Surrogacy more serious than pedophilia - FdI MP

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 20 - Federico Mollicone, a lawmaker for Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party and the president of the Lower House's culture committee, said Monday that surrogacy "is a serious crime, more serious than pedophilia" amid a heated debate in the country about the rights of same-sex-parent families.
    "We are faced with people who want to choose a child like they choose the colour of their house," he told La7 television.
    Surrogacy is a hot topic in Italy at the moment after Milan was forced to stop a procedure it had used to register both members of a same-sex couple as the parents of a child after the prefect's department warned it was illegal following consultations with the interior ministry.
    The procedure was based on the transcription into the Milan civil register of foreign birth certificates of children conceived by surrogacy, which is illegal in Italy, or assisted fertility, which is only allowed for heterosexual couples here.
    A major rally took place in Milan on Saturday to protest against transcriptions of birth certifications in such cases being stopped and to defend the right of same-sex-parent families.
    The right-wing FdI, however, wants to further clamp down on surrogacy and has presented a bill in the Lower House for it to become a "universal crime".
    This would mean it would be possible to prosecute Italians who have children via surrogacy abroad, even when the procedure is legal in the country it takes place in. (ANSA).