Pope Francis criticized women this week who believe they have the “right to a child” in a new declaration.
On Monday, the Vatican published its “Infinite Dignity” declaration, sharing the Catholic Church’s views about abortion, surrogacy and transgender rights.
“First and foremost, the practice of surrogacy violates the dignity of the child,” a portion of the declaration said. “Because of this unalienable dignity, the child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver. Moreover, acknowledging the dignity of the human person also entails recognizing every dimension of the dignity of the conjugal union and of human procreation.”
Pope Francis continued in the declaration, “Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a ‘right to a child’ that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life.”
Newsweek reached out to the Vatican via email for comment.
His comments come a few months after he criticized surrogacy and called for a global ban against what he called the “commercialization” of pregnancy.
“I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs,” Pope Francis said in a speech to Vatican-accredited diplomats in January, the Associated Press reported.
The pope called for the world to “prohibit this practice universally,” while speaking about surrogacy.
The Vatican’s Doctrine Office published the 20-page declaration on Monday after it was approved by Pope Francis on March 25. The document states that God created man and woman as biologically different beings and that people should not try to alter that or “make oneself God.”
The declaration states that the Catholic Church does not believe that someone’s sex can be changed and puts gender-affirming surgery in the same category as abortion and euthanasia as practices that reject God’s plan.
Additionally, the report describes the surgeries as violating the human dignity gifted by God and as attempting to play God on the surgeon’s table during “sex-change intervention.”
As for abortion, which the Catholic Church has been historically against, the declaration said: “On account of the intangible value of human life, the Church’s magisterium has always spoken out against abortion. In this regard, Pope St. John Paul II writes: ‘Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable.’”
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