The surrogacy bill was approved by the upper house justice committee on Wednesday after approval by the lower house last month and recently saw a right-wing League amendment.
The amendment says using surrogate mothers should be punishable by 4-10 years in prison and a fine of 600,000 to two million euros.
Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party bill would make surrogacy a “universal crime”, even abroad.
The bill would controversially end a practice that is widely used by Italian gay couples in the US and other countries.
The League’s further stricture against surrogacy includes punishing the public official who registers the children born from that practice.
Both Meloni and League leader Matteo Salvini have described the ‘babies for sale’ practice of paying allegedly vulnerable women and depriving infants of their natural mothers as “abominable”.
The centre-left opposition is fighting the bill.
Meanwhile, centre right post-Berlusconi Forza Italia (FI) Senate Whip Maurizio Gasparri launched the bill to pay poor pregnant women 1000 euros a month for a year not to terminate their pregnancies.
Gasparri said this ‘maternity income’ was a “good incentive to protect the unborn child”.
The government has already controversially allowed pro-life activists access to abortion information services.
It is notoriously difficult to get an abortion in Italy already, with over two thirds of the country’s doctors morally or religiously opposed to the procedure.
ANSA
