The Catholic bishops in Michigan have decried a new state law that has legalized and regulated surrogacy.
In a news release, the Michigan Catholic Conference, which includes each of the state’s seven bishops, remarked that the “Michigan Family Protection Act” dismisses both the value of motherhood and concerns that women will become more vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the Act, which included nine bills, into law on April 1, according to a news release from Whitmer’s office. Measures included ensuring that children born through surrogacy and other means, like in vitro fertilization, have equal protection under the law. In addition, the Act made it easier for same-sex couples to be legally recognized as the parents of any biological children they conceived with technological assistance.
The Michigan Catholic Conference said that the bills violate the dignity of both women and children.
“While every child possesses inherent dignity and worth, regardless of the manner by which the child came into the world, the change in Michigan law will allow for those with resources to obtain a child at the expense of women in financial need,” the Conference’s president and CEO, Paul Long, said in the release.
“For profit surrogacy contracts that pay females for the use of their reproductive means violate the inherent dignity of women and unethically allow children to be the subject of a contract,” he continued. “The practice of surrogacy undermines the significant prenatal bond formed between a child and the mother who nurtured him or her through birth.”
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The Conference acknowledged that creating opportunities to raise children and start a family is a good thing. However, surrogacy brings a “societal cost” that will impact women, especially single mothers and women who are struggling financially. According to the Conference, the surrogacy industry in Michigan will soon begin recruiting and targeting women to use their bodies to create children for other people.
“Infertility is a bitter cross to carry for those who yearn for children,” Long said. “This is why we continue to advocate for policies that promote and improve the state’s adoption and foster care system, so married men and women who earnestly desire to be parents may be better connected with the thousands of children in need of loving homes.”
Though Michigan was the last state in the U.S. to legalize surrogacy, the practice has been frowned upon by the European Union. Surrogacy is available in some European countries, but a 2015 E.U. resolution condemned and prohibited it.
“[Surrogacy] undermines the human dignity of the woman since her body and its reproductive functions are used as a commodity,” the resolution said.
CatholicVote reported that Pope Francis recently decried surrogacy as “deplorable” and called for a global ban on the practice.
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” Francis said in a Jan. 8 address. “Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally.”
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Author: Hannah Hiester
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