https://doi.org/10.4081/mem.2002.688
The Italian parliamentary debate on the riproductive techniques.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
The Italian Chamber of deputies approved in June 2002 a bill now to be submitted to the scrutiny of the Senate.
The present paper examines first the history of the bill from the IXth legislature, recording not only the parliamentary passages but also the contributions of the jurisprudence, of the Govern, of several Committees and social movements. The bill is then examined in its most important features. The principle of the priority of the interest/right of the unborn child is consistently applied: in the protection of the new human being from the fertilisation to the birth (right to life), during which period every manipulation of its genetic characteristics is forbidden (right to genetic identity); then in the protection of its right to a family, according to which biological, affective and legal parenthood must coincide (right to psychological and existential identity).
Some ethical reservations however remain with regard to the dignity of the procreating act and to the inadequate protection of the unborn's right to a family founded on marriage, whose respect would have given a better guarantee of the stability of parental affection (the bill, on the contrary, gives access to cohabiting couples). Some reservations remain also with regard to the loss of embryos due to the low percentage of success of riproductive techniques. Still, in its main features, the bill deserves appreciation. One must also remember the possibility of conscientious objection, which the bill foresees and which gets all its importance with regard to the significance of giving and been given birth.
How to Cite
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.