Yet another world leader has issued a statement against surrogacy, saying it leads to the commercialization of women and children.
Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni urged Parliament to vote in favor of a bill penalizing those who go abroad to rent women’s wombs, calling surrogacy an “inhuman practice” that turns children into “supermarket products.”
“No one can convince me that it is an act of freedom to rent one’s womb, no one can convince me that it is an act of love to consider children as an over-the-counter product in a supermarket,” she said. “I still consider the practice of uterus renting to be inhuman, I support the proposed law making it a universal crime.”
The bill has already been approved by Italy’s lower House, and is currently under debate in the Senate.
Earlier this month, the Vatican issued a document slamming things like abortion and surrogacy as attacks on human dignity. Pope Francis likewise has called for an international ban on the “deplorable” practice.
“The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking,” Pope Francis said in January. “In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”
An international conference was likewise recently held in Rome, with leaders from numerous countries present. Olivia Maurel, an anti-surrogacy advocate who was, herself, born from surrogacy also attended, and reiterated her opposition. “There is no right to have a child. But children do have rights, and we can say surrogacy violates many of these rights,” she said.
The effort to curb foreign travel for surrogacy in Italy has been under debate since last year, though many — including LGBT families — have pushed back.
“We strenuously say no to the sale of children,” lawmaker Maurizo Lupi said while debating the bill last summer. “Surrogate maternity is the most extreme form of commercialization of the body.”
