CCBI News: Catholic Teaching on Surrogacy

January 26, 2024

Dear Friends of CCBI,

Catholic Teaching on Surrogacy

In his January 8^th message to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Francis addressed the suffering and cruelty brought about by war in so many countries, calling for the re-establishment of truthful and open dialogue and diplomacy, and encouraging the way of peace. Somewhat unexpectedly in the context of his message, he addressed the topic of surrogacy, where a woman brings another couple’s embryo created through in vitro fertilization to gestation. Although occasionally voluntary, this is most often arranged in a surrogacy contract with many conditions, e.g., ending of the contract should the child in the womb die, and financial payment. It is legal in many countries, but it is easy to see why women in poorer countries are most often ‘used,’ due to their desperation, while allowing those seeking their services to obtain a more favourable price. ‘Utilitarian’ is the kindest word that applies to such an approach even if surrogacy were morally approved by the Church (but it is not), and exploitation of poorer women is rampant.

In 2008 in the first edition of my book, Bioethics Matters, I wrote:

Apart from the commercial nature of this type of transaction, the use of another party in this way is clearly in total contradiction to the Covenant of marriage, not only from a religious viewpoint. Even if one is not religious, the introduction of another woman to carry the couple’s embryo to term, or, more commonly, to be impregnated with the paying husband/donor’s sperm to do so – surely changes the nature of ‘husband, wife and child.’ The child’s biological inheritance will only partly be that of his or her parents, and if both egg and sperm were donated, will not be the child’s biological parents at all.

Regarding payment to surrogates in other countries, I noted:

Canadian law cannot regulate that issue, and it is problematic for surrogates so contracted. Will they be fully compensated, say, in the event that there is miscarriage or fetal death or injury? The spectre of exploitation hangs over this practice, one more consequence of the technical capacity to produce embryos…

In his Address the Pope calls attention to these ongoing practices and calls for their global prohibition:

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. 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. Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice 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.

In an article with a pointed title, “Pope Francis says something clear…and good” published in World, a biblically based, pro-life American evangelical journal, the author extols the Pope for his remarks on surrogacy and his courage on calling for a global ban:

Ironically, it is Pope Francis’s deep opposition to capitalism, which has earned him the suspicion of many American conservatives, that enables him to grasp so clearly the perverse logic of surrogacy. In a world in which the market is everything, there must be a market for everything: groceries, furniture, votes, sex, organs, and babies. Only by applying firm brakes to the train of capitalism when it comes to human flesh, and ensuring that markets serve human flourishing, can we keep it from jumping the tracks and turning pregnancy too into just another transaction, like leasing a car. Francis’s opposition to surrogacy stems in part from his recognition that womb-renting is not a particularly “free” market: As with pornography, the women who engage in it are usually poor and desperate, and their exploitation by rich couples brings to mind the ancient Roman practice of purchasing slave women as breeders.

Perhaps then it is no wonder that many American evangelicals, catechized in the capitalist creed that consenting adults should be able to engage in any market transaction they wish without legal interference, have had so much difficulty in rallying to oppose surrogacy as they have opposed abortion. Make no mistake, though: Although one of these practices involves ending life and another involves making life, both embody the same godlike pretensions to subject human life to our control, our whims, and our wallets.

The evangelical author raises the same moral and ethical questions about surrogacy as the Pope does, further recognizing the limits of capitalism in a ‘free’ market when involved in immoral and dignity-abusing practices and transactions.

An article sent to us by Fr Leo Walsh, csb, CCBI-Assumption, relates the story of a young woman who discovered she had been given birth by a surrogate mother. She had never felt accepted by her parents, and did not ‘bond’ with them, leading to troublesome behaviour on her part. Once she discovered the truth, she found her birth mother, also learning she had half-brothers and sisters in the other children born to her birth mother. One of many such reports, this article was published just two days after the Pope’s Address, and reveals the dangers inherent in lack of openness about surrogacy and in the deception that can be involved through withholding of information from children born of them. No doubt many people will need therapy to bring about their healing once they realize they are not their parents’ biological children, but, unlike those who are adopted, women unknown to them were paid to bring them to term, most often by means of donor eggs and/or sperm. Surrogacy cannot possibly be a straightforward, harmless transaction, neither for the women so employed nor for the children they bear.

The last word goes to Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith. In the Instruction Donum vitae, 1987, the then CDF wrote:

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. (Part 11, A,1)

In contrast:

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. (Part 11, A, 3)

We are indebted to Pope Benedict and to Pope Francis for upholding the dignity of the covenant of marriage, the transmission of life through the child’s own parents, and the dignity of every human embryo. We must heed their call to preserve the dignity of every woman! No woman should ever be put in the position, through need, of using her God-given body to fulfill someone else’s wishes. We hope and pray that Pope Francis’ call for a ban on such practices does not go unheeded.

To members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See (8 January 2024) | Francis (vatican.va)
Moira McQueen. Bioethics Matters, 3^rd Edition, Novalis, 2023. Pp 60-61
Pope Francis says something clear … and good | WORLD (wng.org)
I was born via surrogate… but from Day One there was no bond with my mother and my childhood was unhappy. That’s why I believe so strongly that this cruel and immoral practice should be banned | Daily Mail Online
Donum Vitae Instruction on respect for human life (vatican.va)

Pope Francis’ Intentions for January

For the Gift of Diversity in the Church
We pray that the Holy Spirit may help us to recognize the gift of different charisms within the Christian community and to discover the richness of different traditions and rituals in the Catholic Church.

Moira and Bambi