The law 40 on fertility treatment approved in 2004 amid a thousand controversies has increased the number of couples who have to migrate
to conceive a child, but now it had a new interpretation by a judge of the court
of Salerno. It's not the first time that the stakes of this law have been changed by the courts, because already the Constititional Court had declared this law partially illegal.
Now the Judge
Antonio Scarpa gave the right to access to in vitro fertilization even to a couple
that is not sterile but carries a genetic disease. "The
right to procreate - it is stated in the reasons of the court - and the
same right to health of those involved, would be irreparably harmed by
an interpretation of the rules under review that would prevent the use
of techniques of PMA (medically assisted procreation) by couples, not infertile or sterile, but who run a real risk of procreating children with
severe disease, because they have genetically transmitted diseases.
A couple who lives in Lombardia had
resorted to the court in Salerno because they could transmit to their child the spinal
muscular atrophy type 1, that causes the deaths of babies in the first
year of life, because both parents were carriers of the disease. They went then to the gynecologist Domenico Danza, who lives in Salerno, to access the practice of
assisted reproduction, but the doctor, (because of the law 40) could not do
anything. That's why they choose to go to court.
Now the court has granted the right of access to assisted procreation preceded by preimplantation genetic diagnosis by ordering the transfer of only healthy embryos in the uterus.
The ruling is
certainly an historic one and it has already received many
criticisms, most notably that of the Undersecretary of Health, Eugenia
Roccella, who called it "very serious", because with this ruling, "disability becomes a criterion of discrimination compared to the right of being born". Undersecretary Roccella asked to whom refers the sentence when it speaks of "health." "Certainly not to the embryos - says Roccella - which in fact are being sacrificed in a very high number, even 20. The court essentially states that for the right to a healthy life of one it can be sacrificed the right to life of twenty ".
Entirely different view of Gianni Monni, head of the hospital
Microcitemico of Cagliari and president of the Italian hospital
gynecologists who calls it "a victory for women" and declares that "Now
all couples with thalassemia and those who are carriers of other genetic
diseases may give birth to healthy children and avoid unnecessary and
painful abortions when they know the fate of sick fetuses.
The couple, now almost 40-year old, can then have a new pregnancy using
preimplantation diagnosis without having to emigrate abroad. "I've had 5 pregnancies, only one child and 4 loss.- said the woman - After the last abortion, we decided to go to court rather than going outside of Italy."
Politician will discuss for a long time about this sentence, as they did in July, when another decision of the Court of Bologna
had given the green light to select healthy embryos for a Florentine couple already parents of a child suffering from Duchenne
dystrophy, transmitted by the mother.
Marianna Lepore
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