Holy See urges UN to reject all forms of surrogacy

The Vatican has released one of its most strongly-worded statements yet opposing the global surrogacy industry, calling on the United Nations (UN) to eliminate surrogacy “in all its forms and at all levels.”

Key Takeaways:

• The Catholic Church has been a staunch advocate for life, opposing practices like abortion, the death penalty, and IVF.

• Additionally, the Vatican has strongly opposed surrogacy, labeling it as exploitation of both women and children.

• A new statement from the Vatican calls on the UN to work toward eliminating surrogacy.

The Details:

In a pointed statement to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, the Vatican’s permanent observer warned that what many market as a “compassionate solution” has become a multi‑billion‑dollar business built on the exploitation of the poor and the commodification of babies.

During a March 12 event titled, “Protecting Women and Children: Combating Violence and Exploitation in Surrogacy,” Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See’s apostolic nuncio and permanent observer to the United Nations, said that “technology and practice have run laps around the law and ethics."

Relying on Catholic teaching like the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1987 instruction Donum Vitae, Archbishop Caccia reaffirmed that surrogacy violates the unity of marriage and the dignity of human procreation. The practice prevents a child from being naturally conceived, carried, born, and raised within the stable bond of his or her own parents, while trivializing a woman’s body and fertility as a service to be contracted.

While conceding that many regard surrogacy “as a compassionate solution for those wishing to be parents,” the prelate called for the enactment of initiatives that treasure the dignity of women and children.

Highlighting that the demand for surrogacy-born children “already exceeds supply,” the archbishop said many women choose to become surrogates for wealthy clients owing to economic pressures, a situation that is not “happenstance."

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Zoom In:

Sometimes, women are pressured by their own families into surrogacy arrangements, with those in poverty especially susceptible because of limited access to legal protections and proper medical support.

“One must question whether the surrogacy industry could survive if poverty were eradicated,” Archbishop Caccia said, explaining that women with “social protection, education, and economic opportunity” would likely refuse to be surrogates.

The prelate noted that surrogacy could distance women from their families, both physically, when clients impose such conditions, and emotionally, when they must answer painful questions from their own children about why they are not keeping the child.

The Vatican statement to the UN also touched on the rights of children, who have been treated by the surrogacy industry “within an industrial and dehumanized logic.” 

Moreover, the same statement slammed the commodification of babies and the fact that many are regarded as “a defective product” when they have a disability.

Such a mindset “runs contrary to a just society in which children can grow and flourish. Children, in fact, possess rights and interests that must be respected, beginning with “a moral right to be created in an act of love,” and “to know their parents and to be cared for by them,” a right mentioned in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The archbishop cited Pope Leo’s Jan. 9 speech to Vatican-accredited diplomats, where the pontiff cautioned that surrogacy undermines the dignity of both mother and child, deeming a woman’s body as something to be used, and the child as a commodity. 

The Bottom Line:

Thus in light of the actual reality surrounding surrogacy, the Holy See requested that the UN adopt new measures “toward ending this practice in all its forms and at all levels,” with the goal of safeguarding women and children “from exploitation and violence.”

Yet Archbishop Caccia ended his address on a hopeful tone, with the Holy See’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations welcoming the Hague Conference on Private International Law’s decision not to move forward with drafting a convention on legal parentage in surrogacy cases.