Italy hails CoE no to surrogacy

(ANSA) - Rome, October 12 - Italian politicians from across the spectrum reacted positively to Tuesday evening's vote by the Council of Europe against recognising surrogacy agreements. "I am pleased that the Council of Europe has rejected regulating surrogate motherhood...a practice that I consider to be abominable," said former health and social solidarity minister Livia Turco of the Democratic Party (PD). "It is a practice that damages the woman's dignity and reduces the mother-child relationship, which is built during pregnancy, to a mere biological fact," she added. "I hope this decision...paves the way for surrogacy to be declared a universal crime," said centre-right politician Maurizio Lupi, president of the lawmakers of Area Popolare. Centre-right former equal opportunities minister Mara Carfagna took the same position. "Now let Italy lead the campaign to universally outlaw this abhorrent practice," she said in a message to her Twitter account. Only the Luca Coscioni association, named after the Radical politician who died prematurely of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2006 at the age of 38, took a diametrically opposite stance.
    "Those who rejoice at the rejection by the Council of Europe of regulation of pregnancy for others perhaps do not realise that this decision is to the advantage of phenomena of exploitation," secretary Filomena Gallo said. "To combat abuse and exploitation...the freedom to have children must be guaranteed, also using the safe reproduction techniques offered by science. To ban women from having a pregnancy for others means pushing couples to act clandestinely," she added. Surrogacy is outlawed in Italy and earlier this year a provision introducing stepchild adoption for homosexual partners in a civil union was scrapped from a bill regulating such unions on grounds it could pave the way for the practice.