The rainbow families of Padua are still fighting for the rights of their children

The rainbow families of Padua are still waiting for a decision regarding the birth certificates of their children registered by the Municipality. A year has passed since the Padua Prosecutor’s Office contested the more than 30 birth certificates registered by the mayor Sergio Giordani starting from 2017. «When the Public Prosecutor’s Office challenged the birth certificates asking the Court to rectify them, that is to say the cancellation of the name of the second mother and the cancellation of her surname (leaving only the surname of the mother giving birth and her name as the only parent), the couples had to to appear in court opposing the request” explains the lawyer Susanna Lollini of the Lenford Lawyers Network which follows the families involved. «Won in the first instance, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry have made Appeal to the Court of Appeal and all the families had to turn themselves in again so as not to risk losing everything without at least trying to fight.”

Among these mothers are Franca and Ilaria, mothers of Matilde. “What we are experiencing is persecution, state harassment. The Ministry of the Interior is taking us to court because we want to build a family like the vast majority of people. The normality of our life project, together with that of the fathers’ couples, seems to have become a public danger that requires priority attention from this government”, they tell Vanity Fair. «We know that if the cancellation request is accepted we will have to proceed with the special adoption. This will put Matilde in the position of legally losing a mother from 1 to 3 years. Time in which I, who am the non-giving birth mother, will need a proxy to accompany my daughter to school or for a trip abroad with her, I will not be able to make health decisions (not even urgent) for my daughter. I would lose all rights and duties towards Matilde, so if Ilaria and I separated, she might not let me see my daughter anymore or I could abandon her without any problem. Without thinking then that if Ilaria were to pass away, Matilde would be an orphan and therefore adoptable”. Since the Meloni government took office, civil rights and in particular those of homoparental families living in our country have been subjected to various attacks. The case of the families of Padua is the most striking in particular after the decision of the Ministry and the Prosecutor’s Office to appeal. “It did not seem to us that the Court of Appeal was as attentive as the Tribunal”, continues lawyer Lollini. «We know, however, that the Court of Cassation has a very hard (and uncompromising) position of closure, so we assessed that the risks for the families of losing everything were very high and therefore we decided to focus everything on the return to the Constitutional Court. The Court of Appeal did not raise thea question of constitutionality as we had requested, preferring to postpone to 23 December 2024 with the prospect that the Court will rule by that date on the issue raised by the Court of Lucca”.

In the meantime, the families involved live in limbo. “We’ll face the next few months trying not to think about it,” Franca and Ilaria say. “We have a 50 percent chance that the Constitutional Court will decide in our favor.. It would have been more significant if the Court of Venice had also sent all the Padua cases back to the Constitutional Court. What is certain is that this situation, in addition to being anachronistic, is not aimed at safeguarding the interests of minors. These are discriminatory actions aimed at creating families and children of series A and series B. The majority of people who resort to PMA practices are heterosexual, but they are not required to have special adoption. And don’t come and tell me this isn’t homophobia.».

The legislative vacuum that no government has chosen to pay attention to so far has become an abyss in which minors are the first to not be protected in terms of their rights. «We expect the Constitutional Court to take note that that “intolerable lack of protection” that children of same-sex couples suffer “exclusively because of their mothers’ sexual orientation” has not been filled in the slightest by the legislator, despite the repeated warnings of the Court and that it draws the consequences”, concludes lawyer Lollini. “Because if no one intends to protect these children despite it being a clear obligation imposed by the Constitution, the only possible solution is to declare the unconstitutionality of articles 8 and 9 of law 40, in the part in which it does not allow the recognition of children by two women who have resorted to medically assisted procreation abroad, even though they did so in the absence of the subject requirements provided for by Italian law: being a couple of different sexes”.