A European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision concerning a child obtained by an Italian couple from a surrogate mother in Russia has been condemned as “ratifying the sale of children”.
Following a ruling by the Strasbourg court that the child should not have been removed by Italian authorities from the commissioning couple because they had ‘behaved as parents’, Grégor Puppinck of the European Centre for Law and Justice described the decision as “devastating” and “an incentive to international children trafficking”.
The couple at the centre of the ECHR case travelled to Moscow in 2011 to pay a surrogate mother to have a baby for them, returning to Italy with the child who was subsequently found to have no biological link at all to the couple.
The couple has previously been refused permission to adopt by the Italian authorities because of their age.
By their own admission, the couple had purchased an egg and sperm from third parties and hired a surrogate mother in order to procure a child. The Italian authorities, acting on a judge’s order, moved on this basis to remove the child as one purchased or trafficked.
The child was given to another couple to raise.
In response, however, the couple took their case to Strasbourg where the ECHR ruled – by five judges to two – that, while Italy had a legal right to refuse to recognise a link between couple and child, it had no right to remove the child from their care as it breached the rights of the family under Human Rights legislation. Italy was subsequently fined €30,000 for this breach.
“To reach such a conclusion, the court held that the relationship between the purchasers and the child constitutes a ‘family life’ protected by Human Rights because they behaved ‘like parents’ for six months,” Puppinck explained.
“This judgment is devastating, as the two dissenting judges pointed out: it negates the freedom of States to not recognise legal effects to surrogacy, and even the legitimacy of the State’s choice to ban it. Moreover, this judgment is an incentive to international children trafficking ; it withdraws from States the reasons and means to prevent it.”
Puppinck added: “Thus, the court ratifies the sale of children.”
Puppinck expressed the hope that Italy will now appeal the court’s ruling.