THEIn Italy there are almost 500 thousand people looking for their mother. For the bureaucracy, who are “in search of their own biological origin”. They move by relying on analogue archives, compassionate officials, voluntary associations, in the almost total certainty of failure, because tracing the mother who resorted to anonymous birth, according to the laws in force, is impossible for “one hundred years”.
It is the political outcome of a little-known and entirely Italian paradox. Why the search for origins, according to the Court of Strasbourg, the Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation is a person’s rightlike the sacrosanct right to give birth in anonymity. How then can two principles, two rights that are only apparently in conflict, coexist?
The journalist and TV author asks herself this through field research that has collected true stories, opinions of jurists and comparisons between experts. Melania Petriello in his book The way home, a journey in search of origins (Round Robin).
Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
A journey that intertwines news elements with a more intimate and personal story, raising political and ethical dilemmasbut also health inequalities (“a child who does not know his origins effectively ignores all the genetic information that is able to cure, anticipate and prevent serious pathologies”).
“The road home, a journey in search of origins” by Melania Petriello (Round Robin).
A reflection that necessarily calls into play, for a legislative evolution on new families, both the rights of parents and those of their children. “Regulating the ontological value of the biological root is also one of the themes underlying the reflection on gestation for otherswhich all countries and parliaments are called upon to address. It is one of the biggest fractures in the feminist movements that we see today,” the author points out.
Beyond the debate, “What matters is that politics in the institutions deals with it”: because the time has come to dedicate “construction work”, a vision, to families and their complexity.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.