Italy passes anti-surrogacy law that effectively bars gay couples from becoming parents - The West's most restrictive law against international surrogacy threatens would-be parents who use birth mothers abroad with jail time and severe fines.

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ROME — Italy on Wednesday passed the West's most restrictive law against international surrogacy, threatening would-be parents who use birth mothers abroad with jail time and severe fines in a move that critics say will chiefly target same-s*x couples.

Domestic surrogacy was already banned in Italy, as it is in some other countries and U.S. states, but the amended Italian law goes further, classifying surrogacy as a rare universal crime that transcends borders, like terrorism or genocide.

The measure marks the strongest salvo yet in far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's bid to put a conservative stamp on Italian society, and it elevates surrogacy as a hot-button issue in the West's raging culture wars.

The law, passed last year by the lower house and effectively ensured by the Senate vote on Wednesday, also criminalizes work by Italian citizens employed as doctors, nurses and technicians in foreign fertility clinics that facilitate surrogacies.

That and other aspects of the amended law may be hard to enforce. Even backers of the legislation concede that heterosexual couples may face few questions when returning to Italy with an infant, or when registering their child's birth certificate with local municipalities. Who is to say that the woman in that couple didn't deliver the baby while abroad? By contrast, an infant in the arms of same-s*x parents — particularly two men — would amount to an obvious red flag.

"The people who can't hide this are gay couples," said Alessia Crocini, director of Rainbow Families, a group that opposed the law. "This is about [targeting] gay fathers."

Same-s*x couples are already barred under Italian law from domestic or international adoption. Thus, the new law effectively cuts off the last, best route for gay male couples residing in Italy to start families.

"It is nature that decides this, not us," said Sen. Susanna Campione, from Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, who voted in favor of the law.

"We wish for this example to be followed [by other countries]," she added. "This is a civilized law that safeguards the child but also the woman, since we believe that surrogacy essentially reduces a woman to a reproductive machine."

After an intense 7-hour debate, the measure passed the Senate by a vote of 84 to 58.

Meloni — a single mother who never married the father of her daughter — has vowed to amplify "traditional family" values. Her government and its backers in Parliament have moved to stop same-s*x couples from registering their children's birth certificates and have sought to curtail gender-affirming care for minors. Legislation on topics beyond family issues, including a sweeping, government-backed security bill already approved by the lower house, takes aim at climate activists and labor unions by criminalizing protests that obstruct roads and railways, opponents say.

"What is clearly important for the right-wing at this moment is to deliver a message to Italian society," said Sen. Alfredo Bazoli, from the opposition Democratic Party, who voted against the new law. "The message is that we are not opening doors to new rights; we are closing doors instead."

Experts said the Italian move could further the debate over an international treaty on surrogacy. Pope Francis, who has decried surrogacy as "womb renting," this year called for a global ban. Last year in Morocco, an international convention of experts from 70 countries issued a joint decree calling for a universal surrogacy ban. In April, the European Parliament voted to include "the exploitation of surrogate motherhood" under acts of "human trafficking."

"I think the goal of Giorgia Meloni would be to push … for an international convention abolishing surrogacy," said Léopold Vanbellingen, director of the European Institute of Bioethics. "At this moment it's clearly unrealistic, but during a Trump administration the answer might be different."

Europe has long taken a less receptive stance on surrogacy than the United States, where the practice is widely legal. Many European Union countries, including Germany and France, ban domestic surrogacy. In some of those countries, families who use international surrogacy can sometimes face obstacles to registering their newborns as citizens. Other countries — including Turkey — have administratively barred couples from seeking cross-border surrogacy but have stopped short of passing full-fledged laws.

The new Italian law, said Vanessa Brown Calder, director of family policy studies at the Cato Institute, appears to be the broadest passed by any nation.

The Italian government and its backers insist the law is not aimed at same-s*x couples — but rather at the practice of surrogacy, which they decry as immoral.

"Of course it will be easier to identify two men" with a child, said Jacopo Coghe, spokesman for the conservative advocacy group Pro Vita & Famiglia, which vigorously campaigned for the law. But, he added, "I believe this is a barbaric practice that creates a market for children regardless of who makes use of it. Everyone should be penalized."

Roughly 90 percent of the 250 or so couples in Italy who rely on international surrogacy each year here are heterosexual. But same-s*x couples are seen as the law's most vulnerable targets.

"This law is disgusting," said Salvatore Scarpa, who, with his domestic partner Luca Capuano, had their daughter Paola with the aid of a California-based surrogate mother last year. The couple said they will defy the new law and move forward with plans for the same birth mother to be implanted with the embryo of their second child this month. "They cannot stop our family. How dare they judge us."

A Meloni government edict last year barred Italian cities and towns from registering birth certificates listing parents of the same s*x, denying their children access to citizenship, public schools, health care and other benefits and services. That ruling is being disputed in the courts, but for now, the couple has been unable to legally register their 14-month old daughter, who lives at their home near Naples as an American citizen who overstayed her visa. They will face the same challenges with their next child — plus the added threat of up to two years in jail and 1 million euros ($1.1 million) in fines as outlined in the new law.

To get around a possible customs stop at an Italian airport, they plan to fly to Paris with their newborn from the United States, and travel by road over the open border between France and Italy. They said they would run the risk to remain in their country and be close to their parents and loved ones but would leave Italy for good "if they come for the children."

"We will not have them grow up in an orphanage," Scarpa said.

Italian legal experts call the measure fuzzy on crucial points. Italian judges, for instance, will need to decide the point at which a crime is committed. At the signing of a contract? At birth? They say Italians prosecutors are also likely to face major hurdles to accessing the kind of overseas medical records they would need to conclusively prove the involvement of Italian citizens in international surrogacy, either as prospective parents or medical staff. It would also find the Italians attempting legal acrobatics, seeking to convict its citizens for acts that were legal in the country where they took place.

Under Italian law, customs authorities at airports cannot arrest people suspected of crimes that carry sentences of under three years. In Italy, first offenders are also highly unlikely to be sentenced to jail.

But cases can still be referred by customs agents, or anyone else, to prosecutors, and penalties could be severe if convicted. Families would live in the shadow of fear of being reported.

"There is the possibility that you have two fathers with a child, and their pediatrician or a next-door neighbor who doesn't accept two fathers with a child decides to press charges," said Vincenzo Miri, president of the Lenford Network, an association of Italian lawyers that advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. "That's what they're facing."

Just a reminder: there is not exactly a shortage of babies in need of adoption.