According to Lahl, a total ban on “renting wombs and buying children” is needed because of the inevitable limits of regulation.
“How do you regulate to prevent health risks to mother and child? How do you regulate to prevent trauma to mother and child?” she asked. “How do you regulate to prevent death to mother and child? What law could our lawmakers write and pass that would save lives?”
In light of human rights concerns, Pope Francis called for a global ban on surrogacy in a speech to all of the world’s ambassadors to the Vatican earlier this year.
“I deem deplorable 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. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” Pope Francis said.
“Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally. At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended,” he added.
A letter to the pope
Maurel told CNA that she was “very happy” when she heard that Pope Francis had strongly condemned surrogacy in January.
Although Maurel is not Catholic — she identifies as “a feminist and an atheist” — she had written to the pope in December sharing her story and asking for his support for a universal surrogacy ban.
She explained that she decided to write to the pope after hearing Ana Obregón, a 68-year-old Spanish TV actress, speak on the Spanish Catholic bishops’ radio network, COPE, about the actress’ experience of traveling to the United States to obtain a surrogate baby conceived with her dead son’s frozen sperm.
“And I was a bit shocked that she was able to give a testimony on the Church’s radio station and to make it sound like it’s a wonderful story,” Maurel said.
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“I thought that the Church was against surrogacy. So what I did is that I wrote to the pope, explaining my situation … that I was born via surrogacy, and that I’m an atheist and a feminist. … and I asked him kindly if he could take a stance against surrogacy,” she added.
Maurel had the chance to meet Pope Francis privately last week as part of her role as the spokeswoman for the Casablanca Declaration for the Abolition of Surrogacy, a document signed in 2023 calling for the abolition of surrogacy.
She shared her testimony on Friday at a conference at Rome’s LUMSA university marking one year since the declaration was signed.
The conference was held near the Vatican a few days before the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith prepared to publish a document on ‘moral questions’ regarding human dignity, gender, and surrogacy.
The new document titled Dignitas Infinita (“Infinite Dignity”) (On Human Dignity) will be published on April 8.
“The reality of surrogacy is a woman that is used for her reproductive system. … When you read a surrogacy contract, it’s literally renting a woman,” Maurel said.
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