Church stands for total prohibition of surrogate motherhood

Russian Orthodox Church believes surrogate motherhood unacceptable both for commercial and non-commercial ends, since such way of child-bearing «destroys human dignity”, claimed to RIA News Deputy Chairman of the Synod’s Department on Church Relations with the Society and Mass Media Vakhtang Kipshidze.

Draft law on prohibition of surrogate motherhood was submitted to the State Duma on Monday. “Using a surrogate motherhood technology is a choice of parents. The Church cannot support such choice, since it believes that surrogate motherhood humiliates human dignity and is a morally dubious technology of reproductive health,” said Mr Kipshidze.

The situation when a child is “customized” is inappropriate to the ROC. Such reproductive way causes damage to a child-bearing woman given that “her parental feelings get trampled”.

According to Kipshidze, surrogate new-born babies are not at all worse or better than other children. However, the Church can baptize them only after the repentance of those who made a decision on such a non-traditional birth of a child.

"This position is connected with the fact that parents wishing to have their child baptized cannot but share a moral standpoint of the Church, which considers such reproductive choice to be morally unacceptable,” explained the interviewee.

He also noted particularly that in the event of life threat to a newborn, he/she can be baptized without any delay or compliance with any preliminary terms.

The Church believes if a husband or a wife is infertile, they have to accept their childlessness with humbleness. In such cases spouses are recommended to think about fostering a child.

The only acceptable medical assistance in case of infertility, according to the Church, is artificial fertilization by the husband’s germ cells, since it “does not ruin the marriage integrity, makes just a slight difference from natural fertilization and takes place in the context of marital relationships.”