Ethical and legal issues on Italian medically assisted Procreation Law

Aim:After ten year, the Italian law on medically assisted reproduction has been almost completely demolished. The law was widely criticized and right from the start it came under attack from Italian judges who proceeded, through the issue of about twenty sentences, to dismantle it piece by piece. Restrictions imposed by Law 40/2004 drove many infertile Italian couples to choose to go abroad so as to have wider access to assisted procreative treatments.Methods:In 2009 the Constitutional Court declared that the maximum limit of three embryos, and the obligation to implant all three produced, was constitutionally illegitimate; finally, in 2014, the Constitutional Court (no. 162/2014) declared the ban on donor insemination unconstitutional, thus opening the way to heterologous assisted reproduction.Results:However, the Italian legislator must tackle several issues relating to heterologous MAR techniques, such as number of donationsm, adoption of an open-identity system versus an anonymous system, criteria for accessing therapy, withdrawal of consent to MAR procedures and the use of embryos for scientific research.Conclusion:On these topics and on the emission of ministerial guidelines will depend the future of those Italian couples who are sterile, infertile or unable to reproduce responsibly, and who are still waiting to exercise their rights; restoring to physicians their right to independent and responsible decision-making within their own sphere of competence and autonomy.