On Monday, in a speech to all the world’s ambassadors to the Vatican, Pope Francis called surrogacy “deplorable” and called for a global ban on such practice. He emphasized that it “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” and remembered that “a child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”
For its part, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) echoed the concerns of the Holy Father. Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, issued a reflection stating that “surrogacy represents the commodification and instrumentalization of a woman’s body, treating her as a ‘carrier’ rather than a human person. And just as troubling is the fact that the child is reduced to terms of buying and selling as an object of human trafficking.” Bishop Barron pointed out that while the desire to utilize surrogacy might feel like the desire to form a family naturally, it always does grave injustice to all involved: the child, any discarded embryos, the commodified birth mother, and the loving union of the spouses.
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