New Article Offers LGBTQ+ Perspectives in Debate Over Reproductive Surrogacy

Phil and Meghan Young, left, with Rachelle Simon, Ariell Watson Simon, and the Young’s child, Henry

After Dignitas Infinita—which condemned reproductive surrogacy as “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child”—as well as Pope Francis’ recent comments calling for a global ban on surrogacy, Catholic conversation around this alternative means to parenthood has increased. In the National Catholic Reporter, journalist Camillo Barone explores the ways that surrogacy has played a part in Catholics’ lives, offering a perspective on the practice that objects to its description as “a grave violation of dignity.”

Although the church officially condemns surrogacy, numerous Catholic couples, particularly in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, engage in the practice to build their families. The stories of LGBTQ+ parents utilizing surrogacy and LGBTQ+ surrogates themselves, which Barone narrates, highlight some of the reasons that the practice is becoming more popular, indicating surrogacy as a matter of discernment, self-gift, and the realization of God-given vocations.

For Rachelle Simon, surrogacy provided a way to preserve her best friend’s dream of becoming a mother. Simon’s friend and former roommate, Meghan Young, was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, which meant that she was born without a uterus. Simon, attentive to Young’s sense of being called by God to motherhood, offered to be a surrogate—first during their time at college and again years later, when Young was poised to give up her dream. 

At this point, Simon was serving as a Catholic campus minister at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Simon’s future wife, Ariell Watson Simon, was immediately supportive of Simon’s decision to be a surrogate:

“‘We as Catholics believe that we’ve all been given all of our resources, all of our abilities, as a body of Christ for one another, to work together in community. God designed us to all have pieces of the puzzle that we have to put together. Rachelle was given a uterus, and Meghan wasn’t,’ Watson Simon told NCR. ‘Rachelle has something that Meghan needs in order to live her vocation of mother. So that doesn’t mean that she’s being exploited, as the Vatican says. That means that she has an opportunity to collaborate and to be generous.'”

Young and her husband adopted a foster child in 2019, then began the IVF process in 2020. According to Barone, “Simon immediately got pregnant, and she remembers the months of her surrogate pregnancy as among the most joyful and moving of her life. The Youngs named their baby Henry Simon, in honor of their friends’ last name.”

Similarly, surrogacy provided a way for Matt Vidal and his husband Rick to live out their vocations as fathers. Devout Catholics, Matt and Rick founded Out at St. Paul, an LGBTQ+ Catholic ministry at St. Paul the Apostle Church, Manhattan, in 2010. The supportive community at St. Paul the Apostle and its then-pastor, Paulist Fr. Gil Martinez, were instrumental in the thorough spiritual discernment that Matt and Rick entered into as they considered surrogacy after efforts at adoption fell through.

“They really took the church teaching seriously and wanted to really make a well-formed conscience decision,” Martinez told NCR.

The discernment process resulted in Matt and Rick pursuing surrogacy. “God gave us reason, science and so many things in our lives as the result of our ingenuity and our science to make love happen,” Vidal said. “We were doing something to increase love. We were making an effort to grow a family out of love.” For Alex, the woman who served as Matt and Rick’s surrogate, this act was one of “self-donation.”

Matt and Rick’s entered parenthood with the birth of their child, Finn. “Baptizing their first child at St. Paul the Apostle came naturally to the Vidals, who asked Martinez to be Finn’s godfather,” Barone reports. “After the ceremony, they held a party on the parish rooftop. Finn integrated perfectly into the life of the community, being looked after by parishioners who never failed to show their support.”

In these stories of LGBTQ+ parents and surrogates, surrogacy emerges as a way of living out one’s vocation, building up one’s faith community, and offering a great gift of self. These stories demonstrate how these LGBTQ+ Catholics take the church’s position seriously, while remaining open to the movement of the Holy Spirit and the voice of God within themselves and within their communities.

Unfortunately, as LGBTQ+ people and others pursue surrogacy, these individuals have also weathered rejection, disappointment, and sacramental limbo. For example, the Youngs have yet to baptize Henry Simon in light of the Vatican’s condemnation. “It’s devastating and very othering,” Young said. “The beautiful gift and process that we went through to bring Henry to this earth is meaningful and just as important as a baby who was able to be conceived naturally without the use of scientific help. I just feel not welcomed. I feel ostracized.”

And although Matt and Rick were embraced by their community in Manhattan, when they moved to the Hudson Valley they were met with multiple rejections from parishes when seeking to baptize their surrogate-conceived twins, Charlee and Luca. “I felt awful,” Vidal said. But, “It doesn’t shake my faith,” he said. “I know what’s right, and I know God loves me in what I’m doing.”

These stories reveal an important perspective on surrogacy and an important perspective on LGBTQ+ family life. While many Catholics may, at first glance, believe that these stories diverge from ‘typical’ Catholic family values, Watson Simon reminds us that this is not entirely the case:

“Jesus was not born by a conjugal union. Were Jesus’ rights as a person violated? Was his personhood less because he didn’t come about through sex?”

Indeed, one might imagine Mary, the mother of Jesus, well acquainted with the scorn, derision, and questioning garnered by an unconventional pregnancy, being in solidarity with all those who, like her, seek to openly embrace the life of parenthood with prayer, discernment, and grace.

—Phoebe Carstens (they/them), New Ways Ministry, September 20, 2024