Acronyms will eventually be a casualty

[PatatiPatatras]

Reading up on https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66860266.

I couldn't help but think, you mean homosexuality is being targeted. It feels like everything else is hanging on to homosexuality because ???

It started out as cool to look out for each other and for everyone to be lumped together. Now it feels like you can't state when something specifically targets homosexuals.

The article does use the term same sex but it just feels tagged on. Something about this feels demeaning.

Sorry, OP, but I don’t really understand your post.

The article is doing its best to misrepresent an Italian law seeking to prevent the reproductive exploitation of women in other countries as some kind of injustice or hate crime against gay men who want the right to purchase access to a woman’s body and the right to deny a child access to its birth mother.

“Many same-sex parents feel that a new law, which would make it illegal to have surrogacy abroad, is a personal attack against them.”

And the headline.

“The state says our kids don’t exist”

No, the Italian government isn’t saying those human infants don’t exist, it’s saying it’s opposed to the international trade in human infants.

The article might be partly right in that no ‘countries’ ban residents from using international surrogates however some states in Australia brought in laws that meant a person/s would be convicted if they used international commercial surrogates. They did this around the baby Gammy case if I remember correctly.

I’ve now read further.

It isn’t that the Italian state believes the twins don’t exist.

It’s that the Italian state regards the US-born twin babies as US citizens, not as Italian citizens.

Presumably there’s nothing to prevent the couple who adopted them from paying privately for health and education services. They could afford to travel to the US to pay a woman to risk her health to give birth to the babies, so they are not without funds.

“At the time of our interview they told us that the move had so far deprived their twins of Italian citizenship and means they would have difficulties having access to the country's free health care system and nursery schools.”

I don't understand the title of this thread and think, on the whole, that the article is badly written and a confusing mess.

I am opposed to surrogacy and think the cross border nature of it is inherently problematic.

But at the same time I think that the situation in Italy with regard to gay rights is pretty awful. In my view focusing on the proposed surrogacy ban is unhelpful because there are legitimate arguments against surrogacy. It's difficult to tell whether Giorgia Meloni's government is motivated by those legitimate arguments or by homophobia or by a combination of the two.

Same sex couples in Italy still lack rights which should be universal by now in any advanced Western democracy, such as the right to marry. And some of these new laws which are supposedly designed to protect children and uphold the integrity of the nuclear family are anything but, particularly the ones which are imposed retroactively (an extreme and undemocratic move) and are depriving children who already exist of legal recognition of their relationship to one or both of their parents and, in some cases, their Italian citizenship. It is horrific.

Gay people still have a long way to go to achieve equal rights in Italy but I think there are other, more legitimate causes to focus on than surrogacy. Marriage is the obvious one, but also adoption. I don't agree with two gay men using a surrogate to have a baby no matter how much they might want a baby, but to also ban two gay men from adopting a child seems inherently homophobic to me. I'd need to see a very compelling argument that a child is better off being raised in the care system, or even necessarily better off being raised by a mother and father, or a single parent, to be against it. If you ban both surrogacy and adoption for gay couples then there is no doubt that you are banning gay men from having children. It doesn't apply equally to lesbians because even if you ban IVF and IUI for lesbian couples, there is nothing to stop them from going abroad and then pretending that the one who carried the baby had sex with a man (although the other mother still would not be able to be recognised as a parent).

It's also clear that the surrogacy ban would really only apply to gay men except perhaps where a woman with, for example, MRKH syndrome made public statements about her condition causing absolute infertility and then returned home from a trip abroad with a new baby. Of course she could pretend she had adopted the baby but questions might be asked as to why she needed to go abroad to do that rather than adopting a baby in Italy, which is legal for heterosexual couples.

I also think that, despite my views on surrogacy, actually enforcing this law against people who travel abroad and return with a baby born via a surrogate benefits no one, least of all the child who already exists, has already been separated from his or her birth mother, and has a loving family. What would be the actual benefit to prosecuting the parents and removing the baby?

Ban surrogacy within your own legal jurisdiction if you like. Lobby other governments to ban surrogacy in theirs. Make it expensive and difficult to legally recognise the commissioning parents as being the parents of the child in your country if you must. But as soon as you start talking about prosecuting intended parents, removing children conceived via surrogate from their care, and creating a legal black hole for those children where their parental relationships and even citizenship are not recognised, and I don't think you can really continue to pretend you are doing this in order to protect children.

It will still make life in Italy unnecessarily difficult for those children.

Ironically the family might be better off moving to another EU country where the twins would benefit from their parents' right to free movement in the EU and the family as a whole would benefit from increased legal protection.

“I also think that, despite my views on surrogacy, actually enforcing this law against people who travel abroad and return with a baby born via a surrogate benefits no one, least of all the child who already exists, has already been separated from his or her birth mother, and has a loving family. What would be the actual benefit to prosecuting the parents and removing the baby?”

Clearly the purpose of the law is to act as a deterrent and discourage them from travelling abroad to exploit an economically disadvantaged woman in the first place. So it would cut off some of the demand from buyers.

I agree that the article is badly written and confusing. I think that’s because it’s a pro-reproductive exploitation of women article trying to use the position on same-sex equality in Italy as a cover for that. It’s an attempt to equate being concerned about the reproductive exploitation of women with being homophobic and equivalent to being Mussolini.

If the article were really concerned about same-sex equality it would start with the existing position on same sex equality and then explain how it is being further eroded. Instead it starts with its: look, cute babies! Italy is so mean! headline. Surely the big story in that article is same sex couples not being allowed to adopt. That’s direct discrimination. Both heterosexual and same-sex couples not being allowed to use surrogacy is not direct discrimination.

Campaigning for the UK to have its own surrogacy industry is already underway. Those who are set to benefit from it need to get the general public on board, as well as the politicians. And articles like this are part of that campaign. We’ll see more of these articles, along with lots of happy smiley coverage of gay male couples in theUK who have paid women abroad to give birth and would like the convenience of being able to pay women in the UK and have the birth funded by the taxpayer via the NHS instead of by them. And of heterosexual couples too.

I think it is a very hard balance to strike. Will the child who has been procured by illegal surrogacy (ie, citizens of one country trying to avoid laws by organising international surrogacy) be able to claim citizenship as adults in the country of their childhood, where their parents raised them ?

Are they effectively made nationless from birth?

Because this I can see the difficulties in denying citizenship on an innocent child of this arrangement. There has to be measures to stop international surrogacy, but it must not harm the child.

Maybe it is just me. I need to "reframe" my thinking whenever I see LGBT in the article.
My brain keeps going "gay". And I autocorrect to re-read "LGBT".

I did it so many times that I got tired of it. If they mean same sex they should just stick to same sex. The flip flopping between same sex and lgbt to tie the two together made me tired.

It's dreadfully biased article.

What happened to the BBC's impartiality?

“Are they effectively made nationless from birth? “

In that article it says the twins have got US birth certificates.

I assume that means they are US citizens.

Because this I can see the difficulties in denying citizenship on an innocent child of this arrangement.”

You mean difficulties in not having an automatic entitlement to a change of citizenship as a result of having crossed international borders under the guardianship of an adult resident of the country they’ve been brought to.

No Looby, I mean that the child should never be left stateless because of the selfishness of the people who have commissioned their conception.

There are countries in the world who don’t automatically give citizenship to people born in the country to non-citizens of that country. So I mean that a child should be not left in a situation where they are stateless or that child finds that at 18 they have to leave the country they grew up in because the parents broke the law and procured them using means illegal in the country they were raised in.

Punish the people who put the child in that position, not the child if you see my meaning.

People who exploit poor women and their uteruses, and traffick newborn babies for their own selfish needs of having a family are the ones who are casualties. I have zero sympathy.

Framing it as an “LGBT” issue and making it appear that this law is an egregious attack on that “community” is a deliberate attempt to obscure the fact it’s people exploiting poor women and their uteruses and trafficking newborn babies. They want to keep doing it and pretend it’s fine.

The awful people who do this are using the LGBT part of their identity to cover up their morally reprehensible acts, for which they should be ashamed. But they won’t be I imagine.

I believe that they have positioned this as negative direct discrimination or even negative indirect discrimination.

People who do that forgot that the reality is that these people are exploiting at least one of not two women’s bodies and an infant. To achieve what they desire.

Absolutely fight for the right to marry and the right to adopt if held to the same standard any person of that sex should be held to. But they leverage in surrogacy in their push for ‘fertility equality’.

“There are countries in the world who don’t automatically give citizenship to people born in the country to non-citizens of that country.”

I’m not following how that (being born to a non-citizen) is more relevant to surrogacy than it is to children who grow up with their birth mothers in a country which their birth mother is not a citizen of. I can see how being adopted by, rather than born to, could be more relevant.

Unless impoverished women from overseas are being trafficked into such countries, for reproductive exploitation purposes, for the benefit of non-impoverished couples who are citizens of that country? Is that the scenario you have in mind helleofabore?

Trafficked women are what I had in mind yes.

Their babies also become the casualties of laws like this though.

One of the most frustrating things for me in arguments around surrogacy and trans rights is how mixed up the conservative arguments and the women’s rights arguments are, which is a gift for those opposing women’s rights. I believe that the Italian government is much more motivated by homophobia and reactionary conservatism and I don’t believe they really give much of a shit about the well-being of women in other countries. I don’t want to endorse governments like that - but I do agree with what this policy, for totally different reasons to why I think they are enforcing it.

The twins will have citizenship of the USA as they were born there.
In fact this is a reason why some people use surrogacy in the USA (I think it is common among chinese but no doubt citizens of other countries also do it) - the babies become US citizens and then the parents are able to obtain citizenship via their babies.

This explains it:

The international surrogacyy market is fraught with problems, but one major problem that goes largely unnoticed is that U.S. citizenshipp is being bought and sold to international couples who hire U.S. surrogate mothers to carry their children to birth.
Here is a short primer on how one becomes a U.S. citizen. First, most Americans have birthright citizenship, meaning anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically deemed a citizen of the United States. Second, one can become a citizen through naturalization, which happens by going through the legal immigration steps, applying for citizenship, and having citizenship granted.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has as its first sentence the Citizenship Clausee_, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
But can you buy citizenship in the United States?
The answer is “Yes,” and it is quite easy and relatively affordable, all things considered. Babies born of U.S. surrogates to international couples are often referred to as anchor babies, because by virtue of being born in the United States, these children secure an anchor as citizens, afforded all the rights and benefits of that citizenship.
And those rights and benefits are many: the right to vote, the right to a U.S. passport, and most importantly, the right to “family unification,” or the provision of a pathway to citizenship for other family members who may want to come to the United States.
As Andy J. Semotiuk wrotee_ in Forbes, “Anchor babies, birth tourism, and surrogacy are pushing the envelope of what are the rights of citizenship in North America.”
Reproductive or birth tourism is a booming business. As one country cracks down on the buying and selling of eggs or sperm, or the renting of uteruses, the Big Fertility market shifts to accommodate the change.
For example, in China, all surrogacy is illegal, as is the sale of human eggs, so the Chinese flock to the United States to buy a baby. In fact, I have interviewed several U.S. surrogates who were contracted to carry babies for couples in China.
One whistleblower I spoke with worked for an agency in southern California and handled the VIP clients. When asked who those clients were, she said she worked solely with Chinese, who came with loads of cash to buy eggs and rent wombs.
She described to me how it wasn’t uncommon for the Chinese to hire two or three surrogates, and once their pregnancies were confirmed and the sex and health of the babies were determined, the couple would choose which pregnancy they wanted to continue and which ones they wanted to be terminated.
If that isn’t enough to say we need to stop this birth tourism industry, perhaps these storiess_ will be. A surrogacy attorney in New Jersey reported that a Chinese person approached her, wanting her to represent him in a U.S. surrogacy arrangement, but what didn’t seem right was this person wanted to hire five surrogates at the same time. In another case, the foreigner “wanted to keep two babies, and put the rest up for adoption,” according to a different surrogacy attorney.
With U.S. citizenship granted to five babies, three of which were going to be put up for adoption, most certainly to the highest bidder, it isn’t much of a leap to think of baby traffickingg rings. In fact, two women in Vietnamm were busted on a surrogacy baby-selling ring, selling babies to people in China.
And this practice works both ways.
In 2015, three individuals who ran a multimillion-dollar fertility agency in Irvine, California, were arrestedd_ “in the biggest federal criminal probe ever to target the thriving industry, in which pregnant women come to the United States to give birth so their children will become American citizens,” according to The New York Times.
The U.S. Department of State has a policyy_ on how U.S. couples who travel abroad to hire a foreign woman as a surrogate can be sure to have U.S. citizenship granted to their baby born of surrogacy in another country. Sadly, the State Department needs to address the problem within our own house, of granting citizenship to anchor babies.
As it stands, when surrogacy is involved, the child is used as a commodity, a means to an end, if you will, and that end is U.S. citizenship.

With Surrogate Mothers, US Citizenship Is for Sale: mailchi.mp/stopsurrogacynow/egg-freezing-parties-and-artificial-wombs-425150

Not their babies. The babies of women in the USA who they intend to purchase and traffick to Italy. The babies will have citizenship of the USA and in the future Italians will be restricted from exploiting poor women and trafficking newborns.

Right, so say these babies have US citizenship but they grow up in Italy, don't learn English, consider themselves both ethnically and culturally Italian, but their right to live there is based on being the minor child of Italian citizens. What happens when they turn 18, they are no longer minors and the only country they have the right to live in is the USA?

What if that country happened to be Ukraine rather than the USA?

A couple could not go to Ukraine to try and buy themselves a baby?

I'm sorry that gay men can't be fathers because of biology. It's a hard thing to know that you can never be a parent when you really want to.
However that being said I agree with the position of the Italian government on surrogacy which will effect mostly straight couples (90% of surrogacy is in straight couples in Italy).
Surrogacy is a form of slavery and involves, renting a womb (with no regard to the women or their risk), buying an egg from another woman (again no concern for the risks to the women) effectively buying a person and then trafficking that person (baby) across international borders after having ripped the baby from its mothers arms. Imo surrogacy should be illegal in all its forms in every country in the world.

The parents can apply for Italian citizenship for the child on the basis of long-term residency after the time period is satisfied. The child just can't get it automatically. Or if you're concerned about what happens at 18, the child can apply after reaching adulthood. Or the child can get it by adoption by an Italian citizen.

Would one of the fathers in cases like these not have parental rights? Because surrogacy will usually involve at least one 'commissioning parent''s DNA. Then that father could transmit his Italian citizenship to the baby.

Yes, but they did, and now that baby exists.

Why should the baby be punished?

But apparently they don’t want to have to do that because it’s time consuming and expensive and “humiliating”. Another example of how the child’s needs are put last.