Fertility's closed Italian frontier

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. At the very least, the ban may move a variety of procedures beyond Italy's borders, limiting their access just to the wealthy.

"It is as if we have gone back to the Dark Ages," said Federica Casadei, who runs a Rome-based organization for couples with fertility problems called "Cercounbimbo" (Lookingforachild). "The embryo is so sacred now that you cannot touch it - not even to help it be born."

Italy has the oldest population and one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. The government is so keen for a baby boom that it is offering cash incentives for every naturally born second child.

Yet the law, approved by Catholic politicians from across the political spectrum, has thrown an estimated 250,000 couples seeking fertility treatment each year into despair and left doctors and researchers with their hands tied.

"This law is made by people who have no idea what it is like not to be able to have children," said Cristina Zuppa, whose attempts at in-vitro fertilization since last September have failed. "They are dictating to the nation on the most private of things. It's like being told what clothes you are allowed to wear."

The plan has put medical experts in Italy and Europe in an uproar. "Some of these bans are astonishing from a scientific point of view and disgusting from a moral point of view," said an open letter by fertility expert Carlo Flamigni and Rita Levi-Montalcini, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

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