Surrogacy and gender-affirming surgery are two ethical issues discussed in a new Vatican document, “Infinite Dignity.”
Some Catholics support Infinite Dignity’s message. Others are dismayed.
Surrogate born woman against “womb renting”
A woman born in 1991 via a surrogate mother, who is now a leading campaigner for the abolition of “womb renting”, is of a like mind to Francis regarding surrogacy.
It’s a practice the Pope has called “deplorable”.
The negative sides of surrogate pregnancies aren’t made well known, says Olivia Maurel. It’s totally unethical in her book.
“We’re used to having in the news a lot of beautiful stories of children born via surrogacy … and we are not used to hearing the bad aspects of surrogacy and how it’s totally unethical” Maurel told CNA in an interview on 5 April.
It led her to experience abandonment trauma, identity issues, and to make several suicide attempts.
“I was a product of surrogacy and I’ve always felt it inside me — a baby made to order, a commodity for money” she said.
It’s totally unethical in her opinion.
Vatican view
On Monday the Vatican declared gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy as grave violations of human dignity.
These practices are on par with abortion and euthanasia as practices which reject God’s plan for human life, the Vatican says.
The Vatican’s doctrine office, with the Pope’s approval, issued “Infinite Dignity” on 25 March. It is a 20-page declaration that has been in the works for five years.
The Vatican repeated its rejection of “gender theory” – the idea that one’s biological sex can change.
God created man and woman as biologically different, separate beings, and people must not tinker with that or try to “make oneself God” the document says.
“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
The document distinguishes between gender-affirming surgeries, which it rejected, and “genital abnormalities” that are present at birth or develop later.
Those abnormalities can be “resolved” with the help of health care professionals, the document says.
Transgender community distressed
Feedback from transgender Catholics shows they are disappointed with the new Vatican document.
That’s because in essence, Infinite Dignity is as a restatement of longstanding Catholic teaching.
Transgender Catholics are particularly dismayed however, as recent moves by Pope Francis had encouraged some to hope the Church might become more accepting.
“A document like this is very hurtful to the larger LGBTQ+ community but especially to the trans community” one lifelong Catholic transgender man says,
“We have seen the care and love Pope Francis has personally extended to the trans community in his personal interactions, yet this document fails to extend that same respect, love and support.”
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