Lesbian mothers rights restricted in Italy

While many governments worldwide are tampering with birth certificates to allow erasure of biologcal sex, in Italy the conservative Italian government now only recognises the birth mother on birth certificates issued for children of lesbian couples, and lesbian couples can now be ordered to change the child’s surname. Some cities are even removing the title of parent retrospectively for the birth mother’s partner.

Even before Giorgia Meloni’s  conservative government had been elected last year, same sex couples had been banned from adopting children and lesbian couples banned from using IVF to get pregnant with donor sperm. The latter is not such a bad thing, as the medicotechnical procedures take a huge toll on the woman undergoing th procedure. There doesn’t seem any barrier, however, to low tech ‘turkey baster’ methods.

Some good news, though. Gay male couples have been banned from using surrogate mothers in Italy (a highly exploitative practice that oppresses mainly poor women). And any couple–heterosexual or homosexual–will pay a hefty fine if they look overseas for a surrogate.

Kington, Tom 2023. ‘Lesbian mothers in Italy set to be erased from birth records,’ The Times. June 21.