Senior Vatican diplomat calls for ban on surrogacy

ROME (LifeSiteNews) — Vatican’s top foreign policy official and an Italian minister denounced surrogacy as a crime against women and children.

Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, and Eugenia Roccella, Italy’s Minister for Family, Birth Rate and Equal Opportunities, took part in a dialogue against surrogacy at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See on Tuesday. The dialogue addressed ethical, legal and social concerns linked to surrogacy and presented the positions of the Holy See and the Italian government on the practice.

“By turning gestation into a negotiable service, surrogacy violates the dignity of both the child, reduced to a product, and the mother, whose body and generative process are instrumentalized,” Gallagher said, recalling recent papal statements on the same issue.

In his address, Gallagher said that surrogacy concerns “all of humanity” and referred to remarks made by Pope Leo XIV during his address to the diplomatic corps on January 9. In that speech, the Pope described surrogacy as a practice that undermines human dignity and transforms pregnancy into a service subject to negotiation.

Gallagher also recalled that Pope Francis had previously described surrogacy as “deplorable” in addresses to diplomats, stating that it is often based on the exploitation of women in situations of material need.

According to Gallagher, the central issue is the “commodification of the human person.” He said that no individual can be treated as an object of transaction, even when surrogacy is presented as an act of generosity. He argued that, regardless of legal definitions, the practice involves the transfer of a child to commissioning adults through a contract that prioritizes adult interests over those of the child.

READ: Pope Leo XIV condemns abortion, surrogacy in speech to Vatican diplomats

Gallagher also highlighted the impact of surrogacy on women, stating that it reduces the female body to a “reproductive instrument and obscures the non-transferable and existential dimension of pregnancy.” He added that these effects influence broader social understandings of motherhood and human dignity, noting that also feminist groups have criticized surrogacy for reducing women to what they describe as “incubators.”

Addressing public narratives, Gallagher warned against what he called “superficial portrayals” of the practice, sometimes reinforced by examples involving celebrities. He described surrogacy as “a new form of colonialism,” driven by market mechanisms that exploit vulnerable populations, particularly in poorer countries. Formal consent, he said, cannot by itself guarantee the absence of abuse, because agreements are often signed under economic pressure and mediated by agencies that limit women’s real autonomy.

On the legal front, Gallagher noted that many countries have banned surrogacy domestically while facing challenges when the practice is carried out abroad. He referred to ongoing international discussions, including those within the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which tend to explore regulatory frameworks rather than outright bans.

Gallagher described the prospect of international regulation as “inadequate and counterproductive,” arguing that regulation would stimulate demand and, in turn, increase the number of children involved in surrogacy arrangements. For this reason, he concluded, the principle of the “best interests of the child” cannot be safeguarded through regulation, and abolition remains the only coherent response.

He said also that the Holy See intends to continue dialogue with countries where surrogacy is permitted, focusing on child protection and legal safeguards.

In her remarks, Minister Roccella focused on Italian law against surrogacy, stating that the aim is to make the ban on surrogacy effective by applying criminal consequences to Italian citizens who pursue the practice abroad. Since 2024, Italy has extended criminal liability to citizens who resort to surrogacy abroad.

Roccella emphasized the need to counter what she described as the “contractualization” of motherhood and rejected the idea that surrogacy can be considered a form of donation. Unlike blood or organ donation, she said, surrogacy involves a contractual arrangement that cannot be described as altruistic.