THE POPE'S STANCE ON SURROGACY

The billion-dollar baby-making industry

On Monday the Pope stepped forward encouraging surrogacy to be banned. He described the act as "deplorable".

Headlines blasted the internet and comments flooded social media.

"He is so irrelevant." 

"Who asked him anyway?"

"What the hell would he know!"

"Mary was a surrogate."

The last comment was a good one, but was followed by so much hate I immediately felt wonky. 

God’s mouthpiece states that surrogacy is DEPLORABLE. I’m not Catholic, but I’ve read a lot of the Pope’s work and I like the guy. I encourage you to check out at least one of his encyclicals. I encourage you to read people you think you don't agree with. If you’re left-leaning, I think you would be surprised by the Pope's long-form work. If you’re Catholic…you should be up to date with this stuff. The Pope is a great lover of nature, an advocate for the indigenous, and depending on how you look at it, a fierce feminist (this is for another post). And the thing he can’t stand, the thing that he finds more corrupting than anything else is…capitalism.

So when I heard the Pope make such a bold statement about surrogacy, I was not surprised, but I was curious. My husband and I have several friends who have used surrogates, even more friends who have used IVF, and know a few couples and singles who have taken on sperm donors. These are our beautiful people, so how could I possibly see these types of interventions as DEPLORABLE when I have seen firsthand the sunshine they bring? I went on a little investigation to see the OTHER side of surrogacy in an attempt to understand our religious brothers and sisters. Sometimes it can feel like these people have a super wedgie and just want to ruin the fun for the rest of us when they could simply put on bigger underpants. 

Oh dear, as soon as I opened the first report on surrogacy, I wished I hadn’t. You are immediately confronted with the reality that we in the Western world do not want to see. We are rich. We love to forget this fact when money can help us achieve our dreams. We just refuse to see this truth when it stands in the way of us and what we think we are owed.

Surrogacy is a billion-dollar industry. That right there should ring alarm bells and remind us that things are not going to be all rosy happy families.

To commission a surrogate in the US costs around 100,000 dollars, so this type of family planning is only available to those doing very, very, very, very well. What about those doing OKAYISH? There is the option of the global south or poor regions in Europe where women offer their bodies for baby-making for around 10,000 dollars. I was not aware of this but I’ve learned that surrogacy is high-risk, so many of these women miscarry. They are paid a few hundred bucks per miscarriage. As someone who has miscarried...knowing that there is a price on this feels very very strange indeed. In some cases, surrogates are forced to abort the baby, once again this is a couple hundred bucks. There is a story of a surrogate in the US who did not want to abort a baby just because it had developmental issues. She had to escape to another state that offered her the right to not abort the child she was carrying. This is already getting very, very, very tricky for me to be certain of any moral clarity in the case of surrogacy. It's certainly making the word "deplorable" sound less shocking. Not right, but less shocking. 

An ABC foreign affairs report documented the harrowing story of a surrogate baby abandoned in Ukraine when her American parents were not prepared to deal with her disability. At three years old she was in a care home and believed that the health professional paid to care for her was her mother. “Mama,” she cried when her carer arrived for her therapy. “Why are you always leaving me, Mama?" This is the question an overwhelmed healthcare worker is constantly forced to answer. This is not a unique case. When surrogacy becomes a business, women become factories, and babies become products. If you have paid thousands of dollars, you expect a perfect product. I won’t be able to get that “mama” out of my head. I think it’s staying there for a reason…reminding me that this is not cut and dry. This is very murky and strange territory we are entering into. The mama was jarring because in a way this child has no clear-cut mother. No one felt attached to her commissioned existence. 

However, surrogacy is available in a humane way for people with money. Celebrities like Lucy Luu now say things like, “Surrogacy was the way for me because I just couldn’t stop working.” Prianka Chapra and Nick Jonas hired a surrogate because they are both so busy they don’t have time to line up their privates to get the baby made. 

We are here. 

In this mini-investigation on surrogacy, IVF, and pregnancy, I’ve also discovered that there are apps in the US where you can scroll through egg donors to see what kind of genetics you prefer. Another thing I wasn't aware of...some rich US couples are now choosing IVF NOT because they are infertile…but because with IVF they get to choose the sex of the baby.

Spain, my country of residence, is one of the few places a woman can donate eggs. In a country with low income women are donating their eggs to pay rent and years later have a horrible feeling…Where are my kids? What are they doing now? Before the egg donation, they have to undergo a psychological test where they must show they are doing this purely for altruistic reasons. One woman said that she must be a really good actress...because they passed her immediately and she was there purely for the money.

I tutor English and with my students, I created a family tree activity to help them learn how to introduce their parents and siblings. One boy is the child of a same-sex couple who used a sperm donor. I thought I'd been sensitive to this when I made his tree with Mum and Mum above his little photo. "

Abi, I don't know who my father is," he said.

"Don't worry, see, your tree has mum and mum, so there’s no problem." He became stressed and looked me directly in the eye and said, "No, Abi you don't understand...I don't know who my father is!" I know many of us see the wonder of modern-day medicine and tech as healing the heartache of childless parents, but are we looking at this from the perspective of the child? I'd never considered this. And I think we should consider this when we think about this delicate topic. There are donor conception babies now adults protesting this but are we truly listening?

Deplorable, that word is so harsh, but I do believe the Pope is looking at an angle and bigger picture many of us don't see. And all of this becomes complicated when money is involved. It will have repercussions we aren’t considering. I ask you this, who are you going to promote? The woman who can afford to commission her baby? Or a woman who has to get pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed? As Lucy Luu put it...she didn't need to stop working to have her baby. 

I'm forty next month, and a part of me would love to have a second child, a sibling for my son...but the last pregnancy was deeply exhausting, the entire 9 months. Then breastfeeding for another seven. I don’t want to do that again at forty. It’s also 1.5 years without income. My husband is dealing with this grief, I can see him saying to himself, "That's life." But just last week, his two gay friends, mid-forties, sent a pic of their second child born via surrogate. "That's life" didn't cut the mustard in his mind because that's not life anymore...that's money and moral ethics.

Elon Musk is on his tenth child - some natural, some IVF with his staff member, two surrogates with a pop star whom he is no longer in a committed relationship with. This billionaire could have an army of children if he desired. He could fill Mars. This sounds like a joke...but this is where we are moving. We are moving very far away from our nature in a world entirely run by dollars. 

Another thing to consider here when attempting to see the Pope's perspective..is the story, the biblical story. As I have stated, I'm not Catholic...but I love myth, I love story. I love stories that have stood the test of time. There is truth at the root of some of these stories, in my mind. The Jesus story is a story of sacrifice and suffering. It is embracing the inevitable suffering that life brings us and letting it move us into transcendence. The Pope is also looking at us removing the very pain that connects us all.

As Rumi says, "You need to keep breaking your heart until it opens." If we in the West won't let our hearts break with the inevitable suffering that is life, biology, and death...will our hearts ever break open? 

Do I agree with the Pope using deplorable? No. He should have been more considerate to the surrogate babies and families, he should have been smarter to consider the human heart and pain that led to the development of the tech. He could have figured out a better way to communicate such a deep and painful issue. Do I agree with the Pope? I don’t know. But I certainly think he has a point. A very strong one.

"The Pope is irrelevant.”

“What would he know anyway.”

Of course, we can ignore such strong comments from a religious leader who looks at things differently from us. But I certainly did well listening, truly listening without reacting first. It was worth my time to take a look into where we are regarding the creation of who we are. 

So, before we lose it at the Pope's deplorable comment...let's remember...we do better when we listen, we do better when we try to learn.