EWTN News explains: Why does the Catholic Church oppose surrogacy?

The practice of surrogacy made national news in August when surrogate mother McKenna West fled to Texas to give birth to a baby after its biological parents requested it be aborted due to a treatable heart condition.

West was sued by the couple for not adhering to the terms of the surrogacy contract, which included a clause allowing them to request abortion of the baby if it were found to have fetal abnormalities.

The mother sought refuge in Texas and gave birth there to the baby, whom she named Gabriel; the state ordered a hospital system to provide the baby life-giving care.

The controversial case has generated significant commentary around gestational surrogacy, the practice in which a woman is paid to grow and birth a baby for the parents .

The Catholic Church explicitly opposes surrogacy, describing it as a comprehensively immoral practice that offends the dignity of everyone involved. But why specifically does the Church so strongly forbid this arrangement?

Practice is ‘contrary to the unity of marriage’ and of human dignity Joseph Meaney, a senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, described surrogacy as an arrangement in which “a woman…