The Pope spoke out against surrogacy on Monday in surprisingly strong language. Surrogacy is when a woman carries and births a child in her womb for other people to raise.
“I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which 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,” he said in a foreign policy address to global ambassadors. He later referred to the practice as the “commercialization” of pregnancy. He called for a global ban on surrogacy “to prohibit this practice universally.”
Surrogacy is increasingly common due to many factors including increased levels of global infertility, increased numbers of same-sex couples, and an increase in wombs for rent in Ukraine, which we’ve covered on Redacted.
Studies of surrogacy have shown that it is a high-risk emotional experience for the mothers and children of surrogacy have also reported that the process has psychological effects on them too. What do you think? Is it time to discuss the ethical nature of surrogacy?
