The Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations has pressed for an international prohibition against the practice of child surrogacy. Source: NCR Online.
His comments came during a panel discussion on March 20 that framed arrangements where women carry others’ children as exploitative and contrary to the UN’s landmark 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN, cited stories of women in need choosing to become surrogate mothers in order to receive payment.
“A just society should not tolerate practices based … on the exploitation of the situation of the mother’s material needs,” he told the event, which the Vatican mission co-hosted with the conservative advocacy group ADF International.
“The practice … has far more in common with trafficking, of both women and children, than its proponents are willing to admit,” Archbishop Caccia said.
Pope Francis first called for an international ban against surrogacy in January, as part of his annual “State of the World” address to global ambassadors representing their countries at the Vatican.
The Vatican’s UN mission hosted the March 20 event as part of the 68th session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, which promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment. Other speakers on the panel included Giorgio Mazzoli, ADF International’s director of UN advocacy, and Olivia Maurel, a woman who was born via surrogacy and now condemns the practice.
“There is no ethical way of selling children, like there is no ethical way to rent a woman’s body,” Ms Maurel said. “Women and children pay way too much of a price.”
FULL STORY
At UN event, Vatican calls for global ban on child surrogacy (By Joshua McElwee, NCR Online)
