“Reconsider gestation for others Meloni: not being able to become mothers is an illness”

An appeal to Prime Minister Meloni: rethink the bans on surrogacy for medical reasons, because surrogacy is in many cases the only possibility of having a child for women who are born without a uterus or with pathologies that prevent a pregnancy tout court . Because not being able to become mothers is an illness. Antonio Pellicer , seventy-year-old founder and president of the Spanish Ivi, the Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad, one of the largest groups in the world that deals with Reproductive Medicine, speaks. Today Pellicer, a renowned gynecologist and great father of assisted procreation, has chosen to live and work in Rome, where Ivi has had its headquarters since March 2021. But the group also has centers throughout Europe, in South America and in the United States. Italian couples went to Spain when all the barriers of Law 40 were still in place. As the bans have fallen, the health exodus has decreased. And Italian specialists have begun to perform previously prohibited techniques, such as heterologous fertilization, in which sperm or oocytes are donated by people outside the couple.

But at the European Eshre congress underway in Paris, about ten thousand experts in Reproductive Medicine from 138 countries around the world, they are not just talking about advances in techniques but also about ethics, because perhaps no other field of Medicine also poses ethical problems like assisted procreation, the rules for access to techniques and surrogate motherhood or gestation for others. Or again – with an ugly definition – rented womb. But not only that.

"In Italy there are still some prohibitions - continues the professor - such as the ban on access to PMA by single women, which I consider a shame. And I also think that embryos not used by couples should not remain unused in centers: let's donate them to other couples, let's give them a chance at life".

And then gestation for others, one of the most divisive issues. In our country it is considered a universal crime, prosecutable even abroad. But in other countries it is legal, even in countries with strong religious limitations where it is forbidden to resort, for example, to the donation of oocytes or sperm from outside the couple. “In the United Arab Emirates it is authorized for medical reasons,” Pellicer continues, “for married couples. Obviously we must avoid any commercialization or commodification of life, but even in Spain they are starting to discuss surrogate motherhood for medical reasons again. It is an important issue.”

Just as important is the age of access to PMA techniques. In Italy, the Lea, the essential levels of assistance, provide an age limit of 46, a limit contested by many experts. “Already in 2005 we published a study on 5,000 women – continues Pellicer – which highlighted how starting from the age of 45, complications related to pregnancy increase. If they ask me if it is possible to have a child at 50, I answer that it is possible, but it is more difficult and there is more risk. The uterus is a muscle and does not contract at 50 as it does at 35. And so when I see a woman over 45 who asks me for a child, I always start from the complications, then they can decide to take a greater risk, but it is right that they are aware”.