| Popis: |
The new challenges posed by biotechnology for legal science have led to unprecedented dilemmas as regards legal subjectivity and the beginning of life. Notably, biotechnology has rearticulated the existential project concerning procreation and parenting. In this process, biotechnology expands the existential prerogatives of the parties involved, but it also radicalizes ethical positions impinging on crucial issues posed by the need to define, in philosophical and legal terms, the status of entities produced but not necessarily involved in the procreative process, as in the case of embryos. This dilemma is crucial in the field of assisted reproductive techniques (ART), as witnessed by the Italian regulatory framework (art. 1 co.1, L. 40/2004). The Italian ‘Rules Governing Assisted Fertilization’ (L. 40/2004) have been extensively modified by the Italian Constitutional Court that, in recent years, declared many of its parts unconstitutional (see C.C. 229/2015; C.C. 96/2015; C.C. 162/2014; C.C. 151/2009). The Italian Constitutional Court’s judgment finally permits a diagnostic survey of the health of the embryo, thereby allowing couples, within the limits of the law, to transfer only 'healthy' embryos in the uterus. The production of surplus embryos (so-called because they exceed the number of embryos transferred to the uterus) poses ethical and legal dilemmas about their destiny, especially in the case of embryos whose growth is arrested in vitro or who are affected by a severe disease and thus are excluded from becoming individuals. Considering the recent Italian Constitutional Court’s judgment on art. 13 L. 40/2004 (84/2016), the paper analyses the current open dilemma on the destiny of the surplus Embryos, even in the light of the European framework offered both by national legislations and Higher European Courts on this topic. |
