Surrogacy and Christian Compassion

Surrogacy has been a hot topic recently internationally and domestically. Just last week, Israel took one step closer to legalizing gestational surrogacy contracts for virtually anyone desiring to be a parent. Israel’s Health Minister, Yael German, who introduced the bill celebrated, stating: “This is a day which brings with it good news, in which we were able to bring about equality between people and allow anyone who wants to have a family.”

Early this year in Kansas, a proposed bill to ban gestational surrogacy contracts drew fierce criticism and emotional testimonies urging the state legislature to vote against the measure. Dr. David Grainger of the Center for Reproductive Medicine testified: “We firmly believe that those seeking to build families deserve the opportunity to pursue the treatment that is most appropriate for them.” Hilary Louvar, the mother of a surrogate-born child stated that “If this bill passes, we will be denied our right as parents to bring another life into our family.” She continued: “I don’t see how a senator that claims to be such an advocate for the pro-life movement would want to abolish contracts protecting the very families that want to create life.”

It is not uncommon to hear Christian, pro-life defenses of third-party reproduction. After all, why would defenders of life stand in the way of a loving couple who desires to create a new life through whatever means possible? But before we go further down the reproductive technology road, Christians should take a step back and consider the many moral and ethical problems posed by third-party reproductive methods.

Despite appearing to be “pro-life,” surrogacy commodifies human life by using a woman’s body to create and carry a child that she is legally obligated to give away. In these arrangements, the child is a product protected by a lengthy contract between his birth mother and the intended parents. Modern surrogacy itself is a symptom of our culture’s mentality that all persons have an equal right to a perfect, healthy child if they want one.

Surrogacy arrangements have predictably and tragically gone wrong. Last year, intended parents demanded their gestational surrogate abort a child that was found to have severe disabilities in utero. When she refused, they offered her $10,000 to have an abortion, and she eventually fled to a state that would legally recognize her as the child’s mother. Another couple recently abandoned one twin with his young impoverished birth mother because he had Down Syndrome, while they took his healthy sister home.

These stories illustrate how the use of third party reproductive technologies has created a market in which children are products and women are vehicles to deliver them. There is no right to have a child, and belief in this “right” objectifies and degrades human life. This treatment of the human person contradicts the Christian teaching that God is the author of all life and we are created in His image.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches:“Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage.”

Although Protestants have been quieter on modern bioethics, Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has been clear on the topic. Earlier this year he wrote, “Surrogacy of all varieties … [treats] women and children essentially as objects of commerce; ultimately, it exploits women’s bodies and children’s lives.” Embracing surrogacy and other forms of third-party reproduction perpetuates a culture that commodifies and degrades the sanctity of life.

The desire to have children is one of the deepest, most natural yearnings humans have. To be denied the gift of biological children is indeed tragic, but the emotional pull of infertility stories should not be the primary argument for a revolution in the creation of new human life. It is right to feel compassion when hearing of a couple that is unable to have children after years of trying. It is good and natural to want to ease their pain. The Christian’s response, especially, must be one of compassion. True compassion though, seeks the good of all parties involved. In the case of third-party reproduction, this includes caring for the children conceived and the women loaning their wombs.