Position of the Team of Experts for Bioethics of the Polish Bishops’ Conference on surrogate motherhood

https://episkopat.pl/doc/251925.Stanowisko-Zespolu-Ekspertow-KEP-ds-Bioetycznych-w-sprawie

https://episkopat.pl/doc/252906.Posizione-del-Gruppo-di-Esperti-di-Bioetica-della-Conferenza

https://episkopat.pl/doc/252029.Stellungnahme-des-Bioethik-Expertenrates-der-Polnischen

We publish the full text of the Position:

Position of the Team of Experts for Bioethics of the Polish Bishops’ Conference
on surrogate motherhood

As there are more and more offers guaranteeing a healthy child via surrogacy in Poland, the Team of Experts for Bioethics of the Polish Bishops’ Conference want to briefly recall the implications of the teaching of the Church concerning the techniques of artificial procreation and their application in relation to surrogacy:

1. Surrogacy is available exclusively through artificial fertilisation, generally performed extracorporeally (in vitro), which means that it brings about all the genetic, developmental and psychological consequences associated with the use of techniques of artificial procreation. Experts from the Team have repeatedly drawn attention to the serious consequences, both for the health of the children themselves and in terms of risks to public health, arising from the use of in vitro techniques in human reproductive medicine.

2. The guarantees of healthy offspring promised in such offers inevitably entail the conclusion that, should genetic or developmental disorders be detected, the children conceived will be killed through eugenic abortion. The Team of Experts recall that the killing of an unborn child is always an act of the utmost moral depravity and, in some cases, additionally constitutes a criminal offence under the law in force in Poland.

3. Conducting the surrogacy process outside Poland does not render it lawful. On the contrary, the practice takes on the characteristics of international human trafficking, which cannot be justified either by the desire to have offspring or by the consent of almost all parties involved in the process. The Team point out that the transaction involves children, who are treated as commodities rather than as persons endowed with an inalienable dignity inherent in their humanity.

4. Apart from human trafficking, the objectification of women who make their bodies available for the purposes of surrogacy is morally objectionable, too. The women’s formal consent, all too often motivated by a will to improve their material well-being, does not render morally acceptable an action in which a human being is treated as an object, even if that person were to do so voluntarily.

Given the above arguments, the Team of Experts for Bioethics of the Polish Bishops’ Conference state that surrogate motherhood is intrinsically illicit and cannot in any way be reconciled with the Christian faith and morality.

The will to have offspring cannot be interpreted as a right, since a child, in ontological terms, and thus as a human person, is not the property of his or her parents. The conception and birth of a child cannot be the subject of a commercial transaction, whether on the part of a woman offering her body for hire for the purposes of surrogacy, on the part of persons seeking to obtain offspring in this way, or otherwise; nor can the practice of surrogacy be tolerated, permitted, accepted, let alone promoted, by state institutions.

To conclude, the Team of Experts for Bioethics of the Polish Bishops’ Conference call upon the authorities of the Republic of Poland to take immediate, decisive action to prevent Polish nationals from resorting to surrogate motherhood and to block the activities of companies offering such procedures in the Polish state.

On behalf of the Team of Experts for Bioethics of the Polish Bishops’ Conference

Bishop Józef Wróbel, SCJ

Warsaw, 27.08.2026