FISTFUL OF SCRUPLES:

Fertility's closed Italian frontier: A law takes effect Wednesday that curtails options in a former hotbed of reproductive treatments. (Sophie Arie, 3/10/04, The Christian Science Monitor)

Determined to end its reputation as the 'Wild West" of fertility treatment, Italy is severely curtailing the ability of couples who cannot conceive to seek alternative routes to becoming biological parents.

The Medically Assisted Reproduction Law, which takes effect Wednesday, gives embryos the same rights as their would-be parents and makes it illegal for sterile or gay couples, as well as single adults, to use donors or surrogate mothers. It also bans all forms of embryo research and limits the treatments that "stable" couples - married or living together - can resort to for assistance in conceiving.

The move reverses what critics charge are lawless, market-driven practices in a country where doctors have in the past helped a 63-year-old woman become pregnant. After more than 20 years of debate, the law is seen as a victory for traditional Catholics who argue against all forms of technological assistance - or "playing God" - for infertile or sterile adults.

Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia has called the law "a good starting point" for protecting the embryo. "Research should be carried out on animals, not Christians," he told Corriere della Sera when the law was approved last month.

But opponents warn that the ban's restrictions could simply drive those trying desperately to have children - in a country where family life revolves around bambini - to take unnecessary risks. It could also, they say, be a first step toward banning abortion, which is legal in Italy.

That'd take care of the bad and the ugly, but they better start producing more good or Italians will be just a memory.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 9, 2004 8:03 PM