On April 8, the Vatican issued Dignitas Infinita, a 20-page document rejecting quite a lot of practices that violate human dignity. Unsurprisingly, these included human trafficking, violence against women, abortion, euthanasia, sex change, and child abuse. It also included surrogacy.
This isn’t the primary time the pontificate has come out against this “deplorable” practice, which “fails to respect the dignity of [the] child” and “violates the dignity of the lady.” Pope Francis made waves in January when he condemned surrogacy, noting that “a toddler is at all times a present and never the idea of a industrial contract.”
Evangelical Christians and pastors value the lifetime of the unborn. That’s why we march across the capital on freezing January mornings and pray outside of abortion clinics. Our motivation for child protection must also lead us to confront the ways children are impacted by the baby-making industry as well.
But when did you last hear your pastor address the problem of surrogacy from the pulpit? Odds are, never. Protestants have a dearth of official guidance on reproductive technologies. While some are clear on abortion, only a few denominations have clear teachings on IVF, let alone the much rarer practice of surrogacy.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary ethics professor Andrew T. Walker told The New York Times that when he suggested introducing a resolution about artificial reproductive technology on the denomination’s annual convention, his colleagues hesitated.
Some Christians are directly involved in surrogacy and see their role as a calling to assist families have children, as CT reported in 2018. But many Christian bioethicists cite concerns. While there’s no Bible verse that commands, Thou shall not hire an economically vulnerable woman to gestate your custom-ordered baby, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t clear biblical guidance on surrogacy for Protestants.
Infertility alone mustn’t guide our pondering, even when longing for kids is a God-given desire. Christians have a definite responsibility to guard children. Thus, when considering reproductive technologies on the whole, and surrogacy specifically, it’s children’s rights and wishes that ought to rank highest.
While there are a number of adults involved—intended parents, surrogate moms, sperm/egg sellers, lawyers, fertility doctors—together with their individual interests, from the kid’s perspective, surrogacy at all times requires loss.
As I’ve detailed elsewhere, surrogacy splices what needs to be one woman—mother—into three purchasable and optional women: the genetic mother, or egg “donor,” who grants the kid their biological identity; the birth mother, with whom the newborn develops their first, critical bond; and the social mother, who provides day by day female care to maximise the kid’s development and satisfy the kid’s eager for maternal love.
For children, none of those three moms are optional. Studies have shown that if children never know their genetic mother, they often experience identity struggles. If they lose their birth mother, some consider that children experience a “primal wound” that makes bonding, trust, and attachment tougher. And in the event that they are deprived of a social mother, their development is impacted.
No matter what form it takes—traditional or gestational, altruistic or industrial, commissioned by gay or straight adults—surrogacy takes something away from the kid. It’s not a loss that results from a fallen world, where parents who cannot or mustn’t take care of their child seek to redeem that loss through adoption. It is the infliction of an intentional loss just because an adult wants it that way. And that violates several biblical mandates.
First, surrogacy goes against God’s protection of kids. God insists that his people take child protection seriously. It’s one basis on which Job pleads his innocence: “I rescued the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help them” (29:12). Child sacrifice is listed amongst the explanations God condemned Israel to Babylonian exile (Ezek. 16:21). And even when an unborn child was harmed when the mother was by chance struck, God insisted on proportionate punishment for the offender—a watch for a watch, a life for a life (Ex. 21:22–25). Chief amongst our concerns for kids have to be their safety and overall well-being. Surrogacy threatens each.
Second, God’s definition of a faith that’s “pure and faultless” includes taking care of “orphans … of their distress” (James 1:27). Adoption is one in every of the best ways we take care of orphans. As the previous assistant director of the biggest Chinese adoption agency on the earth, I used to be charged with upholding state, national, and international standards to make sure that adults were properly vetted and screened prior to child placement. We also ensured that cash never flowed from intended parents to birth parents; otherwise, it was not a legitimate adoption but child trafficking. In adoption, adults shoulder the load in an try and relieve children of the burden of parental loss.
Surrogacy, however, often involves legally orphaning children via a “pre-birth order” that preemptively strips children of a relationship with genetic/birth parents. There are not any adoption-like requirements for intended parents to undergo screenings, vetting, or background checks. Surrogacy also relies on direct payments to genetic/birth parents, which is arguably a type of child trafficking.
Christians are also called to defend the fatherless. The Old Testament includes dozens of commands to defend and protect the orphan. Children raised outside the protective umbrella of their parents’ lifelong marriage experience drastically diminished physical, mental, academic, and relational health, exploitation, and poverty. In biblical times and now, the fatherless stand out as a demographic deserving of distinct protection because they’re distinctly vulnerable.
Never before, nonetheless, has humanity faced the phenomenon of “the motherless.” A girl is required to be connected to the kid for the primary nine months. After birth, biological systems chemically knit together mother and baby, making post-birth abandonment of the kid unlikely. Historically, if the mother died during or soon after childbirth, the newborn would often die as well. Only surrogacy enables what’s utterly foreign to the human race—a motherless baby.
Some surrogacy apologists point to the dearth of information on children who grew up from birth with out a mother as evidence that there have to be no harm. The absence of information is definitely the best alarm bell. The data on the harms of fatherlessness are well-known. The statistics on motherless children, on condition that children have a fair greater bond with their mother in the course of the first three years of life, would likely be far more devastating.
Whenever you read of God’s admonishment to guard the fatherless, it’s secure to assume the mandate applies to the motherless as well. Far from protecting the motherless, surrogacy manufactures the motherless.
Finally, God calls his people to sacrifice for the vulnerable. A biblical meta-principle runs throughout Scripture: The strong are to sacrifice for the weak, not vice versa (Ps. 82:3; Jer. 22:16; Prov. 31:8–9). God warns of cruel punishment for adults who would cause “little ones” to stumble (Matt. 18:6). He demonstrated his “sacrifice for the weak” principle on a cosmic scale when Christ, the strongest of all, died for the ungodly “while we were still powerless” (Rom. 5:6). Surrogacy violates this meta-principle since it at all times requires the weak (children) to sacrifice for the strong (adults).
Sisters and brothers of the Reformation, we don’t need a papal encyclical, decree, or motu proprio. We have the all-sufficient Word of God, which directs us to reject any practice or process that victimizes children.
Katy Faust is founder and president of the worldwide nonprofit Them Before Us and coauthor of a book by the identical name. She speaks and writes on why marriage and family are matters of justice for kids.
