Rainbow families, Alessia’s story: lesbian, mother, separated
LIs Italy the country of families? Only the traditional ones. “For rainbow families, life is an immense daily effort,” says Alessia Crocini, president of Rainbow Families. For this reason, with her association, today, 7 June, she presented a bill for the equality and equal dignity of all families. “Not to introduce new laws but to extend to same-sex couples and single people the rights that are denied them today“.
«There are four», says Crocini, «the fundamental points of our proposal, elaborated by Rainbow Families together with Lenford Network, which deals with legal support for LGBT + couples: egalitarian marriagereform of the adoptions so that they are also possible for single and same-sex people, recognition of children at birth and access to the paths of medically assisted procreation even for single or homosexual women ».
Rainbow families, “natural” parenting and “pathological” infertility
Today, the use of techniques that allow those who cannot do it naturally to conceive is forbidden for homosexual couples and singles. “But since the 1960s, when contraception techniques have existed, parenting is no longer “natural”, but a choice», Argues the president of the Rainbow Families. “If a straight couple with infertility problems today is accompanied and supported, a couple of women is forced into health tourism.” Undertaking a path of medically assisted procreation abroad is a long and very expensive path.
And even if the pregnancy is successful, the family can never be recognized as such: in fact, it is not legally possible, in Italy, to rectify the birth certificate to add the name of the intentional mother (that is, the one who did not physically give birth but the other), in the case of two children born with medically assisted procreation. The choice made by the legislator with law 40/2004 (articles 4 and 5) is in fact to limit access to this technique to situations of pathological infertility: a condition that cannot be recognized in the case of infertility of the homosexual coupleas confirmed by a recent sentence of the Supreme Court.
The story of Alessia and Chiara and their son, Levon
Alessia Crocini herself fights every day with the many regulatory gaps that concern rainbow families.
She and Chiara Pizzolo fell in love in 2010. A couple of years later they started imagining a family. “I first had to deal with my internalized homophobia: the scruple that, as a lesbian, having a child could be wrong. I understood that it was right, at 39 years old ». For Chiara and Alessia thus began the odyssey: hormonal stimulations, ultrasound scans sent by e-mail to find out if it was the right time for the implant, flights and hotels to book, money to spend. They attempted PMA first in Denmark, and then in Spain. Levon was born in August 2014. “I was the first person who held him in her arms, while they were sewing Chiara’s belly, after her caesarean section. A great emotion. And yet, still, I am not her mother legally ».
Mother every day. But not according to the law
Same-sex couples cannot recognize children at birth. Whenever Alessia has to move with Levon, for example when she goes abroad, she needs Chiara’s written consent. “But even when Levon was hospitalized for Kawasaki disease at the age of two Chiara’s signature was essential to be able to administer the life-saving drugs he needed. And even on the occasion of a recent day hospital: without his signature, my son could not be discharged. In front of my son I had to say: I’m not the legal mother, now I’ll get the other one. He was humiliating“.
Alessia then embarked on the path of stepchild adoption (the adoption of the partner’s child). But then Chiara and Alessia separated, and everything got terribly complicated: «Psychologists and social workers have been sifting through our lives for a year and a half and weighing me as a mother. The Juvenile Court wastes time looking after my son, a child who is well and simply has two lesbian mothers. He would have other children to take care of, wouldn’t he? ‘
If the Court gives a favorable opinion, Alessia could be the first to obtain a stepchild adoption from a separated mother.
Rainbow families and Italian law
“Shall we take the egalitarian marriage?” Invites Crocini: “Zapatero made it legal 18 years ago. Despite the bishops in the square, he looked beyond, he traced his path. We live in a bubble of conservatism ». Bubble is the right word. Because it is often a bubble that must burst to free the rainbow families and allow them to be legally what they practically are. “Following a lost cause, the Municipality of Milan now automatically transcribes foreign birth certificates even when there are parents of the same sex. I know that the mayor of Turin no longer does it, while the mayor of Fiumicino did, ”says Alessia, giving an idea of the jungle that exists at an administrative level in the absence of a law that protects the children of homosexual couples. “The paradoxical side of the matter is that society is far ahead of politics“, Assures the president of the Rainbow Families:”Our children are the same as others in every way, at school as at the playground: equally serene, they are welcomed, loved, considered“. “Tolerance” is really something else.
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