On 28 August 2012, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Court concluded that the Italian ban on embryonic screening violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides a right to respect for one's private and family life.¹ Since Italy is one of the few countries prohibiting pre-implantation diagnostics (PID) for medically-assisted procreation, this ruling may force Italy to lift this ban in the near future.

The applicants, Rosetta Costa and Walter Pavan, are an Italian couple. In 2006, after they had a daughter born with cystic fibrosis (CF) they found out they were both carriers of the disease. During a second pregnancy Mrs Costa opted for an abortion because upon prenatal screening the fetus was diagnosed with CF.

This time the couple wanted to have a child by in vitro fertilisation (IVF), and to genetically screen the embryo prior …