The northern Italian city of Padua has started removing the names of non-biological gay mothers from their children’s birth certificates under new legislation passed by the “traditional family-first” government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
These birth certificates belong to 33 children of Italian women who underwent artificial insemination abroad and then registered their children under the city’s center-left government, led by Sergio Giordani, in 2017.
The prosecutor’s office in Padua confirmed to CNN that, as of Thursday, 27 mothers had been removed from 27 birth certificates.
Giordani came to power promising to remove the traditional “mother” and “father” designations on birth certificates, but this was overturned when Meloni’s government ordered local authorities to stop registering the children of same-sex parents with both of their names.
The measure means that only the biological parent of a child can be named on a birth certificate.
The measure also stops men in a same-sex relationship from registering the birth of their child with both fathers’ names.
Padua is the first city in Italy to retroactively cancel birth certificates, but rights groups are concerned that other regions, especially those controlled by center-right governments, will follow suit. »
