Parents are too old to keep child, court rules

A COUPLE who conceived through IVF treatment after being repeatedly told they could not adopt because of their age have been ordered to give up their child because they cannot look after her.

Italian judges ruled that librarian Gabriella De Ambrosis, 57, and her retired husband Luigi, 70, should have their 18-month-old child Viola taken away from them due to concerns over the girl’s future.

The court in the northern Italian city of Turin said the couple suffered from “a narcissistic need to have a child” and showed “indifference with regard to the child’s perspective” in later years.

Viola was conceived with the help of artificial insemination after the couple’s repeated applications to adopt a child were turned down as they were too old.

The four ruling judges said the couple “never thought about the fact their daughter would be orphaned at a very young age, and before that would be forced to care for her elderly parents”.

The child is “the fruit of a distorted application of the enormous possibilities offered by genetic progress”, they said.

Among the issues raised in court was that the couple already have problems taking care of their daughter, with concerns raised after “she was kept in the nursery for five days because the mother didn’t feel up to having her in the room with her”.

Social services were called by neighbours after the child was left alone in a car for a few minutes late one evening, at which point the 18-month-old was taken into care.

The couple, who married in 1990 when Gabrielle was 36 and spent years trying to conceive naturally, are planning to appeal the ruling, their lawyer told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

The ruling is likely to raise further questions over elderly couples’ access to treatments such as IVF.