Read the Catechism in a Year
The Sixth Commandment: You shall not commit adultery.
What is the Church's judgment on surrogate motherhood and artificial fertilization?
All assistance in conceiving a child through research and medicine must stop when the common bond of parenthood is loosened and destroyed by the intrusion of a third person or when conception becomes a technological act outside of sexual union in marriage.
Out of respect for human dignity, the Church cannot approve of the technologically assisted conception of a child through artificial insemination or fertilization. Every child has in God's plan the right to have a father and a mother, to know his parents, and if at all possible to grow up surrounded by their love. Artificial insemination and fertilization with the sperm of another man or the ovum of another woman (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) also destroys the spirit of marriage, in which husband and wife have the right to become a father or a mother only through the other spouse. But even homologous artificial insemination and fertilization (in which the sperm and the ovum come from the spouses) make a child the product of a technological procedure and does not allow it to originate from the loving union of a personal sexual encounter. If the child becomes a product, however, then that leads immediately to cynical questions about product quality and product liability. The Church also rejects pre-implantation diagnosis, which is carried out for the purpose of killing imperfect embryos. Surrogate motherhood, too, in which an artificially conceived embryo is implanted into another woman, is contrary to human dignity. (YOUCAT question 423)
Dig Deeper: CCC section (2376-2379) and other references here.
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