Constitutional Court nixes embryo motion

(ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - The Constitutional Court on Tuesday rejected a motion to hear testimony from expert witnesses in the case of a couple wishing to donate their non-viable embryos to science. Italian law on assisted fertility treatments forbids using embryos for research purposes under any circumstances whatsoever.
    The couple has appealed for the ban to be lifted after several cycles of assisted fertility treatment resulted in severely damaged embryos. Last November the Constitutional Court ruled that a ban on selecting embryos for fertility treatments to avoid the transmission of some serious diseases was illegitimate.
    Screening and selecting embryos for grave genetically transmitted diseases is not a crime, the court said.
    However, the Court upheld a ban on suppressing embryos carrying such diseases.
    The Court was ruling on objections raised to Italy's Law 40 approved in 2004, which bans assisted fertility treatments using eggs or sperm from anonymous donors, IVF treatments for same-sex couples, surrogate motherhood and suppressing embryos.
    The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in 2012 had already rejected the law, saying it went against two provisions in its convention for the protection of human rights.
    Italy's Constitutional Court in April 2014 lifted the ban on anonymous donor IVF.