Elisabetta Casellati

Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati

Maria Elisabetta Alberti (born 12 August 1946), known by her married name as Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, is an Italian lawyer and politician, serving as Minister for Institutional Reforms since 2022. She was President of the Italian Senate from 2018 to 2022. She was the first woman ever to have held this position.

Quotes

• We believe that, when technologies cause psychosocial harm linked to the loss of the unborn child's genetic parental identity, this is not progress but regression, a form of barbarism. This is the case with assisted reproduction, which creates an unacceptable disconnect between social parentage and biological parentage – a rift between genetic parentage, gestational parentage and educational responsibility– with inevitable and irreparable psychological harm to the unborn child. Nor should it be claimed, as has been said many times, that the concept of parenthood is evolving today towards new horizons, because parents' horizons are different from those of their child, especially when we consider that the couple today is increasingly unstable and therefore in need of well-considered and, so to speak, 'orthodox' choices. You only have to look at the statistics to see the alarming figures. Nor should we accept the provocative claim, which I often hear repeated here and in public debates, that Italy is full of 'children of assisted reproduction' because they are the result of a woman's relationship with the milkman on duty. We believe that, when science is called upon to make up for nature's shortcomings, we should not imitate nature's excesses and degenerations, but rather preserve as natural a character as possible for the parental role, thereby avoiding the chaos of socially unprecedented and hard-to-define figures.

• Verbatim Transcript of the Italian Senate, Session No 506, 11 December 2003.

• • 'Family' is not an expandable concept. The State cannot equate marriage and civil unions, nor can it allow a child to be brought up by a couple who are not a family. Diversity must be protected, but differences cannot become identities if they are not identities. [...] We must not create confusion, to use a word the Pope used a few days ago: any attempt at homogenisation would be a hasty superimposition and would obscure models that cannot be superimposed.

• Quoted in Unioni civili: Casellati (Csm), la famiglia "non è estensibile", Agensir.it, 28 January 2016.

• (About the Cirinnà Bill of Law) These problems are the result of a devious political strategy. In words, they said they wanted to create a new legal entity, a union between people of the same sex; in practice, they mimicked traditional marriage to the point of creating a hybrid.

[...] The legislator argues that same-sex unions should be included among social formations, with reference to Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution. That's all very well, but then we see that all the repeated references are to Article 29 and to the regulation of the family. They've taken a circuitous route to get to marriage, without saying so, but this raises serious constitutional issues because it goes against Article 29 of our Constitution. [...] If they claim they don't want to replicate marriage because it discriminates against de facto mixed couples, then what?

• Quoted in Stefano Zurlo, La "Cirinnà" parte male "È anticostituzionale e discrimina gli etero", ilGiornale.it, 13 May 2016.

Inaugural address upon taking office as President of the Senate of the Republic

Inaugural Address as President of the Senate, 18th Legislature, March 24, 2018, available at Senato.it.

• Despite the debate over the different roles that will be defined in the next stages of the institutional framework, all the political parties represent the community as a whole.

A shared awareness of common legitimacy is an essential prerequisite for good governance.

• Please forgive my emotion, but for me, the decision you have made to elect a woman to the Presidency of this Assembly for the first time represents a responsibility that I cannot hide behind any formal preamble.

It is an honour and, as I said, a responsibility that I feel I must share with all those women who, through their stories, actions, example, commitment and courage, have built the Italy we know today. A great democratic and liberal country, where no goal and no aspiration is out of reach anymore.

• The age of globalization offers opportunities and knowledge, but at the same time carries with it the risk of new forms of marginalization—a risk that cannot be ignored or underestimated, starting with the real economy and starting with the workplace.