A (2005) Italy enacts new law on medically assisted reproduction

In 2004, the Italian Parliament enacted a law regulating medically assisted reproduction. Although the law recog-nizes as legal certain assisted reproduction techniques, several other procedures are implicitly or expressly banned: oocyte and sperm donation, using embryos for the scientific research purposes and reproductive cloning. In this article, I outline the new legal framework, pointing out some of the shortcomings of its provisions, such as the fail-ure to define what an ‘embryo ’ is, the contradictions between this law and the law on abortion, the opportunity for Italian couples to circumvent some of the prohibitions by resorting to ‘reproductive tourism’, and the central role that physicians play in the new legal framework. Key words: cryopreservation/embryos (legal status of)/fertilization/medically assisted reproduction/preimplantation testing Celestine Bohlen (1995) noted that ‘Italy is virtually the only country in Europe that still has no law, no controls, not even any minimum regulations governing more than 100 private clinics that perform various fertilization procedures’. The leg-islative gap was eventually filled on February 19, 2004, when the Italian Parliament enacted Law 40/2004, which regulates medically assisted reproduction (MAR). Italian policymaker