This article is published in number 26/27 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until July 5, 2022
“I’m always afraid of saying the wrong thing and being swamped with insults”says Sara after asking for reassurance on how we will tell her story. “You never know what reaction people will have when they hear you talk about gestation for others.” And so it is. Every year, hundreds of Italian couples go abroad to become parents by choosing this path. And most of them are not homosexuals. In Italy, gestation for others (Gpa) is not legal, as established by law 40 of 2004, for this reason there are no precise data on the number of people who use it.
For Sara and her husband Luca, the Gpa is a hope. “We became parents of two girls aged 2 and 4, but now we can’t see our third child born. During the last birth, I had serious complications and I lost the uterus, ”says Sara. “But our third embryo is frozen and waiting to be born. For us he is already a child, we cannot pretend that he is not there ». For this reason, Sara and Luca have decided to launch an appeal, together with the Luca Coscioni association (ALC), to find a woman who understands this desire and is available to carry on the pregnancy for them, free of charge: this is the case of gestation for others in solidarity. When they find this woman, Sara and Luca will have to go to court. In Italy it is not clear in what terms this practice is also prohibited, because the law 40 of 2004, which deals with the subject, does not specify it. “It provides for a ban on marketing in any form,” he explains Filomena Gallo, National Secretary of the Association. “But as the law is written, it seems that only the subrogation of commercial maternity is prohibited”. The fine, in this case, ranges from 600 thousand euros to one million. “If in Italy you can donate a kidney alive, as well as blood, why is it not possible to carry on a pregnancy for nine months instead of another woman, requiring only the reimbursement of the necessary expenses?”.
A request already inherent in the bill presented on April 13, 2021 and elaborated by the Coscioni and others association, precisely to regulate the solidarity form of this kind of gestation. “It is deposited in the Chamber but has not yet been discussed.” In the absence of clear laws, couples are forced to turn to judges. She did it Maria Sole Giardini, who has long been told as the Roki girl, borrowing the name of the Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome with which she grew up. “It means being born without a uterus, but I still have oocytes and ovaries, so I’m fertile”, explains Maria Sole. She and her husband have also been registered for two years in the national adoption lists and recently had publicly offered to adopt the girl Ukrainian arrived in Italy and rejected by the Italian couple who had chosen to give birth to her. «We have not been contacted by anyone and I hope that this child has already been entrusted to others. We look forward to being able to adopt or realize our dream together with the woman who has given herself willing to carry out the pregnancy for us on a voluntary basis “. Regularizing gestation for others in solidarity, some argue, could also be a solution to avoid any form of possible exploitation and the rise of abuse and illegality. Among the couples we meet there are also Marina and Fabio, who like Sara and Luca weigh every word and repeat that they feel under a magnifying glass subject to comments and criticisms of all kinds. “Fabio, if you say it like this they fill us with bad words”, Marina says between sentences. «In the family they supported us even if it was not easy to talk about it at the beginning. However, I happened to have to distance myself from a friend who as soon as she learned of our choice she said that we were making an abomination, that we were only selfish “. A little less than two months ago, Marina and Fabio returned from Ukraine where they went, with great difficulty, to take home their baby, born a few days after the outbreak of the war. They chose Ukraine when Marina learned from doctors that she could not carry a pregnancy due to the rare disease she is forced to live with. “We originally thought about adoption,” she says as she prepares for the feeding of her two-month-old baby. “Then with my health situation it became more complex and we started thinking about gestation for others. I was very frightened by the idea of not being able to be next to the woman who would allow our child to grow in his belly. This was perhaps one of the most complex parts to accept ».
Marina and Fabio turned to a clinic in Kiev which followed them throughout the process. They signed a contract and paid the costs related to the gestation process: from egg donation to birth. About 40 thousand euros. “On the morning of the birth, our pregnant woman sent me a message telling me that I was about to become a mother and I was very excited”. In the first days of life, Marina and Fabio saw their baby in the photos that came from the nursery moved to a bunker. “We wanted to leave immediately but it took a few days to get the permits and documents to take him home.” Then that day arrived and after several hours of traveling and waiting, Marina and Fabio held their son in their arms in the lobby of a hotel in Lviv. “To be able to return to Italy, the couple takes a path that is followed every time there is a birth abroad, or rather the passage from the consulate to which the documentation is requested to bring the child to Italy”, explains Filomena Gallo. “Having verified that the process took place in legal compliance with the laws of the country, in this case Ukraine, the proceedings are filed and the transcription is carried out automatically”.
In Italy, France, Spain and Germany, gestation for others is completely prohibited. In other countries it is possible under different conditions, such as in Ukraine (only for heterosexual and married couples), in Russia (legal in commercial form), in Greece (with court authorization), in Portugal (guaranteed to women who for medical reasons do not can face a pregnancy) and in some American states, where it can be done for a fee. In solidarity form it is also granted, among others, in Canada, Brazil and Australia. “In our bill we have left the marketing ban in force, specifying the existence of a single reimbursement given to pregnancy costs. In addition, there is a national register of pregnant women followed by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. Women will only be able to do it twice, they must already be mothers and they will not have to be in conditions of economic need. It is a basic standard that starts from those already existing in other countries ». In Italy, the political debate on the GPA has led the Justice Commission of the Chamber to adopt the proposal of Brothers of Italy which asks to make it a universal crime and therefore also to punish couples who go abroad. “Impracticable, because if you want to punish a crime committed abroad in Italy, that fact must also be a crime in the country where it is committed. It is the fundamental principle of double criminality ”, explains Gallo. “Women are not subjects who are unable to decide. If a person wants to carry on a pregnancy for another woman why can’t she do it? At the base is his choice“.
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Source: Vanity Fair
