In Italy, only children conceived from ‘heterosexual sexual intercourse’ are deemed legitimate
Same-sex couples in Italy have to lie about how their children were conceived due to regressive laws.
These retrograde laws, pushed by the Catholic Church, require a child be conceived through ‘heterosexual sexual intercourse’ in order for parents to register their child.
The same laws also punish heterosexual couples who choose In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to conceive.
Currently, it is illegal for same-sex couples to adopt their partner’s children in the country. Though same-sex unions were recognized in Italy in 2016, a clause in the law bans adoption of stepchildren.
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Chiara Foglietta, a lesbian mother, delivered her baby boy, Niccolò, last week. However, she refuses to lie about how he was conceived.
‘Employees tell me both yesterday and today: you must declare that you had a union (sexual act) with a man to recognize your son. There is no formula to say you did medically assisted procreation,’ Foglietta wrote on Facebook.
‘Each child has the right to know their own history, the set of events that have generated it, and has the right to claim rights to those who wanted it.’
‘Once again, reality has to adapt to bureaucracy and not the other way around bringing people like me to a public office to declare false before the law.’
‘I need to make this stand not for me, but for Niccolò, for all Rainbow children, for families who do not have the same strength to face these battles, for the children of single women and those with partners who have chosen medically assisted procreation with external donors and want to tell the truth,’ she said. ‘The problem is today, not in the future, but in the present—the present that is here, now.’
