Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is a Catholic, has urged her country’s Parliament to pass legislation that would make it a crime for Italians to procure surrogate parenting abroad. Currently, surrogacy is only illegal when done within Italy’s borders and can result in jail time and/or a fine. “No one can convince me that it is an act of love to consider children as an over-the-counter product in a supermarket. I still consider the practice of uterus renting to be inhuman; I support the proposed law making it a universal crime,” Meloni declared at a recent conference in Rome. Her statements echo the Vatican’s most recent declaration on human dignity, Dignitas Infinita, which states that the practice of surrogacy violates the dignity of both the child and the woman by treating them as mere objects.
It is worth noting that most European countries ban all forms of surrogacy (such as Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Finland, Norway, Austria, and Switzerland) and even most of those that allow unpaid surrogacy, prohibit paid surrogacy (for instance, the UK, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Greece). Ukraine and Russia are among the very few countries in Europe that allow paid surrogacy. This contrasts with what happens in the United States, where both paid and unpaid surrogacy are legal in almost every state; only Nebraska and Louisiana expressly prohibit paid surrogacy.
To read the full article from Catholic News Agency, click here.