Just weeks after calling for acceptance of the LGBTQIA+ community in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis is alienating a group of mothers.
In his statements, Pope Francis called surrogate motherhood “deplorable” and compared it to child trafficking.
“I deem deplorable 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,” Francis claimed during his speech.
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract. Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally.”
The Pope spoke out about surrogacy in the most uneducated way that makes surrogates seem like poor money hungry people. It’s inaccurate and harmful to surrogates, intended parents and the children involved.
— Ashlyn(@ashlynisheree) January 8, 2024
The remarks left several enraged while others applauded the Pope’s remarks.
But this is far from the first time Pope Francis spoke out against surrogacy. As The Washington Post reports, in 2022, Francis called surrogacy “womb renting” and compared it to “pornography, calling them ‘threats to human dignity.’”
The United Nations also warned against bad practices when it comes to surrogacy, cautioning that it “can make children into commodities.” But unlike the Pope’s call for a global ban, the UN called for “global safeguards.”