When Pope Francis called surrogate motherhood a deplorable practice that he hoped the international community would prohibit universally, he was roundly criticized as insensitive and out of touch.

But a recent case in which 21 children, including 17 toddlers, were taken from a California couple who had them through their surrogacy business has revealed some of the practice’s inherent problems and potential for abuse, bolstering the arguments of those who believe it should be banned. 

Born to various surrogate mothers using fertilized embryos from Silvia Zhang, 38, and her husband, Guojun Xuan, 65, the children were discovered as part of a police investigation after a 2-month-old from their home was taken to the hospital, the New York Post reported. That child had suffered a brain injury and is believed by police to have been shaken and struck by the family’s nanny, according to The Associated Press. The other children in the home also are believed to have been abused. All since have been placed in the custody of the Department of Children and Family Services. The couple was arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment and neglect but were released from custody pending further investigation, NBC reported. The couple has not responded to requests for comment from multiple media outlets.

The surrogate mothers who bore the children apparently did not know they were carrying embryos from the couple who ran the surrogacy business. One of them, Kayla Elliott, now is seeking custody of the child she carried and has started an online fundraiser for legal fees. 

Catholic Church teaching considers surrogacy to be gravely immoral because, according to the Catechism, it dissociates husband and wife by the intrusion of a person other than the couple, infringing “a child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage.”  

The pro-life organization Human Life International calls surrogacy “the oldest form of assisted reproduction” and says it was practiced in ancient societies to work around laws allowing a husband to divorce his wife because of her infertility. Today, surrogacy is employed not just by infertile couples, but by those who don’t want to pass a genetic defect or health condition on to their child and by homosexual couples and single men and women who want children. Surrogacy uses such techniques as in vitro fertilization (IVF) or artificial insemination, which the Church also deems morally unacceptable. 

As happened when Pope Francis spoke out against surrogacy in 2024, the Church’s teaching on such matters often is branded as unsympathetic to the plight of those unable to have children. Yet the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Couples who discover that they are sterile suffer greatly,” and goes on to add, “Research aimed at reducing sterility is to be encouraged.”  

Indeed, such research has led to morally acceptable alternatives, such as those developed by the St. Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction. 

Often, however, infertile women who resort to morally problematic solutions such as IVF are unaware of these options. In a recent article about the infertility treatment she received through a doctor trained in NaPro (natural procreative) Technology, which is approved by the Catholic Church, Madeleine Kearns, associate editor at The Free Press, observed that many women turn to IVF because the root cause of their infertility has not been addressed. Several fertility clinics told one woman quoted in her article before she went to a NaPro doctor that IVF was her only option. 

Against the Dignity of the Child and Family

Joseph Meaney, senior fellow and past president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, said the Church definitely has compassion for the suffering of infertility, something he and his wife experienced for the first eight years of their marriage. But he said, “At the same time, just as the suffering is real, the solutions have to be real solutions and not bad ones.”

From a Catholic perspective, he said, the first objection to surrogacy as a solution is that it disregards the right of children to be conceived and raised by their married, biological parents who give them life and love. 

Not only do children have that right, added Mary FioRito, Cardinal Francis George fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an EWTN Radio host, but they do best when raised in a home with their biological mother and father. This is not to disparage children who are raised by adoptive parents, she said, but studies show that the greatest economic advantage to a child is not the school they attend or the wealth of the family, but being raised by two parents, male and female, who are married to each other. “Men and women bring different dimensions of parenthood to the child. Children are not your pets. They have a natural right to a mother and a father and it’s wrong to deprive them of that right.” 

Additionally, Meaney said, it is a violation of human rights to treat babies as objects of commercial contracts, as is done in surrogacy. He pointed out that such contracts often contain disturbing language specifying, for instance, that a couple “ordering” a child can require the child be aborted if he or she is found to have a particular defect.

“What surrogacy also does is it commercializes women’s reproductive capabilities,” Meaney said. “In a sense, their bodies are being rented out to be used by others to carry children. In some cases, the surrogate mother is the biological mother. In other cases, she will have an embryo transferred into her womb not related to her biologically. In both circumstances, it is extremely unnatural for her to be used in such a way, even with her consent. It goes against the dignity of a human being.”

Meaney said there is a social-justice aspect to surrogacy as well because surrogate mothers tend to be from lower economic backgrounds and those ordering what is typically an expensive procedure often are people of means. “So it’s the rich exploiting the poor, which from a Catholic perspective is blamable,” he said.  

Indeed, Brian Clowes, director of research and training for Human Life International, said when he traveled to Bengaluru, India, several years ago, the Parliament was considering banning surrogacy because groups of women were being abused as “baby farms” for rich women, both in India and the West. The nation eventually passed a law banning commercial surrogacy, but not “altruistic” surrogacy, in which the mother is only compensated for essential medical expenses and insurance.

“When scientists dare to venture beyond the limits of the natural law,” Clowes said, “there are inevitably abuses, especially when there is the prospect of making a lot of money. This is certainly the case with surrogacy.”

‘This Is a Case of Surrogacy as Planned’

Although advocates of surrogacy like to portray it as a compassionate, benign service, Katy Faust of Them Before Us, a group focused on defending a child’s right to his or her mother and father, sees it as harmful, particularly to the children of surrogate mothers. “Even if the child maintains the relationship with their genetic mother,” she said, “the child will always lose a relationship with the only person they know the day they are born. Birth-mother loss increases the likelihood of struggles to trust and attach in the future. Practices that require the weak to sacrifice for the strong are always an injustice.” 

Faust told the Register that what occurred in California is not a case of surrogacy gone wrong. “This is a case of surrogacy as planned,” she said. “Everything that happened with regard to the acquisition of those 21 children was perfectly legal, supported by government-backed contracts in alignment with the new definition of the family as anything that aligns with adult wishes. When the law conceives of the child as an object to be assigned to any adult with the money and means to acquire them, as surrogacy dictates, this is the inevitable result.”

According to the website of a surrogacy agency known as ConceiveAbilities, California is considered the “friendliest” state for surrogacy and was one of the first to enact a law making surrogacy available. Among the law’s provisions are that intended parents do not need a genetic connection to the embryo and that the practice is open to anyone regardless of marital status and sexual orientation. Other states permit surrogacy, but with conditions that vary. Louisiana has the strictest surrogacy restrictions of any state and prohibits commercial surrogacy. 

Faust, who believes surrogacy should be prohibited, said she does not think any amount of regulation would make it safe for children. “Regulation can never solve the problem of the maternal deprivation inherent to surrogacy. Further, California already had all kinds of contractual reinforcements that facilitated, rather than mitigated, these risks. No surrogacy can be safe or healthy for children. It simply needs to be banned.”