Breakthrough for lesbian couples in Italy: both mothers can be recognized as a parent at birth

If two lesbian women want to set up a family together, they cannot rely on in vitrofertilization in Italy (IVF, ‘test tube fertilization’). The technology is forbidden in Italy for non-heteros and single people. With LGBTI sets who underwent an IVF treatment abroad and returned to Italy before delivery, only the woman who gave the child to the world has been officially recognized as a mother. Not the other woman in the relationship, she could only go through a special step-child adoption procedure.

According to the Italian Constitutional Court, that rule is inconsistent and both women can be recognized as parents at birth. According to the Court, forcing a mother into an adoption procedure is discrimination against children in lesbian families. A child from a heterozin born via IVF does not have to wait for the man in the family when the father is recognized. That happens automatically at birth. Children from lesbian relationships have the same right, the court ruled on Thursday.

The statement has no consequences for gay men in Italy. Because surrogacy in Italy has been forbidden for years, they were able to turn to a surrogate mother abroad, but the government of the radical-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also made that impossible. Since October last year It is forbidden for Italian wish parents to go abroad for this.

Legal and moral victory

The judgment that regulates the legal situation of lesbian women as parents is a legal and moral victory for lesbian families in Italy. The Italian government led by Meloni stands for strong conservative values ​​and only sees the traditional family as the ideal image in society.

The legal situation surrounding the woman in a lesbian relationship that the child does not wear was simply not arranged. That gap in the law led some progressive cities in northern Italy to recognize both women as parents at the birth of their child. Those progressive municipal authorities, including Padua and Bergamo, saw this as an act of ‘civil disobedience’.

The Italian government of Meloni only sees the traditional family as the ideal image in society

But in 2023 Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi called on the Italian municipalities to stop this. In a country where the LGBTI rights were already on the back burner compared to other countries in Western Europe, the initiative of Minister Piantedosi led to the parenthood of lesbian women being withdrawn or revised, resulting in legal proceedings.

The Italian Constitutional Court now creates clarity: the woman in the relationship that the child has not put into the world can also be recognized as a parent from birth.

In another judgment, the Court ruled that the exclusion of single women for an IVF procedure in Italy is in line with the Constitution. The Court leaves it to Italian politics to judge this, and therefore did not create an opening for single people or lesbian couples to be able to undergo IVF procedures in Italy. In most Western European countries, lesbian couples and single people can have a baby via IVF.

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