Italian Law Gives Green Light To Fertility Tourists

22.12.2010

Rome, 25 Nov. (AKI) - Of the 4,000 Italians who travel abroad every year for fertility treatment, Italy's stringent rules on assisted reproduction prompts 2,700 to seek out foreign fertility clinics where they aim to get pregnant with donor eggs and sperm, according to a new study.

A 2004 Italian law put a stop to sperm and egg donation and bans screening embryos for disease making it one of Europe's most restrictive assisted fertility rules. A referendum the following year failed to get enough voters to turn up at polling stations to reach the required 50 percent turnout for the result to be valid.

The law, strongly supported by the Vatican, also caps the number of embryos created for each treatment at three, all of which have to be implanted in the women's womb at the same time.

"People will continue to be forced to turn to travel abroad until Italy doesn't recognise their right" to use donated and purchased eggs and sperm," said Andrea Borini, president of the Assisted Fertility Observer.

Assisted Fertility Observer is an assisted fertility advocacy group that wrote the report and presented it on Thursday in Bologna, in northern Italy.

Critics of of the law, known as 'Law 40' say it violates the rights of couples who desire to have children. Supporters of the legislation claim it prevents a of human egg 'supermarket' in Italy.

Spain and Switzerland are Italian's most popular country's for sperm and egg implantation. On the so-called fertility-tourist destination list are also Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, the US, Sweden and Switzerland, according to the report.

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