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<\/a><\/p>\nIn a complex case where the law surmounted biology, an Italian judge ruled that twins born from the same mother are not brothers.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0ruling from an appeals court in Milan<\/a>\u00a0reversed an earlier determination that the boys<\/a>, born from a surrogate in California via in vitro fertilization at the behest of a gay<\/a> couple<\/a>, could not be claimed by the men<\/a> as their legal children. Since they each used separate semen samples, according to the ruling, each man<\/a> could claim the corresponding boy<\/a> as a child. But although this process made them fraternal twins, each sharing the same genetic mother, the ruling further specified that they could not be brothers in the eyes of the law.<\/p>\n Despite this confusing caveat, the couple<\/a>\u2014who have wished to remain anonymous in Italian media\u2014welcomed the development that allowed them to confer their Italian citizenship upon the children, previously denied them in an earlier attempt to register their births with officials in Milan.<\/p>\n An organization that was helping the men<\/a> in their court case did likewise:<\/p>\n Famiglie Arcobaleno, a nongovernmental organization advocating the rights of same-sex<\/a> parents and their children, has hailed the court\u2019s decision as a \u201cpositive step.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s the first time that an Italian court has established that a child\u2019s best interest comes before [the legality of] how he or she was born\u201d, the NGO\u2019s president, Marilena Grassadonia, told The Washington Post in a telephone interview. . . . . NGOs such as Famiglie Arcobaleno . . . are working to help gay<\/a> couples<\/a> find surrogates in countries \u201cwhere the rights of surrogates are respected,\u201d Grassadonia said. \u201cCalifornia and Canada are our preferred destinations.\u201d<\/p>\n While the same-sex<\/a> nature of the boys<\/a>\u2019 parentage further complicated the matter, surrogacy remains a barely-accepted concept in Italian law, especially when third-party countries where exploitation is suspected are involved:<\/p>\n Surrogacy itself is stigmatized and referred to by the local media by the derogatory term \u201cutero in affitto,\u201d or \u201cwomb for rent.\u201d Even after a child is born, there\u2019s no guarantee that its best interests will be more important than adhering to the ban. Italian authorities have gone so far as to take children away from their parents. Three years ago, a court in Cremona, a town in northern Italy, took a toddler away from his parents, a straight married couple<\/a>, after it was discovered he was born in Ukraine to a surrogate mother. Another child born in Ukraine via a surrogate was separated from his family in the town of Brescia and was declared \u201cadoptable\u201d by the country\u2019s rough equivalent of the Supreme Court in 2014.<\/p>\n But the case further serves to highlight that Italy remains less progressive in the area of both same-sex<\/a> marriage equality and parenthood than much of neighboring Europe. Limited civil partnerships still make no provision for adoption, which is why neither man<\/a> can simply adopt the other man<\/a>\u2019s child. The curious nature of the court\u2019s attention-grabbing ruling would ideally spur on legislation that could begin to acknowledge the reality on the ground of contemporary families.<\/p>\n Baby Twins by David Gerstein<\/a> is licensed under\u00a0Creative Commons<\/a> Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported<\/a>\u00a0license via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Twins of a Gay Couple Born to Same Mother Are Not Brothers, Judge Rules<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n