An Italian court has recognized three legal parents for a single child for the first time — Reuters
An Italian court has handed down a landmark ruling, officially recognizing three legal parents—two men and one woman—for a four-year-old child. The verdict has already sparked heated debate and criticism from conservative circles in the country.
Reuters reported this on May 13.
The child was born in Germany and lives there with two married men, one of whom is the biological father who conceived her with a woman who is a friend of the couple.
The non-biological father, an Italian-German citizen, subsequently adopted the child under German law but filed a request to have the adoption recognized in Italy as well.
Local authorities rejected this request, suspecting that the child was born as a result of surrogacy abroad—a practice that Italy’s conservative government has criminalized.
An appeals court in the southern Italian city of Bari overturned that decision, ruling that there had been no agreement within the family regarding surrogacy.
This decision, which is final, means that Italy, like Germany, recognizes that the child has two legally recognized parents and one mother.
The decision was made in January but was made public as Italy marked the 10th anniversary of the parliament’s passage of a law legalizing same-sex partnerships.
The Catholic organization Pro Vita & Famiglia, which advocates for what it calls traditional family values, condemned the decision and stated that the legal recognition of same-sex unions “has overturned family law, subjecting minors to all sorts of social and ideological experiments.”
Earlier, Italy rejected Donald Trump’s accusations of allegedly insufficient participation in joint U.S. security missions, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz. Rome emphasizes that the country, on the contrary, has offered assistance, and cooperation with Washington remains functional and mutual.
In Italy, a former ambassador was detained on suspicion of illegally issuing Schengen visas to Russians.
