On 8 April 2024, the Holy See Press Office released the 'Declaration "Dignitas Infinita" on Human Dignity', a doctrinal document authorised by Pope Francis, which was five years in the making (see BioNews 1233). Coming some 75 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, the Church issued this document now in order to 'proclaim anew its conviction that all human beings – created by God and redeemed by Christ – must be recognised and treated with respect and love due to their inalienable dignity'.
'All human beings … must be treated with respect and love due to their inalienable dignity.' Everyone, I should imagine, would agree with that sentiment. The Pope also uses the declaration to set out his and the Catholic Church's views on 'some grave violations of human dignity'. However, alongside poverty, war, the travails of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse and violence against women, issues which right-minded people would agree are deplorable and an affront to human dignity, the Pope includes surrogacy.
While I don't deny that surrogacy is a divisive topic and people have strongly held views, to claim that surrogacy violates the dignity of both the child and the woman is as offensive as it is uninformed. Pope Francis calls the child born through surrogacy an 'object of trafficking' and expresses his hope that the international community will prohibit the practice of surrogacy universally. This sentiment echoes his views expressed in a speech given in January 2024 where he called the practice of surrogacy 'despicable' and called for a global ban (see BioNews 1222).
For the child, his concern seems to be that surrogacy requires assisted reproduction and that a child 'has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin…' and it's clear from the document that the Catholic Church believes that a 'fully human origin' can only apply to conception in the usual way between a man and a woman. For the Catholic Church to infer that a child born via assisted reproduction has not had a fully human origin is, frankly, abhorrent and, I would argue, fails to respect that child's inalienable dignity.
For the surrogate, Pope Francis claims that surrogacy violates the dignity of the woman 'whether she is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely'. This is because, the Pope says, she becomes subservient to the desires of others, whereas a human being has the right to be recognised individually and never as an instrument for another.
This paternalistic view of women has no place in today's society. Where is the respect for a woman's bodily autonomy? Her right to reproductive freedom? And what about the respect and dignity for a woman's right to make her own decisions and for those decisions to be respected regardless of anyone else's view? Although, personally, I probably wouldn't choose to be a surrogate, a woman's right to choose is the hill I would die on every day of the week.
The question of coercion and exploitation, of course, is another matter, and I accept that there are bad actors in surrogacy who use women for their own gain, and I do not minimise this. But banning surrogacy isn't the answer to this problem. Banning anything does not stop the thing from happening; instead, it simply drives it underground, or in the case of surrogacy, encourages surrogacy tourism, potentially increasing the risks of exploitation elsewhere.
I know from my own personal experience, and from hearing the agonising stories of infertility on my podcast, In/Fertility in the City, that the desire to become a parent can be all-consuming and the inability to become a parent, whatever the reason, is devastating. Pope Francis says that the desire to have a child, while legitimate, does not equate to a 'right to a child'. Essentially, if you cannot conceive naturally, then tough luck. Or, as is likely the retort, 'just adopt'.
Surrogacy, or any assisted reproduction, isn't someone exercising their right to have a child regardless of the rights of others, it's exercising the right to try to have a family. Founding a family is the most basic of human desires and no law will ultimately prevent a person from doing whatever they need to do to become a parent. Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni recently repeated her claim that surrogacy is 'inhuman' as she encouraged parliament to pass a bill that would criminalise the use of surrogacy abroad (see BioNews 1200), in the days following the publication of the document by the Vatican. If Meloni gets her way, Italians needing to create their family via surrogacy will face the stark choice of forgoing a family, moving out of Italy to raise their family (if that's even possible) or, even more dangerously, creating their family through overseas surrogacy anyway and running the risk of criminal prosecution, imprisonment and uncertainty in respect of their child's life. Yet, banning surrogacy won't save women from exploitative practices or prevent children being born in this way rather, it will escalate the risk of exploitation and ultimately punish the children.
Ultimately, well-considered regulation with the rights of the child at the centre is what will respect the dignity of the child, the surrogate and the intended parents. I accept, however, that surrogacy will likely never not be controversial. Furthermore, it is unlikely that we will ever see worldwide uniform legal parental recognition of surrogate-born children between states, even though that would clearly be in the best interests of the child.
Anti-surrogacy campaigners held a conference in the Vatican in the days leading up to the publication of its latest document. Organisers were behind the Casablanca Declaration, signed last year, that calls for a global ban on surrogacy as opposed to the development of a framework for it. It is signed by over 100 doctors from 75 countries and received Vatican endorsement for the first time during the conference.
The Pope's call for a worldwide ban on surrogacy is, in my view, irresponsible and reckless. With the rise of the far right across Europe and the rollback of LGBTQ and women's rights globally, this recent doctrine from the Pope could galvanise extreme and dangerous views rather than achieving its purported aim of furthering human dignity.
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