Childless in despair as Italian law curbs fertility treatment

March 7, 2004

The hormone treatment was grim. Then there was the experience of having embryos implanted in her womb. Finally came the shattering disappointment when none of them grew.
Yet Cristina Zuppa and her husband vowed to try again and again if necessary. The couple, in their mid-thirties, turned to a fertility clinic after failing over several years to start a family. After two tries, they have five embryos left, frozen at the Rome clinic.

From Tuesday, however, a controversial new law will make fertility treatment harder to get and far less effective for the Zuppas and around 250,000 other childless couples like them in Italy.

Italy has declared that a fertilised egg has the same rights as a citizen. The tight new controls make fertility treatment available only to 'stable couples'. Sperm donors and surrogate mothers are banned. Embryos can no longer be frozen, and embryo research is banned.

Doctors could be jailed for up to 20 years and fined €1 million (£669,000) if they try to clone humans. Those breaking the law on fertility treatment could be fined €400,000 and suspended from practice.

'This law is made by people who have no idea what it is like not to be able to have children,' said Zuppa, 34. '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 law has been approved by Catholic politicians from across the political spectrum. They want to end Italy's reputation as the 'Wild West' of fertility treatment, where doctors such as Severino Antinori have helped women as old as 63 to become pregnant and claimed they were winning the race to clone the first human being.

Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia has said: 'Research should be carried out on animals, not Christians.'

The childless and their supporters are upset. 'It's as if we have gone back to the Dark Ages,' said Federica Casadei, who runs an organisation for infertile couples. 'The embryo is now so sacred you cannot touch it, not even to try to help it be born.'

Under the law, a couple can create only three embryos, and all of them must be implanted simultaneously. This raises the risk of multiple births. The crackdown is expected to reduce the chances of successful fertility treatment from 30 per cent to just 8 per cent.

Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, and the government offers cash for every second child born. Those who need fertility treatment to have children now feel the door has been slammed in their faces.

'I wish I could leave this country,' said Barbara, whose husband is sterile. 'The state obviously does not want people like me. They prefer to act as if we do not exist.'

Barbara began IVF treatment in January and was due for a second round on 20 March, but now the law bans the use of donated sperm, so the teacher is saving up to visit a clinic abroad.

'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 leading fertility expert Carlo Flamigni and Rita Levi-Montalcini, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Professor Arne Sunde, the president of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology, said: 'It is a disaster and it will inevitably lead to "fertility tourism" as couples seek to get better treatment outside Italy.'

Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy's wartime fascist dictator, said: 'Anyone who wants fertility treatment will travel across the border to get it. It will become a luxury for the rich.'

Casadei, 40, is on her seventh attempt at artificial insemination. The new law may mean she has to give up trying to become a mother.

'It costs about €7,000 to have treatment abroad,' she explains. 'At my age, the chances of it working are already low. To go through all that, with a foreign doctor in a foreign language, and then fail. It's not worth it.'

Doctors already plan to set up clinics in neighbouring countries, some of them just across Italy's borders. Dr Marco Gergolet will open one in the autumn just yards inside the Slovenian side of the frontier in the town of Gorizia. He has already received hundreds of requests from couples for treatment.

'Our services will be 20 per cent cheaper than in Italy,' Gergolet said. 'For us it is a great business opportunity.'