The Steps for Life platform in Mexico called for legislation against surrogate motherhood, known in Spanish as “rent a womb,” as well as any other form of exploiting women’s fertility.
As part of its campaign to oppose surrogate motherhood, the Steps for Life platform is painting outdoor murals with messages such as “Women are not for rent, much less are their children for sale.”
The purpose of these murals, the platform explained in a statement, is to “make visible this grave practice that is spreading in Mexico.”
To date, it has painted murals in the states of Coahuila, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, and Jalisco, as well as in Mexico City.
Pilar Rebollo, director of Steps for Life, charged that surrogate motherhood “or any form of exploitation of female fertility violates women more than what has been done for centuries.”
According to research by the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in 2018, this industry generated profits of $6 billion worldwide. By 2025, it is estimated that the figure could rise to $27.5 billion.
“At Steps for Life, we fight for better conditions for pregnant women and their children so that the dignity of each person is respected from conception to natural death. We condemn that [for] a woman in need, her body and her fertility is being commercialized,” Rebollo said.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2376), the teaches that “techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple [donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus], are gravely immoral. These techniques [heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization] infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ right to become a father and a mother only through each other.”
Addressing the Federation of Catholic Family Associations of Europe on June 10, 2022, Pope Francis warned that “the dignity of men and women is also threatened by the inhuman and increasingly widespread practice of ‘rent a womb,’ in which women, almost always poor, are exploited and children are treated as merchandise.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.