It appears that political commentator Dave Rubin has ruffled more than a few feathers with his public announcement that he and his partner are going to have two babies via surrogate mothers. You see, Rubin and his partner are homosexual, so begetting a child according to nature’s way is not feasible for them.
In this matter, let us seek the wisdom of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches: “Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ ‘right to become a father and a mother only through each other.’”
This reasonable teaching on the question at hand is both simple and straightforward, even though some might claim that situations like Rubin’s are complicated. But in truth, they are not.
Rubin is a political conservative, but he is not a Catholic. That being said, the laws of nature have never been identified with any religious persuasion. As a matter of fact, the natural law applies equally to all human beings.
Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD, recently wrote about this Rubin and surrogacy:
The two men who will have legal parenting rights have purchased genetic material from one woman, possibly two. One or possibly two women sold her eggs, meaning, her potential children. Yet another pair of women have agreed to rent their wombs for nine months to gestate children they will surrender at birth. All these women, genetic and gestational mothers alike, promise to have no relationship with their children. These children have not one but two mothers, a gestational mother and a genetic mother, who have been erased from their lives. They will have no mother presence, no legally recognized mother.
In her conclusion, Morse rightly says: “When the history of this era is written, people will look back and marvel at how crazy we have become, how filled with hubris we are, how stubbornly self-indulgent we are. And those historians of the future will realize: Only the people of faith had the sense to see that this was wrong—and the courage to stand against it.”
Courage is not what is required, but rather familiarity with the natural law. In his document Donum Vitae, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger taught that surrogate motherhood is not morally licit “for the same reasons which lead one to reject heterologous artificial fertilization: for it is contrary to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of the procreation of the human person. Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.”
If one reads these words objectively, in the light of reason and common sense, it clarifies the situation regardless of religious persuasion—or lack thereof.
In view of the cultural race toward erasing gender, imposing agnosticism as a national religion, and inviting those of us who disagree to jump off a bridge, a word of caution is in order.
The natural law is not debatable, and it belongs to no one, no sect, and no gender. It is clear and applies to all. Natural law is “common to all humans and derived from nature.”
Natural law is fundamental to who we are. Natural law is based on reason and is comprehensible to anyone. Professor Janet Smith writes: “Natural law operates on the premise that nature is good; that is, that the way things naturally are is good for them to be; it holds that the operations of things and parts of things contribute to the good of the whole.”
Put the Rubin situation into that context and we can see that sometimes things that are not naturally good need to be recognized as such. That is not a judgment; it is a fact.
Nobody has a right to a child. But every child has a right to a mother and a father. That is a fact. Denying that right is sad.
For further reading about the immorality of surrogacy, see these articles on our website:
Surrogate Parenting Is Wrong
Eggs, Surrogates, and Product Lines