CV NEWS FEED // Pope Francis said surrogacy is “despicable” because it exploits mothers and children and called for its universal ban during an address to global ambassadors this week.
“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,” Francis said on January 8 at the Vatican, during the world’s ambassadors’ beginning-of-the year audience with the Holy See.
“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,” Francis said, adding that surrogacy exploits “situations of the mother’s material needs.”
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” Francis continued:
Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally.
At every moment, “human life must be preserved and defended,” Francis said, “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.”
One problem among the many created by IVF is that embryos are either intentionally destroyed or frozen throughout the IVF and surrogacy processes, bioethicist Dr. John Haas highlighted on the United States Council for Catholic Bishops (USCCB) website.
“Unwanted” embryos or embryos to be “saved for later use” are often frozen during surrogacy and in vitro fertilization (IVF) practices. According to the National Embryo Donation Center, there are nearly one million frozen embryos in the United States alone.
“In IVF, children are engendered through a technical process, subjected to ‘quality control,’ and eliminated if found ‘defective.’ In their very coming into being, these children are thoroughly subjected to the arbitrary choices of those bringing them into being,” Haas wrote.
The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document called Donum Vitae in 1987, which articulated the Catholic Church’s stance on IVF.
“In the words of Donum Vitae,” Haas wrote:
“The connection between in vitro fertilization and the voluntary destruction of human embryos occurs too often. This is significant: through these procedures, with apparently contrary purposes, life and death are subjected to the decision of man, who thus sets himself up as the giver of life and death by decree.”
In agreement with Francis’ call to ban surrogacy, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco said in a social media post, “The desire for a child is laudable, but we are not entitled to turn human beings into commodities to satisfy our desires.”
CatholicVote previously compiled a list called “The Top 5 Catholic Videos on IVF & Infertility,” that can be accessed here.
