…and calls for its global prohibition. He made the call January 8 to the world’s diplomats
By Courtney Mares (CNA)
Pope Francis called surrogacy “deplorable” and called for a global ban on the exploitative practice of “so-called surrogate motherhood” in an annual speech to all of the world’s ambassadors to the Vatican on January 8.
“The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking,” Pope Francis said January 8.
“In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which 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.”
The Pope then called on the international community to prohibit the practice of surrogacy universally.
“At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended; yet I note with regret, especially in the West, the continued spread of a culture of death, which in the name of a false compassion discards children, the elderly and the sick,” he added.
A Child is Not an Object
Pope John Paul II approved the “Instruction on Respect for Human life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day,” promulgated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1987. Its author was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI. Here are a few relevant excerpts:
The suffering caused by infertility in marriage
The suffering of spouses who cannot have children or who are afraid of bringing a handicapped child into the world is a suffering that everyone must understand and properly evaluate.
[…] Nevertheless, marriage does not confer upon the spouses the right to have a child, but only the right to perform those natural acts which are per se ordered to procreation.(57) A true and proper right to a child would be contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, “the supreme gift” (58) and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents.[…]Why must human procreation take place in marriage?
Every human being is always to be accepted as a gift and blessing of God. However, from the moral point of view a truly responsible procreation vis-a-vis the unborn child must be the fruit of marriage.
For human procreation has specific characteristics by virtue of the personal dignity of the parents and of the children: the procreation of a new person, whereby the man and the woman collaborate with the power of the Creator, must be the fruit and the sign of the mutual self-giving of the spouses, of their love and of their fidelity.(34) The fidelity of the spouses in the unity of marriage involves reciprocal respect of their right to become a father and a mother only through each other. The child has the right to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up within marriage: it is through the secure and recognized relationship to his own parents that the child can discover his own identity and achieve his own proper human development. […]
What judgment should be made on other procedures of manipulating embryos connected with the “techniques of human reproduction”?
Techniques of fertilization in vitro can open the way to other forms of biological and genetic manipulation of human embryos, such as attempts or plans for fertilization between human and animal gametes and the gestation of human embryos in the uterus of animals, or the hypothesis or project of constructing artificial uteruses for the human embryo. These procedures are contrary to the human dignity proper to the embryo, and at the same time they are contrary to the right of every person to be conceived and to be born within marriage and from marriage.(32) Also, attempts or hypotheses for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through “twin fission”, cloning or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union.
The freezing of embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve the life of an embryo – cryopreservation – constitutes an offense against the respect due to human beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical integrity and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offenses and manipulation are possible.
Certain attempts to influence chromosomic or genetic inheritance are not therapeutic but are aimed at producing human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities. These manipulations are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being and his or her integrity and identity. Therefore in no way can they be justified on the grounds of possible beneficial consequences for future humanity. (33) Every person must be respected for himself: in this consists the dignity and right of every human being from his or her beginning. […]
Is “surrogate” motherhood morally licit?
Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.
Surrogacy’s Tragic Effects
Sadly, the international surrogacy market appears to have significant and growing overlap with human trafficking. Given the amount of money involved, traffickers stand to profit substantially from selling women and girls into surrogacy arrangements.
As Dr. Sheela Saravanan, author of A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India, wrote in a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, “The surrogacy trafficking trade used the same network that was used for domestic work and sex trade from the poor regions of India into urban areas. These unmarried girls [were] impregnated with embryos without their consent. Others were confined in homes and when some girls tried to run away, they [were] caught, brought back and beaten.”
How are governments responding?
In response to various injustices and exploitation, several countries have closed their borders to international surrogacy arrangements in recent years, including India and Thailand. Hundreds of organizations from 18 countries signed an International Statement for a Global Ban on Womb Rental in 2018.
And at its meeting on October 5, 2023, the EU parliament’s Joint Committee on Women’s Rights and Civil Liberties added surrogacy to the list of crimes targeted by the bloc’s directive on preventing human trafficking.
Regrettably, the current official position of the United States with respect to international surrogacy is that surrogacy does not involve the exploitation or commodification of children. The U.S. signed and ratified the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that prohibits the sale of children, but holds that “surrogacy arrangements fall outside the scope” of the protocol. (The Heritage Foundation)
Embryo death toll and “adverse perinatal outcomes” for survivors
As reported by the website ThemBeforeUs: “Both surrogacy and third-party reproduction rely on in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a practice of creating lives outside the womb that can only be sustained inside the womb. It is a violation of human dignity to place a group of people in charge of whether or not a fellow human lives, dies, or continues to develop. These human lives are left in limbo, at the mercy of an unregulated industry.”
The majority of IVF clinics engage in genetic screening to weed out “less desirable” embryos, despite the questionable accuracy of these screenings, and in 2015 it was estimated that almost half of the clinics offering genetic screening allowed couples to discard embryos on the basis of sex. Furthermore, the multiple-pregnancy rate jumps 30% for IVF pregnancies (twins), and more than 400% for triplets and greater, over the rate observed in naturally-conceived pregnancies. Therefore, “selective reduction” of embryos is often used at the 9-12 week mark — which is, in fact, an early abortion of one or more of the growing embryos.
The death toll from IVF exceeds that of abortion, and, while the exact number is unknown, it is estimated that the number of embryos who have been abandoned to a frozen fate by commissioning parents in the U.S. is in the millions. This number continues to grow every year.
As for those IVF babies who make it to birth, a study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 2017 concluded that pregnancy and birth outcomes are harmed for them: “Neonates born from commissioned embryos and carried by gestational surrogates have increased adverse perinatal outcomes, including preterm birth, low birth weight, hypertension, maternal gestational diabetes, and placenta previa, compared with singletons conceived spontaneously and carried by the same woman. Our data suggest that assisted reproductive procedures may potentially affect embryo quality and that its negative impact can not be overcome even with a proven healthy uterine environment.” (see chart below)
The reality is that the new-born baby is traumatized
As ThemBeforeUs.com puts it, “If a child of surrogacy is one of the 7% who are born alive, she will lose the only person she has ever known upon birth. When she is inconsolable because she misses her birth mother — the only person whose voice, smell, and heartbeat she knows — and is unable to express her longing, she will be called colicky. The reality is that she is traumatized.”
Comments Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us: “The question of surrogacy comes down to, will we force the weak (children) to sacrifice for the strong (adults)?
“Or will we live up to Christian principles which always insist that the strong sacrifice for the weak.
“The Pope has made his position clear.
“Children deserve protection.”
Surrogacy rate for same-sex “commissioning couples” is rising
Yet, such couples promise less stability and security for children
According to Psychology Today, “research has shown that cohabiting same-sex romantic couples dissolve their relationships at higher rates than different-sex cohabiting or married couples… Overall, same-sex couples reported shorter relationship lengths than different-sex couples (Joyner et al., 2017).”
Yet, the proportion of “commissioning parents” who are homosexual has been rising over the past decade — exposing an ever-increasing number of children to family dissolution and its attendant negative results (see chart below) from being raised in a household which always excludes at least one biological parent, and sometimes both.
(Source: ThemBeforeUs.com)
