– Supernatural surrogate motherhood Robert Barron, bishop of Winona-Rochester and chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family and Youth of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). On behalf of the U.S. bishops, Bishop Barron issued these statements statements a few days after Pope Francis condemned before the diplomatic corps accrediting to the Holy See the "deplorable practice of surrogate motherhood".
In supporting the Pontiff's statements, Bishop Barrón indicated that even considering the good intentions that a married couple may have for having children through unnatural means, surrogacy is always a grave injustice against all the people involved: the child, the discarded embryos, the mother who lends herself to such commercialization with human life, and the marriage itself.
Barron said that this practice is nourished by the false belief that there is a right to have a child at any cost and by any means. In this way, "the child becomes an object to satisfy one's own desires and the genuine right of the child to be conceived through the love of its parents is overlooked," the prelate said.
Bishop Barron explained that the Church teaches that married couples must be open to life, the fruit of their love and union, however, it is neither an obligation nor a right to have children by any means.
In this sense, the prelate exhorted to respect human life, including the unborn, and indicated that the Church must accompany couples who, due to irremediable medical problems, have given up having children naturally: "we have the obligation to accompany these couples in their suffering", he concluded.
