Controversial decision in Italy. A court decided that a child has three parents: two fathers and one mother. “It exposes minors to all kinds of social and ideological experiments”
The Court of Appeal of Bari established that a four-year-old child can be registered with three parents: two fathers, who form a couple, and a biological mother.
Controversial decision of the Italian judiciary. PHOTO: archive
Although controversial, the decision is final and ends a legal dispute that began in Germany and later reached the Italian courts.
The child was born in Germany and lives there with two men in a stable and married relationship. One of them is the biological father, and the mother is a woman close to the couple, who agreed to have the child with him. The second man, an Italian-German citizen, adopted the child in Germany, according to the law there.
After the adoption, he requested that this situation be recognized in Italy as well, but initially the local authorities rejected the request, suspecting that it could be a surrogate pregnancy carried out abroad, a practice prohibited in Italy.
The judges from Bari, however, reached a different conclusion. They considered that there was no evidence to support the existence of a surrogate mother and decided that the adoption made in Germany should also be recognized in Italy.
“There was no secret surrogacy deal; it was a case where three people all wanted to be the parents of this child, and the court recognized that.” said lawyer Pasqua Manfredi, who represented one of the two fathers.
The decision was pronounced in January, but became public only in May, in the context in which Italy recently marked the tenth anniversary of the Parliament's positive vote on the legalization of same-sex unions, notes Internazionale.
Her appearance in the public space coincided with wider debates in Italy about same-sex unions and the effects of legislative changes over the past decade.
Conservative organizations, including Pro Vita & Famiglia, criticized the decision, arguing that such decisions change the way the family is defined.
“He overturned family legislation, exposing minors to all kinds of social and ideological experiments”, said a representative of the Pro Vita & Famiglia association.
The case is unique in Italian justice and opens discussions about how the current legislation can or cannot cover family situations that do not fit into the classic model.
