Vatican: No 'right to a child'

The Vatican has published a document arguing surrogacy infringes on the right of a child to be created with dignity, and this takes precedence over an individual's desire for a family.  

The document Dignitas Infinita, meaning Infinite Dignity, echoes the earlier words of Pope Francis, who condemned surrogacy as exploitative in January 2024 (see BioNews 1222). The document contends that surrogacy infringes on the rights of children to be born from 'a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin' in which the 'gift of life' is given in a dignified way, and forces women into subservience.

There has been backlash to the statement from many LGBT+ families and campaigners. Douglas Metcalfe who has two children born via surrogacy with his husband, told Associated Press: 'It is important for people to understand that, and recognise that, that maybe we didn't create a family in the more traditional way, but to say the way we did it was somehow wrong or is not dignified, is really saying that our children are somehow less human than other children, and that is a recipe for hate and mistreatment.'

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, head of the Roman Curia department, drafted the Dignitas Infinita, which covers many issues stipulated by Pope Francis, including poverty, war, human trafficking, and violence against women. The document acts as an updated guide to the Catholic Church’s position on many current issues in society, such as abortion, euthanasia, and migration. It does not broach IVF or embryo research.

The document also criticised 'sex change' treatment for not respecting the sex at conception and also risking their ability to have children afterwards. This prohibition did not extend to treatment for 'genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later'.

Publication of the document came days after Vatican official Monsignor Miloslaw Wachowski endorsed the Casablanca Declaration, signed last year by over 100 lawyers and doctors from 75 countries, calling for an international ban on surrogacy.

'Parents find themselves in the role of being providers of genetic material, while the embryo appears more and more like an object: something to produce — not someone, but something,' Monsignor Wachowski, undersecretary for relations with states in the Vatican secretariat of state told organisers of the declaration, America magazine reported.

Casablanca Declaration organisers held a conference in the Vatican in the days before the publication of the document, where Pope Francis met anti-surrogacy activist and Casablanca Declaration spokesperson Olivia Maurel, who contends that her birth to a surrogate mother and her subsequent separation from her caused her lifelong mental health issues, Associated Press reported.