Italy has passed a new law which criminalises seeking surrogacy abroad in a major blow to the gay community.
Surrogacy is illegal in Italy, and the new law passed by the conservative government means LGBTQ+ people will struggle to have families.
Under the new legislation, those who try to get a surrogacy abroad could face large fines and prison sentences, the New York Times reported.
The law was introduced by Italian politician Carolina Varchi, who said online that her party was ‘working against LGBTQ+ ideology’.
Only heterosexual families are allowed to adopt children in Italy, leaving those in the LGBTQ+ community who want a family without any options.
Conservatives in the Italian senate defended the decision by saying surrogacy ‘exploits all women’, but the new law has sparked outrage.
Cristiano Giraldi is a father to two 10-year-old children in Italy, who were born to through surrogacy in the United States.
He told AriseTV: ‘We are very saddened because Italy has once again missed an opportunity to demonstrate that it is a country in line with what Europe and the world are.’
Franco Grillini told Reuters: ‘If someone has a baby, they should be given a medal. Here instead you are sent to jail if you don’t have children the traditional way.
‘This is a monstrous law. No country in the world has such a thing.’
Surrogacy is banned in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
But birth rates are declining across the globe – and even Pope Francis urged Italians to have more sex to address their falling birth rates.
He urged couples to stop buying ‘pets’ and instead have more sex to create children for the future of Italy.
‘Let us not resign ourselves to sterile dullness and pessimism. Let us not believe that history is already marked, that nothing can be done to reverse the trend,’ he said.
Italy recorded a record-low number of live births last year, 392,598, and an elevated number of deaths, 713,499.
In 2015, Italy was dubbed a ‘dying country’ as its birth rate plummeted.
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