Women in same-gender relationships have been informed they are to be removed from their children’s birth certificates in the Italian city of Padua after a magistrate declared that only the birth mother can be listed, making the other, non-gestational mother a legal stranger even in cases where her eggs were used to create the child via IVF.
Queer families faced a similar assault in Milan back in March, after the city, which has previously allowed same-gender partners to both register as parents on a child’s birth certificate, received a letter from the Interior Ministry demanding they stop. Instead, the letter said, the matter of each same-gender couple’s right to be recognized as the co-parents of their child was to be decided by the courts going forward. Protests were held as LGBTQ+ families and their allies, including the city’s center-left mayor Beppe Sala, gathered in Milan to demonstrate this new prohibition, but Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government, which ran on a virulently anti-LGBT+ platform, has no intention of backing down. Instead, the Interior Ministry announced it would be sending similar demand letters to all the other Italian cities that have policies enabling LGBTQ+ families to share legal custody of their children.
Up to this point, there has been no consistent set of regulations regarding same-gender couples and parenthood across Italy. Though civil unions for same-gender couples were legalized in 2016 they didn’t quite confer all the same legal rights as marriage, with adoption and access to IVF specifically being withheld as a concession to the Catholic church. (Surrogacy is also illegal, but that is the case for all couples, not just same-gender ones.) One right that’s been left in question was the matter of parentage to children born to the couple during the union. Where married heterosexual couples are both automatically listed as birth parents to any child born during their marriage regardless of actual, genetic paternity, the same right was not automatically granted to same-gender parents, leaving it up to different municipalities to decide how to handle the matter. Some have automatically registered the non-birth mother as a second parent on the child’s birth certificate, some allow step-parent adoption by the other parent (including gay male couples who sought out surrogacy abroad), and some have refused to recognize both parents, leaving one parent’s section on their birth certificates blank. The queerphobic Meloni regime seeks to remove this leeway, in favor of policies that make it as difficult as possible for same-gender couples to share custody of their children.
“These children are being orphaned by decree. This is a cruel, inhumane decision.”
Alessandro Zan, centre-left parliamentarian
Padua is the first of the targeted cities to see an attempt at retroactively removing existing parental status instead of just denying it going forward. This is likely a test case—one we’ll see repeated across Italy if the prosecution wins—and though no judgment has been heard yet it’s left the 33 children and their mothers who have been informed their family status is up for debate afraid for the future. The effect on their lives will be wide-ranging, from requiring the birth mother’s permission in writing before the other mother can even pick their children up from school, to those children being denied essential services they would have been entitled to through their non-gestational parent because the law no longer recognizes their relationship. And of course, there’s the terrifying question of what happens if the birth mother dies before the child reaches majority, as, deprived of parental status, the non-gestational mother would have no right to retain custody of their child.
Though left and center politicians have spoken out about this as wanton cruelty, Meloni’s supporters are perfectly sanguine about it, with parliamentary relations minister Luca Ciriani only having this to say on the matter:
“In Italy, marriage is only between a man and a woman, and therefore only the biological parent is the parent whose surname can be registered.”
Of course, Italy’s definition of a biological parent is somewhat limited, and in the case of AFAB people, refers only to the gestational parent whether or not another person’s egg was used in conception. One couple who spoke to Pink News are particularly worried about this as the gestational mother, Vanessa Finesso, has cancer and they don’t know yet if she will survive. Despite using her wife Cristina Zambon’s egg to create their child when they sought IVF in Spain, Zambon will be considered a legal stranger to their daughter should the prosecution win its case and have her removed from the birth certificate – leaving both women afraid that, should Finesso die, their daughter will be seized by the state and separated from her surviving mother. Other couples have also informed Pink News that they are considering leaving Italy for this reason, and should the prosecutor’s case succeed more will likely join them.
It’s worth noting that this assault on queer families began shortly after the Italian senate voted against the European Commission’s proposal that Italy adopt the standard birth certificate used across the EU, and grant same-gender couples the same parental rights as straight couples along with it. Seemingly emboldened by their victory, or perhaps just reminded that queer parents exist, Meloni and her supporters launched this new campaign against LGBT+ families, and if they succeed at what they’re trying to do in Padua things will only escalate further.
Meloni has made it abundantly clear that she believes marriage, and family, are only for cishet couples, and while she claims she has no problem with queer people living their lives outside of this, well, successful fascists always start out slowly. It’s always “I’m fine with marginalized groups but…” followed by an increasingly long list of everyday things they don’t think those groups should be allowed to do or have, until eventually they’re emboldened enough to admit that eradication was the plan all along. There’s a long-standing pattern with far-right politicians here, and we’d be fools not to recognize it playing out again in real-time.
(featured image: David McNew/Getty Images)
