Answer

Isn't Surrogacy Just Another Form of Adoption?

If you are considering surrogacy, you may already be carrying the grief of infertility or another circumstance that has made having children difficult. Wanting to become a parent is a good desire. The concern is not that you want a child. The concern is whether surrogacy fits what God has revealed about the body, marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, and children.

The Church discourages surrogate motherhood but leaves the decision to the prayerful consideration of the husband and wife.

Children Are Part of God’s Plan

Before we think about surrogacy, it helps to remember who children are. They are not products created to complete an adult’s family or answer an adult’s longing. They are spirit children of Heavenly Parents who come to earth to receive bodies, grow within families, exercise agency, and learn to become more like Jesus Christ.

The body is part of that plan. It is not separate from a person’s identity or eternal development. The creation of a child also involves the bodies and responsibilities of a mother and father. These relationships are not accidental details surrounding a child’s birth. They are part of the way God designed families to begin.

That is why the Church’s teachings about procreation involve more than a question of whether adults have good intentions or whether a medical procedure is possible. They ask us to consider what a child’s beginning is meant to be and what relationships God intended to surround it.

Surrogacy separates those relationships before the child is born. The woman who carries the child may not be the child’s genetic mother. The parents who provide the genetic material may not be the parents who raise the child. The woman who gives birth may be expected to hand the child to someone else immediately.

That arrangement may be entered into by adults who sincerely want to help. But the child has no choice in how these relationships are arranged.

Why Surrogacy Is Not the Same as Adoption

Adoption and surrogacy can look similar because both may involve adults raising a child who was born to someone else. The circumstances, however, are different.

Adoption begins with a child who already needs a family. The child’s separation from the original parents has already happened because of circumstances such as death, abuse, abandonment, or the parents’ inability to provide care. An adoptive family steps in to give the child stability, love, and a permanent home.

Surrogacy begins with an agreement to create a child for someone else to raise. The separation from the woman who carried and gave birth to the child is planned from the beginning.

That difference matters. In adoption, a family responds to a child’s need. In surrogacy, the adults arrange the child’s beginning in a way that separates the child from one of the women connected to his or her birth.

This does not mean every person born through surrogacy will describe the experience in the same way. Some may feel grateful or have positive relationships with everyone involved. Others may have questions or grief about the woman who carried them, the parents who provided the genetic material, or the reasons those relationships were separated.

Children Suffer When They Lose Their Birth Mothers

Mothers and babies bond during pregnancy.Studies show that maternal separation, a feature of surrogacy, is a major physiological stressor for the infant and even brief maternal deprivation can permanently alter the structure of the infant brain. Many adoptees argue that their “primal wound” of maternal loss manifested as depression, abandonment/loss issues, and emotional problems throughout their lives. It hindered their attachment, bonding, psychological health, self-esteem, and future relationships. One surrogate-born woman notes:

“Children of surrogacy, just like children of a traditional adoption, deal with traumas. We want to know where we come from… who gave birth to us and what they are like. When we have children in this world who already need homes, why are we intentionally creating children [via surrogacy] to go through adoption traumas?“

Children Suffer When They Lose Their Biological Parents

Children have a right to be known, loved, and raised by their biological parents. Surrogacy routinely severs a child’s relationship with his or her genetic mother and/or father through use of sperm and egg “donation.”

Why the Church Discourages It

The Church’s position is not based on the idea that couples who consider surrogacy are selfish or that women who serve as surrogates do not care about children. Infertility can be deeply painful, and people may consider surrogacy because they want to experience pregnancy, have a child who is genetically related to them, or help someone they love become a parent.

Those desires are understandable. But a good desire does not automatically make every way of fulfilling it consistent with God’s purposes.

The concern is that surrogacy treats relationships that God placed around a child’s beginning as separate roles that can be assigned by contract. Motherhood becomes divided among the woman who provides the egg, the woman who carries the pregnancy, and the woman who raises the child. Fatherhood may also be separated from the marriage relationship in which God intends children to be welcomed.

The child’s needs should be considered along with the adults’ desires. The question is not only, Can this help us have a child? It is also, What does this arrangement mean for the child, what is best for the child, and does it respect the relationships God created around the beginning of life?

Questions Worth Considering

• Am I thinking about what the child may experience as well as what the adults want?
• What relationships surround this child’s beginning, and which of them would surrogacy separate?
• Am I allowing the pain of infertility to settle this question before I have fully considered what God has revealed about marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, and children?