‘Inhumane and wicked’: anguish over Italy’s expanded surrogacy ban

‘The daughters and sons that we can never have,’ say the posters at a demonstration in Rome last week against the criminalisation of surrogacy. Photograph: Marco Di Gianvito/Zuma/Rex

Maria Sole Giardini was campaigning outside the Italian parliament in 2021 for surrogacy to be legalised when she encountered Giorgia Meloni.

The current prime minister’s Brothers of Italy party, in opposition at the time, was frantically drumming up support for a bill to extend Italy’s outright ban on domestic surrogacy by making it a universal crime that transcends borders.