Lesbian couple flees Italy as government strips them of parental rights

A lesbian couple say they are fleeing Italy due to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government’s crackdown on the rights of LGBTQ+ parents.

Chiara and Christine are the mothers of six-year-old Arturo, and Christine is pregnant with the couple’s second son, due early next year. But as Chiara told Agence France-Presse (AFP), while she is registered as Arturo’s mother on his birth certificate, she is not his biological parent. Under Meloni’s government, it’s looking increasingly likely that her parental rights could be challenged.

Related:

Italy orders cities to stop recognizing children of same-sex couples

People were protesting in the streets.

“It’s a nightmare,” the 46-year-old, who asked that her family’s last name not be revealed, said of the situation. She described the decision she and Christine made to relocate to Spain with their son as the family’s “only escape route.”

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While same-sex civil unions have been legal in Italy since 2016, Italian law remains unclear about the parental rights of non-biological parents in same-sex couples. Same-sex couples in Italy do not have the right to adopt due in part to opposition from the Catholic Church. Surrogacy remains illegal in the country and the process of adopting “stepchildren” by a non-biological parent is difficult and costly. Medically assisted reproduction, like in vitro fertilization (IVF), is only available to heterosexual couples.

In recent years, mayors in some Italian cities, like Milan, have allowed both parents in same-sex couples to register as “parents” — as opposed to “mother” and “father” — on the birth certificates of children born via surrogacy or IVF abroad. But earlier this year, Meloni’s Interior Ministry ordered cities across the country to end the practice.

The move came the same week that the Italian senate rejected a proposal from the European Commission to introduce a standardized European parenthood certificate that would recognize same-sex parents.

Under current Italian law, the member of a same-sex couple who is not legally recognized as a child’s parent could lose custody if the legally recognized parent dies or the relationship ends.

“The idea that this baby would be put up for adoption if Christine died, instead of being given to me, is absolute madness,” Chiara told AFP. “It would be an absurd brutality.”

Prosecutors across the country have already begun contesting the birth certificates of children born to same-sex couples, AFP reports. In Padua, judges are considering whether to amend the birth certificates of 37 children born to same-sex couples after a prosecutor ordered the city to retroactively remove the names of their non-biological mothers from the documents. The judges could send the case to Italy’s constitutional court, where a ruling would have national implications.

Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party and the first woman to become Italy’s Prime Minister, was elected in late 2022. She made anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric a cornerstone of her campaign, opposing adoption by same-sex couples as well as marriage equality. She has called civil unions “good enough” for LGBTQ+ couples.