A wicked law' How Italy's new curbs on surrogacy spark fear and sadness

Maria Sole Giardini was campaigning outside the Italian parliament in 2021 for surrogacy to be legalised when she encountered Giorgia Meloni.

- Angela Giuffrida

The prime minister's Brothers of Italy party, in opposition at the time, was frantically drumming up support for a bill to extend Italy's outright ban on domestic surrogacy by making it a universal crime that transcends borders.

This would have put people like Giardini, who was born without a womb and whose only means of having a baby was to access surrogacy abroad, on a par with terrorists, paedophiles and war criminals.

Meloni, who refers to surrogacy using the derogatory term "utero in affito" (womb for rent), had described it that year as an "abomination" that sought to reduce human life "to a bargaining chip".

However, she took a moment to speak to Giardini, who is among an estimated 6,000 women in Italy with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, a rare condition that affects the female reproductive system.