Anger at Pope’s call for ban on ‘despicable’ surrogate parenthood
Senator hits out at ‘deeply disrespectful’ comments
POPE Francis’s call for a global ban on ‘despicable’ practice of surrogacy has been branded ‘deeply disrespectful’ to women and children born via a surrogate.
The Pope yesterday called for a universal ban on the ‘despicable’ practice of ‘so-called surrogate motherhood’, including the ‘commercialisation’ of pregnancy in an annual speech listing threats to global peace and human dignity.
In a foreign policy address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, Francis said the life of the unborn child must be protected and not ‘suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking’. ‘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,’ the Pontiff remarked.
Saying a child is a gift and ‘never the basis of a commercial contract’, he called for a global ban on surrogacy ‘to prohibit this practice universally’.
But Fine Gael senator Mary Seery Kearney, who had her daughter via surrogate in India in 2015, said the Pope’s comments come from a place of ‘extremist experiences’. ‘None of us deny
‘He is stigmatising the children’
that there are some exploitative practices within surrogacy and some women are exploited,’ she said. However, she added that this would be solved through proper legislation and not a ban.
‘The Pope’s statement assumes no agency on the part of a woman who decides of her of her own volition to be a surrogate,’ she said. ‘That is deeply disrespectful to the autonomy of a woman who can make that choice for herself.
‘He is stigmatising the children that are born.’
In Ireland, legislation is progressing through the Oireachtas to allow for surrogacy and for Irish parents to pursue the practice in other countries. A spokeswoman for Irish Families Through Surrogacy said they welcomed the Government’s work on ‘legislating ethically for the issue’.
Senator Seery Kearney said she has also heard from parents who have been turned away from baptism and discriminated by the Church if their children are born through IVF or surrogacy. She said the Church not supporting IVF is causing upset, remarking: ‘I know a woman went down to book the baptism of her child... a child born by IVF, normal IVF. ‘The priest castigated her that it was an appalling thing.’ She added: ‘I think that there is a sinister correlation between [the Pope’s] movement forward on LGBT blessings, and the fact that a same-sex male couple can only have a baby via surrogacy or adoption.’
Last month, Pope Francis formally approved letting Catholic priests bless same-sex couples, a radical shift in policy that aimed at making the Church more inclusive while maintaining its strict ban on gay marriage.
But Senator Seery Kearney said of that development and his new remarks on surrogacy: ‘I think the timing of it, I use the words back at him, is despicable.’
She said Pope Francis ‘gives with one hand to LGBT couples, allowing blessings, but on the other hand is so disrespectful to the children that are born ... via surrogacy that is carried out in a dignified and respectful manner’.
‘I strongly and vehemently defend the right of LGBT couples to pursue creating a family together,’ she added.
Francis has previously voiced the Catholic Church’s opposition to what he has called ‘uterus for rent’, a practice that some European countries prohibit, including Spain and Italy.
At the same time, however, the Vatican’s doctrine office has made clear that homosexual parents who use surrogacy can have their children baptised.
Opposed to ‘uterus for rent’