Pope calls for global ban on surrogate motherhood, says practice exploits women, harms children
Mark A. Kellner.
The Washington Times.
January 8, 2024.
Market expected to grow worldwide in coming years, researchers say.
Pope Francis on Monday called for an international ban on surrogate motherhood, calling it a “deplorable” practice that turns an unborn child “into an object of trafficking.”
In a foreign policy address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See, the pontiff said surrogacy “represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”
He drew support from several key thought leaders in the 1.3 billion-member worldwide Catholic Church.
Surrogacy and the technology behind it have become big business. Technavio Research said the assisted reproductive technology market is expected to grow by $8.23 billion from 2022 to 2027. Those technologies help make surrogacy possible in many situations. Two years ago, Global Market Insights, a research firm, predicted that the surrogacy market alone would grow from $14 billion in 2022 to $129 billion in 2032.
In many Western nations, surrogates are paid for carrying an embryo to term. Many sign contracts indicating they will abort the embryos for a variety of reasons and often agree to sign away rights to keep the children. Women who initially agree to surrender a child for adoption can later legally reverse the decision.
Chieko Noguchi, executive director of public affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, lauded the papal remarks.
“As Pope Francis stated, with surrogacy, an unborn child is turned into ‘an object of trafficking’ because it exploits the birth mother’s material needs and makes the child the product of a commercial contract,’” she said in a statement. “This is why the Catholic Church teaches that the practice of surrogacy is not morally permissible. Instead, we should pray for, and work towards, a world that upholds the profound dignity of every person, at every stage and in every circumstance of life.”
Surrogacy involves either the artificial insemination of a gestational mother or the implantation of fertilized eggs in a woman who agrees to be the carrier. More than one embryo is implanted to increase the chance of a healthy baby. Critics say embryos deemed less healthy or viable are “reduced” through abortion.
In a 1987 document titled “Donum Vitae: Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation,” the Vatican said surrogacy was not “morally licit.”
Those seen as likely supporters of surrogacy were notably silent in response to the papal remarks. Catholics for Choice, which advocates for abortion and other measures that contravene church teachings, said they were “not currently poised to comment on surrogacy.”
The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ rights and whose Equality Awards include support for surrogacy as a criterion, did not respond to a request for comment.
Francis said he supports a global ban on surrogacy. Casablanca Declaration, an ad hoc group of 100 experts from 75 nations who oppose surrogacy, proposed a worldwide ban last year.
The Associated Press noted that Francis previously criticized surrogacy as the use of a “uterus for rent.” Children of same-sex couples — including two men who cannot carry children — can be baptized, the church has said, according to the wire service report.
Francis last month said the church would allow blessings for same-sex couples, reversing a 2021 doctrine.
Spokeswoman Olivia Maurel said via email that the Casablanca organization was “deeply thankful” that the pope took a strong stand against surrogacy. She said she was born from surrogacy and the procedure had an impact.
“I was ripped away from my mother at birth, the one who birthed me, the only person I actually knew [through] voice, smell, heartbeat,” she said. “I was sold to people I did not know. This created a very, very intense trauma.”
Ms. Maurel said she suffered consequences, including drug and alcohol abuse, sexual abuse and rape, as well as “terrible relationships.” She said women who act as surrogates “are also victims” because they often need money to support their families.
“We have never seen a rich surrogate carry a baby for nine months and give it away for free to a poor woman,” she said.
Along with the matter of potential exploitation of gestational mothers, Catholics face moral issues concerning surrogacy, said Melissa Moschella, an associate professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America.
“While the church sees it as part of the vocation of marriage to be open to bringing children into the world, the church also teaches that children are not a right,” she said in a telephone interview.
“We tend to think of children as OK if this is part of your life project. If you desire children, then you have a right to them by any means,” Ms. Moschella said. “The attitude of our culture toward children seems to be much more an adult-centered attitude that sees children as an entitlement or as a project for the sake of the parent’s fulfillment.”
She said many people would be appalled if parents gave birth to multiple children, selected the most promising infant and put the rest in orphanages. They say the same should apply to the methods used in surrogacy.
“If we recognize that embryos are, are human beings just like infants and just like adults, that simply at the earliest stage of, of life, we should be equally appalled at the way embryos are routinely treated in the in vitro fertilization process,” Ms. Moschella said.
Jennifer Roback Morse, director of the Ruth Institute, which advocates for pro-life positions, said in a statement, “Pope Francis is correct to note the tendency to the commercialization of human life and the exploitation of poor women.”
Ms. Morse said, “Surrogacy exploits poor women, often women of color and in poor countries, for the benefit of wealthy westerners.”
What of biblical examples of surrogacy, such as Abraham’s impregnating Hagar to produce a son or Jacob having a child with Bilhah, his wife’s handmaid?
Ms. Moschella said those were “things [that] were permitted by God at that time because people were not ready for the fullness of the moral law at that point.”
She said Scripture was clear that “from the beginning of Genesis,” marriage was supposed to be a lifelong, monogamous union that produces children instead of “outside unions.”