Ronin, I have friends to whom it has been explicitly forbidden. And the law does not defend them. You would have been defended by the law, had it happened. And that is the point: the law defends against injustices, even if these injustices are rare (and they are not).
Regarding adoptions...
Guess what my partner does for a living? A social worker in child protection. Since I have known him for years, I have built up a bit of knowledge on the subject, and this topic makes me spring up like a coil. I wouldn't want to vent my frustration on you, but Juvenile Law is a HUGE TOPIC that everyone talks about without knowing a single comma.
Choose: do you want to take a specific topic and talk about it? Give your opinions and wait for mine? It seems to me that I am the only openly gay person in this discussion, perhaps in the entire forum, I don't know, so I imagine I can be a good "sparring partner".
In doubt, I will introduce the terms of the current issue, then the alleged problems with the Cirinnà bill:
the Cirinnà bill addresses a single possible case of adoption, so-called stepchild adoption. Stepchild adoption is the adoption of the legitimate child of a partner. This means that if I had a relationship with a woman in the past and am the legitimate father of a child-boy-adult, my partner CAN (does not have to, but can) adopt my child. This principle has been possible for years for all hetero couples and, for a few months now, ALSO FOR GAY COUPLES. In fact, the institution of special adoption exists which, with the main purpose of protecting affective continuity and the welfare of the minor, also allows adoption by singles. The Cirinnà bill would remedy the lack of current legislation. Special adoption, in fact, is sub iudice; it is ordered years later by the Juvenile Judge, and often within "difficult" proceedings. In this case, one of the cases that set a precedent was that of a female couple, legally married in Spain and "mothers" of a little girl, who decided to separate after a few years. One came to live in Italy, having dual citizenship, and requested the protection of her right to maintain contact with her daughter (we are talking about an 8-year-old child). The "biological" mother was her partner, who was absolutely in agreement with maintaining contact with her ex. In Italy, however, the child would have been an unaccompanied minor, since the non-biological mother would have been "nobody" in the eyes of the law. TO PROTECT THE CHILD, to protect the child's right to maintain contact with one of the parents, to live in safety, to deal with separation etc. etc., the Judge decided to implement special adoption.
Stepchild adoption would make this process simpler; it would allow for the protection of these rights even in other eventualities (death of the biological parent, removal of the biological parent, loss of consciousness etc. etc.). To give you one example, if the biological parent is hospitalized, even for a simple operation, social services would be authorized to entrust the minor to a close relative, completely ignoring the non-biological parent. And since there are already THOUSANDS of same-sex couples in Italy, this makes no sense. Not only does it make no sense, but it is against the rights of the minor, given that the minor has THE RIGHT, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to live in THEIR OWN family.
As things stand, ALL the major Italian juvenile law jurists agree with the Cirinnà bill.
This statement should be enough to lead people to study rather than criticize, because if an expert agrees with something, we can continue to disagree just fine, but to be credible we must also be able to provide SERIOUS arguments in favor of our thesis.
The argument against the Cirinnà bill, an argument used as much by the right as by the left, is the possibility of a surge in the use of surrogacy abroad and a consequent "commercialization" of the matter.
This is a complex argument, which I am willing to deal with, if you wish. It seems to me that I have demonstrated that I am someone who speaks with knowledge of the facts. But at this moment, I think a few elements may suffice to clarify, at least, my point of view:
- surrogacy, or gestation for others, or "renting a womb" (disgusting terminology that we use ONLY in Italy, because we are so refined), is a legal practice in some countries that consists of a CONTRACT between a woman and a couple, or a single person. The woman carries a pregnancy to term, from a fertilized egg that is NOT HERS and, therefore, waives some of her parental rights over the unborn child. The child is recognized at birth by the couple who made the contract and becomes, legally, the child of the couple. The terms of this contract are variable from"},
legislation by legislation, in advanced societies, such as in Belgium or the USA, these terms are ULTRA STRINGENT. They identify social services as guarantors of the process, break it down into various steps, and give the parties the possibility to express doubts, changes of opinion, or perplexities at any time.
- the main problem with surrogacy, which is not an intrinsic problem of the practice but an intrinsic problem of changes in fertility technologies, is that there are many subjects involved, and the rights of these subjects must be harmonized within the complex framework of family law. More or less, these are the subjects we are talking about:
1) egg donor: can be one of the women in the parental couple, or another woman, in which case we speak of heterologous insemination; 2) sperm donor: can be one of the men in the parental couple, or another; 3) "carrier", i.e., the surrogate mother. 4) "legal" parents.
Are these 4-5 characters unknown to the law? In reality no, in the sense that there is ONLY ONE EVENTUALITY that creates real legal problems.
Let me explain better...
Surrogacy has been practiced FOR YEARS by hetero couples. Part of the battle for LGBT rights is based precisely on this principle: don't lecture us now, since you have never done so before to hetero couples. Only a few years ago did surrogacy become illegal in Italy, but only in the sense that it cannot be practiced in Italian hospitals. Similarly, they tried to make heterologous insemination illegal, but in 2015 a Supreme Court ruling definitively destroyed the law regarding it. In short, in Italy there are some, one doesn't know how many, children of surrogacy within HETERO families, and no one has ever made an issue of it.
The problem is that, even if an issue were made of it, it would be impossible to understand who is and who is not... the only way would be a genetic test, which cannot be administered mandatorily, and which would presuppose investigative work. Today, with a thousand global security problems, thinking that the police could start investigating how a child was born seems frankly absurd, especially since the matter should start from a complaint by a party (...) and should pass through a Juvenile Court (...) that opens a file for the protection of the minor (...). These are all things I can explain to you, if you want, but they SAY that the matter makes no sense.
But let's assume this happens... What is the only eventuality in which problems can arise? The only eventuality is surrogacy with heterologous insemination, i.e., the extreme case in which NONE of the parents has a biological link to the child. In this case, very serious crimes could be envisioned, such as abandonment or kidnapping of a minor, human trafficking, false declarations to the registry office, etc. etc. This eventuality is very rare; data shows that until today it mainly concerns hetero couples (older age), and it is PRECISELY the subject of the 2015 court ruling that renders the heterologous law null and void (as well as a double condemnation of France by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg): IF the only way for a person to have a child is to resort to heterologous insemination, their instinct for parenthood is "uncoercible" by the State.
In plain English, this sentence REFUTES most newspaper headlines from recent days: the law says that the right to parenthood EXISTS.
Or rather, if medicine allows it, and if no harm is proven against the minor (this is the real key), no one can forbid you from doing it. Because having a child is part of anthropological drives, it is an instinct, and it is your right to fully express your humanity. No one can forbid you.
Just as no one can forbid a drug addict from impregnating a prostitute, a psychopathic mother from abandoning her daughter, a father in a midlife crisis from not caring about his children, etc. etc. etc.
The mechanisms for protecting minors, unfortunately or fortunately, treat the damage once it has occurred, but they cannot forbid anyone from causing it. Otherwise we would all be sterile; we would end up in a dystopia like "Minority Report," where people are condemned before having committed the crime.