(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 16 - A law making surrogate motherhood a "universal crime", definitively approved by the Senate on October 16, will be published in the Official Gazette on Monday, November 18, thus becoming law in Italy, ANSA sources said Saturday.
    The bill was signed into law by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, on November 4, before leaving for his visit to China, they said.
    Observers said the president had taken an unusually long time to give the green light for its publication in the gazette.
    The Senate gave final approval last October 16 to the bill making surrogacy a universal crime, even if it is carried out abroad by Italian citizens.
    Opposition lawmakers, who voted against the measure, have slammed it as "useless", "unconstitutional", and "against children and same-sex couples".
    In Italy, surrogacy has been illegal since 2004.
    The measure makes gestation for others punishable by law even if committed abroad, but only for Italian citizens.
    Surrogacy became a hot topic under the right-ring government of Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy (FdI) party presented the legislation that allows the prosecution of Italians who resort to using surrogate mothers in countries like Spain, Canada and the US where it is legal, making it a "universal crime".
    Meloni has said she thinks surrogacy is "inhuman" and takes advantage of vulnerable women whose babies are stripped away from them "in a brutal trade".
    Other countries where commercial surrogacy is legal include Georgia and Greece.
    Additionally, altruistic surrogacy is allowed in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala, the UK and Australia.
    In all, over 60 countries allow some form of surrogacy, according to rights groups.
    Over 50 Italian couples are already set to lodge legal appeals against the law, the civil rights and right-to-die Associazione Luca Coscioni told ANSA.
    "We are ready to defend all couples damaged by this unjust and unreasonable law," said the association's leaders Marco Cappato and Filomena Gallo.
    "We will take our and their battle to the courts and to every appropriate venue, with the aim of re-establishing an opportunity offered by science, which a blind and brutal legislation seeks to condemn as a universal crime.
    "There are already over 50 couples from all over Italy who have turned to the legal team of the Luca Coscioni Association, worried about the consequences that this law could have on their family project".
    President Sergio Mattarella's signing he bill into law was "not surprising" since he has already signed other bills "in flagrant contrast with European norms like that on lab-grown meat which was later annulled by the EU, said Cappato and Gallo.
    (Mattarella said Friday night that he had promulgated many laws he did not agree with in order to fulfill his institutional duty, ed.).
    The 50 couples, the association chiefs said, are "couples who have just started the process, who have only signed the consent form in a foreign center or who have already had their gametes collected." Surrogacy is already regulated in 66 countries, they said.
    Italy's main pro-life group hailed the passing of the law.
    Antonio Brandi, the president of Pro Vita & Famiglia Onlus, said: "The promulgation by President Mattarella of the law that makes surrogate motherhood a universal crime, punishable even if committed abroad by Italian citizens, crowns years of battles by Pro Vita & Famiglia and is a milestone on the path to the abolition of the international market of children, which according to estimates by Global Market Insights is worth 15 billion dollars today and which in 2032 could be worth 130 billion due to the increase in the rate of infertility.
    "While congratulating the parliamentary majority for this historic success, we now expect the Government to make this new principle the cornerstone of bilateral relations with States that tolerate this inhumane practice and to promote an international moratorium in the main fora, such as the UN and the European Union".
    photo: An LGBTQIA+ protest against the bill (ANSA).