Pope Francis is not known for being the most conservative Roman Catholic pontiff. His recent condemnation of the international rent-a-womb industry, however, proves you don’t have to be a conservative or even religious powerhouse to agree that surrogacy is an evil practice that harms women and children.
“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,” Francis declared during his annual address to Holy See ambassadors on Sunday. “A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”
Surrogacy is a growing multi-billion-dollar industry that spans dozens of countries, especially allowing wealthy people to profit from the bodies of the poor. Francis blamed this rise of womb rentals on the “continued spread of a culture of death.”
The “false compassion” gripping Western countries, Francis warned, “discards children, the elderly, and the sick” without regard for morality.
“At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended,” he said.
Turning human life into “an object of trafficking” is an injustice that good governments must prohibit, Francis declared.
“I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally,” he concluded.
🎥VIDEO | Pope Francis called surrogacy “deplorable” and called for a global ban on the exploitative practice of “so-called surrogate motherhood” in a speech to all of the world’s
