In the northern Italian city of Padua, 27 lesbian non-biological mothers have their names removed from their children’s birth certificates. This was confirmed by the city’s public prosecutor CNN . The women had themselves artificially inseminated and had their 33 children registered in 2017 under the centre-left government of Sergio Giordani.
Meloni’s government allows birth certificates to be changed retrospectively
Giordani came to power with a promise to do away with the traditional “mother” and “father” information on birth certificates. However, Prime Minister Georgioa Meloni’s government ordered local authorities to stop registering same-sex parents with both names on their children’s certificates.
Only the biological parent of a child can be entered on the birth certificate. Surrogacy is illegal in Italy, and same-sex marriage is not yet recognized. The non-biological parent must make a special application in order to legally adopt their child. Men in a same-sex relationship must decide which of them should be registered as the legal father.
Protest against government: “Birth certificates do not violate any law”
“There will be no discrimination against children,” promised Family Affairs Minister Eugenia Roccella when she presented the bill in June. The local section of the LGBT campaign group Rainbow Family Association has now officially lodged a protest. “These birth certificates do not break any law as they were signed in a legal vacuum that now leaves our children in limbo,” the group said in a statement when the first certificates were invalidated in June.
Fear that families will be destroyed by ‘political will’
“We demand that our children be nothing but full citizens and that our families are not destroyed by the government’s political will to enforce the unitary family model.” Padua is the first city in Italy to retroactively invalidate birth certificates.
Meloni has waged an intense anti-LGBT campaign and since taking office in October has expressed a desire for “all babies to be born of a man and a woman”. Human rights groups now fear other cities may follow Padua’s lead.
