Outside the Palazzo Madama in Rome, Italy, a line of baby socks flutter in the wind, pinned to stark posters reading: “Le figlie e i figli che non potremo mai avere”—“The daughters and sons that we can never have.” This demonstration underlies a complex and controversial subject within domestic Italian politics—surrogacy.
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On October 16th, 2024, Italy’s Senate voted to enact a law extending the nation’s 2004 domestic ban on surrogacy to include citizens who seek such services abroad, even in countries where the practice is legal. This legislation, championed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Fratelli d’Italia, a right-wing coalition, classifies surrogacy as a “universal crime,” placing it on par with offenses like genocide and crimes against humanity. Currently, the full extent of mechanisms to enforce this universal ban is unclear, since legal experts anticipate challenges and potential conflicts with international law. However, lawmakers intend to impose fines of up to €1 million and imprisonment for up to two years.
Proponents of the ban argue that the law safeguards women’s dignity and prevents the commodification of the female body. However, critics from the October demonstration contend that it disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ families, particularly gay couples, who have few alternatives for starting biological families. But this law impacts all Italian couples who pursue surrogacy, 90% of whom are heterosexual. As Professor Serena Bassi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Italian Studies, told The Politic, “This is about targeting non-normative families, queer families, and non-normative individuals, and framing it as feminist.” Furthermore, critics like Bassi view the ban as part of a broader agenda to enforce an ultra-conservative definition of family. This agenda, in the process, infringes on human rights and exacerbates Italy’s declining birth rate, 1.24 births per woman, which Meloni calls a national emergency.
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Girogia Meloni is Italy’s first female prime minister. Her brightly colored tailored blazers and slogan—“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian, and you can’t take that away from me”—encapsulates her political ethos.
Italy’s surrogacy ban is informed by the history of Prime Minister Meloni’s rightwing political movement. Unlike Germany, which criminalized and legally dismantled Nazism, Italy allowed Mussolini’s defeated supporters to form political parties, which have survived within democratic institutions to the modern day. The first party to take up this legacy was the 1946 Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI). One of the key figures in this post-war, far-right transition was Giorgio Almirante, a former Mussolini collaborator of Mussolini who played a significant role in shaping the MSI and its ideological successors.
Almirante became a mentor to Meloni, heavily shaping her introduction to politics. “By the time [Meloni] came of age politically, there [was] already the sense that the right can have strong women who can rethink feminism from a far-right perspective…without challenging patriarchy as a whole, without challenging politics as a whole,” said Bassi. This reflects a broader strategy in which the far-right utilized feminist rhetoric to reinforce conservative values. Meloni absorbed Almirante’s vision of nationalism, social conservatism, and a belief in a strong state, all while learning to navigate within the bounds of democratic institutions.
Meloni’s entry into politics coincided with a shift in the MSI in the early 1990s as the party sought to distance itself from fascist symbolism. This allowed her to position herself as part of a new generation of right-wing leaders who embraced nationalist conservatism without aligning themselves as openly with Italy’s fascist past. She joined the youth wing of the MSI’s successor parties, rising through the ranks and ultimately becoming the leader of Fratelli d’Italia, a party that fully embraces nationalist and socially conservative policies. For Meloni, expanding this surrogacy ban is not simply about restricting reproductive technologies; it is about reinforcing an entire social order in which family, gender, and nationalism conform to a narrow vision set out by the state.
Meloni’s political career marks the latest in a long string of attacks on surrogacy, many rooted in the country’s deep Catholicism. Despite Italy’s increasing secularization, the Catholic Church continues to shape the country’s moral and political landscape, reinforcing traditional values that prioritize natural conception and motherhood.
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Before 2024, surrogacy was already illegal in Italy. In 2004, the Italian government passed Law Decree no. 40, which allowed regulation on assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and defined what procedures were allowed in the country. This law led to the banning of all forms of surrogacy within the country and also denied adoption rights to same-sex couples. Italy’s 2004 surrogacy legislation, which banned the sale of gametes and embryos, was framed as an attempt to restrict the commercialization of human reproduction. This law prompted Italian citizens to start seeking surrogacy services in countries where the practice was less regulated, such as the United States and Canada. Currently, around 250 Italian couples go abroad to have children each year. Kalindi Vora, Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale, highlights in her research on transnational gestational surrogacy, “[e]ach time there has been a ban in one nation, the market moves elsewhere.”
Italy’s criminalization of transnational surrogacy underscores the ongoing debate over whether surrogacy represents empowerment or exploitation. As Rene Almeling explores in Sex Cells, the market for reproductive goods is deeply gendered, with women’s reproductive labor often framed as an altruistic “gift” rather than compensated work. This framing creates a paradox: while women are expected to bear the physical and emotional burdens of reproductive labor, their ability to negotiate fair compensation and labor conditions remains constrained.
Professor Megann Licskai, who focuses on 20th and 21st-century reproductive politics and health activism, said in an email to The Politic, “I don’t think there are any simple answers here. We have a bad system full of bad options and stark wealth disparities. Far be it from me to agree with Meloni, but [surrogacy] policies are often very exploitative!”
According to the Human Rights Implications of Global Surrogacy report by the University of Chicago, surrogacy arrangements often function within exploitative structures that disproportionately impact economically disadvantaged women. These women provide a service that is biologically and emotionally intensive, yet they are often denied basic labor rights, including protections against coercion, the right to workplace safety, and the ability to organize collectively for better conditions. Legal frameworks in many jurisdictions either fail to recognize surrogates as workers deserving of labor protections or frame surrogacy in moralistic terms that obscure the economic dimensions of their labor. In some instances, surrogates are subjected to invasive medical interventions without full informed consent, undermining their agency.
Sociologist Ruha Benjamin’s research stresses that financial incentives often obscure the health risks faced by egg donors and surrogates. The landscape of surrogacy reveals a striking imbalance: intended parents, often from wealthier nations, typically hold greater legal protections and economic leverage, while surrogates, particularly in the Global South, face precarious conditions, including inadequate healthcare, lack of postpartum support, and restrictions on bodily autonomy. Banning surrogacy is not solely about restricting gay rights; it also recognizes the rights of surrogates and the disparities they face. India once served as a surrogacy hub, drawing prospective parents from Europe and North America until a 2016 ban on commercial surrogacy for foreigners sought to curb the exploitation of Indian women.
Referencing an argument from her book Reimaging Reproduction, Vora emphasized, “law and policy around assisted reproductive technologies and surrogacy generally protect already privileged forms of kinship and already privileged legal subjects…” Therefore, “we must work to protect all involved parties equally, which in some cases involves expanding the focus of protection beyond just the nuclear family to include consideration of risks, welfare and interests of surrogates as well as the intended child.”
If surrogacy is classified as a “universal crime,” its treatment within legal and ethical discourse will diverge significantly from other forms of bodily labor, such as low-wage care work or hazardous industrial employment. These sectors, which also involve significant physical and emotional demands, do not elicit the same degree of legislative scrutiny or moral condemnation as surrogacy does. This contrast highlights the distinct ethical framework applied to reproductive labor, rooted in longstanding cultural perspectives on sex, motherhood, and bodily autonomy. Licskai notes, “We have a particular morality around sex and reproduction that we don’t necessarily have around other kinds of physical labour (although perhaps we should). There are ideas about sex and reproduction as sacred.”
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As public opposition grows and legal proceedings unfold, there is hope that this restrictive legislation will face judicial scrutiny and, ultimately, be overturned or significantly weakened. The law’s classification of surrogacy as a “universal crime” raises questions about its compatibility with European Union regulations, which prioritize the free movement of citizens and their rights to access reproductive healthcare abroad. Additionally, cases such as Mennesson v. France (2014) established that denying legal recognition of a parent-child relationship due to surrogacy infringes on a child’s right to identity and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights. Beyond challenges within the EU, Italian prosecutors may also face challenges investigating and criminalizing actions that are fully legal in another jurisdiction—since other countries are unlikely to cooperate with actions such as extradition.
However, advocacy and legal services such as International Reproductive Law Group Inc. are still advising, “… parent(s) not register the child at an Italian embassy [and] during the registration process, the parent(s) should not disclose the surrogate birth…In the case of a single parent or same-sex couple, the US birth certificate used to register the child should only list the bio parent with no mention of the surrogate.”
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While Italy has been a focal point for discussions on pronatalism due to Meloni’s politics, it is only a symptom of the increasing far-right wing wave across Europe. Reproductive politics are never static, and surrogacy has long occupied the fraught intersection of reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and the shifting definitions of family. For many, it represents a modern miracle—an avenue through which individuals and couples, particularly those who are infertile, single, or LGBTQ+, can fulfill their dreams of parenthood. Yet, beneath the hopeful narratives of intended parents finding joy through surrogacy lies a darker reality—one defined by exploitation, coercion, and the commodification of women’s bodies. This new legislation forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about who has the right to parent and at what cost.