The Constitutional Court has put a firm point on a question of rights and equality that Italy, until today, has faced slowly and contradictions. With sentence no. 68 filed today, the Consulta said unconstitutional The ban on recognizing as mothers both women of a homosexual couple for children born in Italy through medically assisted procreation (PMA) carried out abroad.
Until yesterday, Italian law recognized only the woman who gave birth as a mother, ignoring the so -called “intentional mother”, that is, that she had given consent to the fertilized practice and assumed parental responsibility together with the biological mother. The Court instead established that this exclusion is in contrast with articles 2, 3 and 30 of the Constitution.
In practice, Prohibiting the recognition of the non -biological mother means to harm the child’s personal identity and denying him a fundamental right, that of having a certain and stable legal status since birth. Not only that. This exclusion has no rational justification and to harm full protection and parental responsibility, affecting the right of the minor to receive assistance, education and maintenance from both parents, as well as to maintain significant relationships with their respective families of origin.
The case that led to the Consulta starts from a concrete situation: in 2023, the Court of Lucca had received a request from the Prosecutor’s Office to delete the intentional mother from the birth certificate of a child conceived through PMA abroad by a couple of women. The Court, however, had raised doubts of constitutional legitimacy with respect to the interpretation of law 40/2004, asking for a pronouncement of the Court.
Now the Constitutional Court has clarified that Italian law, in its current formulation, discriminating Unjustly children born from homogenitoric couples, violating the principle of formal and substantial equality. The decision underlines that when two people decide together to become parents through PMA, both take on a real and unavoidable responsibility, and the child has the right to be recognized this parental bond from both since birth.
The judgment of the Consulta does not intervene on the issue of the conditions of access to the PMA in Italy – this remains regulated by other rules – but focuses on the aspect of recognition legal bond lawyer. A theme on which our country had accumulated a backlog of civilizations compared to other European nations.
In summary, the Court reiterated that denying the intentional mother recognition as a parent is a violation of the Constitution because:
Italy thus approaches a legal system that reflects the reality of homogenerating families, fully recognizing the rights of children born from these unions. The minor’s right to a stable and recognized family was put in the center, overcoming prejudices and bureaucracy.
This sentence is not only a legal fact: it is a strong signal of civilization and respect for all forms of parenting, which puts the protection of the minor above any ideological or regulatory discrimination.
It is no longer possible to ignore or delay legislative interventions that guarantee substantial and formal equality between all children, regardless of the type of family in which they are born.
Could this sentence or not become an important precedent to face other questions still open, such as the recognition of children born from male homosexual parents through surrogate motherhood abroad, or the expansion of the rights of rainbow families in other areas (think of adoptions, legal protection, health care)?
