ban on donor sperm and eggs that did not come from a spouse.
    Since the ruling went into effect last June, demand for gametes has soared.
    Coccia confirmed that one pregnancy has already resulted from a foreign egg, and that most of the 21 Cecos clinics will be finalizing contracts in coming days with various European gamete banks.