Twin babies born this week in Italy are at the centre of an unprecedented custody battle after an apparent blunder at a fertility clinic in Rome. In Deecember 2013, four couples sought ART and, due to some mistake, two embryos wer implanted in a woman who was not the source of teh oocyte used in IVF. The biological parents’s own IVF treatment ended in failure and they resorted to the court hoping that to obtain custody of the newborns. During the pregancy, DNA tests showed that they were the biological parents of twins being carried by another woman. The babies were born this week by caesarean section, adding a further complication to the court process. BBC states that the unnamed couple have an uphill task on their hands, since Italian law recognises the woman who gives birth to a child is their legal mother. And the birth parents are adamant that they won’t be parting with the babies. “We are happy. Very happy: our children are born, they’re very well and we have already registered their birth,” says the birth mother, named only as Francesca. “No one will be able to take them from us,” she tells La Stampa.