Surrogacy, NFP, and Keeping the Faith When the Church Disappoints

Weekly Notes

It’s Friday, and this essay is arriving much later in the day than it normally does. Apologies for that. I’m in the home stretch on the Word on Fire Children’s Bible, and working hard to finish it up by the end of the month. It will be well over a year before anyone will get to see the fruit of our labors, but once it comes out, I’m hoping you all agree that a couple late newsletters was worth it!

Speaking of years, this coming Monday is my birthday, and boy the years are adding up! We don’t have anything special planned—maybe just dinner at a local Mexican dive with the kids. Last year, however, I wrote a fun little post for full Subscribers on 48 things I learned in 48 years. It’s been behind a paywall ever since then, but just for you guys, I’ve unlocked it. I hope you enjoy it. And if you want access to more essays, including the one I’m working on for next week, you can just click the little button below. Every time Substack notifies me that one of you has upgraded your subscription, I say a little prayer of gratitude for you and your support of my writing. It’s a huge blessing to me and my family, so I hope these newsletters are a blessing to you.

P.S. I want to give a huuuuuuuuge thank you to those of you who donated to my secret, 24-hour fundraiser for the Church in China last week. We ended up raising over $70,000 in just one day for my friend’s apostolate, and you wonderful, generous humans are getting Masses of thanksgiving offered for you.  

(Returning home with Toby in 2018. This is not surrogacy.)

Question Box

Why is the Catholic Church against surrogacy when it supports adoption? Aren’t you paying another woman for a baby in both cases?

I understand why you’re asking this question. Although adoptive couples in no way pay their children’s first mothers for a baby—that would be immoral, illegal, and a profound offense against human dignity—in some ways, from the outside, private domestic infant adoption in the U.S. can look similar to surrogacy.¹ After all, in both cases, a couple raises a child who they did not conceive, and also, in both cases, money is spent.

But the similarities end there . Or, more accurately, the similarities should end there. Unethical adoption practices can make adoption look more like surrogacy, and I’ll address that in a minute. But for simplicity’s sake, let’s start by comparing ethical adoption to surrogacy.

With ethical adoptions, the biggest and most important difference from surrogacy is that the good of the child always comes first—literally and figuratively. Literally the child comes first in adoption because his or her existence predates any adoption arrangement. The existence of the child precedes the process, and from the beginning, the child is recognizes as a subject, an individual with needs that must be met and rights that must be respected. Adoption is a response to that child and his or her needs.  

Figuratively, the child comes first in adoption because throughout the process, the good of the child is what matters most. His or her health, safety, and happiness is the driving concern for both birth parents and adoptive parents. Birth parents make the decision to place their child because they believe adoption is best for the child. They then make a plan for adoption, lovingly choosing a couple who they believe can be the parents their child needs. Adoptive parents do something similar. They enter the adoption process not simply because they want a child, but because children exist who need homes, and they want to respond to that need. They want to give a child love, affection, encouragement, safety, security, and an education in faith, wisdom, and virtue.

Prior to the child’s birth and the transfer of custody, wanting what’s best for the child also means the prospective adoptive couple works to maintain an openness to the possibility that what’s best for the child might not be them. It might not be adoption at all. It might be the child remaining with his or her biological parents. And until the biological parents sign over custody of their child, that is their right to decide. The prospective adoptive couple has no rights over the child until well after birth, when a court declares the child is legally theirs.

Surrogacy, on the other hand, is about what’s best for two adults (or one adult) who want a baby. It’s the adults’ needs, the adults’ desires, that come first, again, both literally and figuratively. It’s the adults’ desire for a child that starts the process. It’s the adults desire for a certain type of child (height, intelligence, eye color) that guides the selection of surrogates (and sometimes egg and/or sperm donors). And it’s the adults’ desire for a healthy boy or girl that dictates which embryos are implanted … and sometimes aborted when those desires aren’t realized. The whole process of surrogacy, from first to last, is about the adults who want a child. The child is brought into existence because of those desires and is treated from the very beginning of their life not as a subject, but rather, in the words of Pope Francis, as “the basis of a commercial contract”—as an object created and tailored to meet the desires of adults who can afford to pay for what they want.

Also, unlike with adoption, where the prospective adoptive couple has no rights regarding the child until the first mother signs her own rights away after birth, with surrogacy, it’s the opposite. It’s the couple pursuing parenthood through surrogacy who has the law on their side. They, not the woman who carries the child, are almost always the ones with rights over the baby from the very start. The woman’s pregnancy is a contractual arrangement, and her job is to honor the contract.

Another important difference between ethical adoption and surrogacy is how the expectant mothers, birth mothers, and surrogate mothers are treated. In ethical adoption, the expectant mothers’ rights are respected. She is never pressured to place or coerced in any way. Her basic needs for food, health care, and a place to live are met, and in most states, varying amounts of adoption funds can be directed to those ends. More than just the mother’s basic needs matter, though. Accordingly, good agencies do their best to provide an expectant mother with the counseling necessary for her to make the best decision for her and her child, as well as give her the opportunity to receive grief and trauma counseling post-placement. Adoptive parents, in turn, show respect for their children’s birth mothers by how they speak about them and how they honor their commitments about post-placement contact (although again, those commitments come second to the good of the child, so if there is a conflict between the two—like with a safety issue—the good of the child comes first).

Surrogacy, on the other hand, exploits the women involved in it, treating them as objects to be used and then discarded. Their health, their desires, their bond with the child they carry for nine months—all that takes a back seat to the desires of the couple doing the paying. To the couple, the woman functions as a means to an end. Moreover, because the women engaged in surrogacy are often poor, most don’t have the resources to push back against the exploitive demands made upon them. This essay, “Motherloading: Inside the Surrogacy Boom” by Suzy Weiss, while not perfect, does a great job of outlining surrogacy’s massive exploitation of women.

Last but not least, in adoption, the prospective adoptive couple pays an agency or attorney, not a woman, to help them adopt a child. That money is what enables agencies to connect with expectant mothers, counsel expectant mothers, support expectant mothers, plus cover all the normal costs of running a business (like renting office space). It also goes towards legal fees, travel, and the not insubstantial cost of paying competent, qualified people to do their jobs. No one is buying a baby. Prospective parents are funding a legally and personally complicated process that is emotionally fraught from first to last.

Surrogacy, on the other hand, is absolutely buying a baby. A woman is given a job—to carry a baby for nine months—and she is paid for that job. It’s a contractual arrangement. Other people get money, too—fertility clinics, surrogacy coordinators—but everyone involved in the process is engaged in a transactional relationship centered on adults’ desires and needs—whether for a child or cash.

All those reasons and more are why the Church is opposed to surrogacy and not adoption.  She sees clearly that surrogacy is always immoral. It is always a grave evil. It treats children as objects and fails to recognize their rights as human beings, starting with the right to be brought into existence through an act of love between a man and a woman. It uses and exploits women, and it uses and exploits the poor. Ethical adoption, on the other hand, is a moral good. It is never about a couple getting a baby at any cost and by any means necessary. It’s about doing what is right for the sake of the child. As such, it is an exercise of love and charity on the part of both birth parents and adoptive parents. It also is an icon of every Christian’s relationship to God, who has adopted us in Christ.

Unethical adoption, however, is a different story. Unethical adoptions, like surrogacy, prioritizes the adoptive parents’ needs and desires over the good of the child and the expectant mother. They also can involve pressuring or coercing expectant mothers into placing her child for adoption, and failing to provide expectant mother with emotional and spiritual support. When any of those things happen, adoption starts to resemble surrogacy, and people can be forgiven for thinking the two look an awful lot alike. Because in those cases, they do.

(P.S. If you and your spouse are praying about adoption and don’t know where to begin finding ethical adoption agencies, I highly recommend Kim Smith and her team of consultants at Cradled in Grace. They helped us adopt Becket and navigate some difficulties with Ellie’s adoption, and if you are in the discernment process, at minimum I would schedule a free inquiry call with them.)

Given all the scandals in the Church and all the hurt I’ve experienced within my parish, I’m really struggling to keep the faith right now. The Eucharist is the only thing really keeping me Catholic. Do you have any advice?

First, I’m sorry. I am so sorry you have been hurt by people within your parish. I’m also sorry you’re struggling. It can feel so world upending when something that is supposed to be the bedrock of your life suddenly seems so unsure. If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone in your struggle. Lots of good, faithful people are or have been where you are. Which, especially right now, given everything that has happened in the Church in recent decades, is understandable. The Church has always been filled with broken people, but we live in a time where that brokenness has manifested in extraordinarily ugly and public ways. God knows this, though. This isn’t how He wanted things to be either. So, don’t be afraid to talk with Him about what you’re feeling. Unload it all. He’s not going to be angry or disappointed by your questions. He welcomes them. He wants to help you through this.

As for advice, that’s hard because so much about keeping the faith is pure grace, and grace reaches us in different ways at different times. We’re people, not machines, so what helps me navigate scandal and disappointment from the Church might not help you. But I’ll share anyways, and you can take what seems helpful, then leave the rest.

I think, for me, the first thing which has helped is keeping my mind fixed on the distinction between the Church Triumphant and Church Militant. Which sounds abstract, but I promise, it’s not. Let me explain.

The Church is, of course, one. She is Christ’s Body and Bride. When we are joined to her, we are joined to Christ, and through her, we receive His saving grace. But although the Church is one, she also exists in three ways or three modes: as the Church Triumphant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Militant. The Church Triumphant is made up of all the angels and saints in Heaven. The Church Suffering is made up of the blessed faithful in Purgatory, who are being purified as by fire before entering into the Beatific Vision. And the Church Militant is us—the faithful on earth, struggling along, with both weeds and wheat in each of our hearts.

The temptation for many of us is to want the Church here to be what the Church in Heaven is. But she’s not. The Church Triumphant is perfect; the Church Militant is not. The Church Triumphant is made up of angels and saints. The Church Militant is not. The Church Triumphant is always beautiful, always glorious, always reflecting Christ. The Church Militant is most definitely not. She’s much more a work in progress, sort of like the old house my family is restoring, where beauty and decay exist side by side.

Again, both the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant are the Church. Both are Christ’s Body. But Christ’s Body in Heaven and Christ’s Body on earth do not look or act the same, and time has taught me that I can’t expect the Church on earth to be what she’s not. In her, I have to expect brokenness. From her, I have to expect disappointment. Because that’s what we get from a Church chock full of wounded people still working out our salvation with fear and trembling. It’s not all we get. She gives us abundant grace too. But that grace is always nestled up with disappointment. That’s just the way of things in this world.

Along those same lines, just like I have learned I can’t expect the Church on earth to be what she’s not, I’ve also learned I can’t expect people to be what they’re not. Priests may say the Mass and administer the sacraments in persona Christi, but they’re not Christ. Bishops may exercise Christ’s authority on earth, but they’re not Christ either. No one is. Only He is perfect. Only He is good.

Dorothy Day once wrote:

As a convert, I never expected much of bishops. In all history, popes and bishops and father abbots seem to have been blind and power-loving and greedy. I never expected leadership from them. It is the saints that keep appearing all through history who keep things going. What I do expect is the bread of life and down through the ages there is that continuity.^[i]

That perfectly sums up my feelings about popes, priests, and bishops, too. I know many wonderful priests, who I love dearly. But I’ve never been tempted to put any of them on a pedestal. No matter how wise or holy some may seem, I still assume they’re broken in some way, with sufferings, wounds, and crosses I can’t see. I also assume they all have graces I can’t see—that God is working in their hearts in countless hidden ways and that much of that work won’t be revealed until the end of days. Above all, I assume all are being tempted by Satan far more intensely and frequently than I am. Satan is evil, but he’s not stupid. He is an efficient tempter, who wisely intensifies his efforts where they can do the most harm, which, as C.S. Lewis said, is at the foot of the altar.

What’s true for priests and bishops is also true of every Christian. Grace is not a fast-acting formula. In the best of cases, it takes a lifetime to remake us in Christ’s image. Our wounds are far deeper and our sins far more numerous than any of us realize in the first years or decades of our journey with Christ. And that is a mercy. If each of us could see the full truth of how far we have fallen, how horribly we have betrayed God, and how fully sin holds parts of us captive, we would despair of grace and die of grief.

But God is kind, so He reveals our brokenness to us slowly, healing us as He strengthens us. When people hurt me, I try to remember that. It makes it easier to extend mercy to them. It also reminds me that it’s not only, “There but for the grace of God go I,” but more often, “There even with the grace of God, go I.”

Most of us are hurting others all the time. We’re all disappointing people, forgetting people, slighting people, neglecting people, judging people, objectifying people, and demeaning people. Usually not in the exact same way as someone is hurting us. And sometimes not in a way as grievous as someone is hurting us. But we all still hurt people. And when we know that, we can take the hurt others inflict us and offer that up to Christ in atonement for the ways we’ve hurt others. We also, in a strange way, can find solidarity with them. We can see all the more clearly how we all truly are brothers and sisters, sharing one broken human nature and desperately in need of a savior.

So, that’s my answer: Lots of grace, combined with low expectations for my fellow Christians and high expectations of Christ. That’s what has helped me navigate my way through a great deal of anger, frustration, and disappointment with the Church’s children. Over the past 20 years of working for and with the Church, I’ve learned not to put my faith in my fellow Catholics, ordained or lay. Faith belongs to Christ alone. He is the One I trust. But, at the same time, I believe part of trusting Him means trusting His decision to entrust His Body and Word to the safekeeping of a bunch of broken humans who, for two thousand years, have been bumbling along, making a mess of an awful lot of things (but also making some things wonderously beautiful).

I don’t know why God arranged things like this. Maybe to keep us praying for ourselves and others? Maybe to remind us that it’s Him who’s truly in charge, that it’s Him who saves? Again, I don’t know. It’s certainly tempting to think I would have done it all differently. But I also just ran around my backyard in the pouring rain like a crazy woman, swearing at a bunch of chickens who didn’t want to go in their coop, so what do I know?

There is so much more to say on this issue, and I don’t feel like I’ve fully done justice to your question. But I did write a whole Substack essay along these lines a year or so ago. I also devoted quite a bit of space in my book Letters to Myself from the End of the World to diving deeper into questions much like this one. So please do read what I wrote there, if you are so inclined.

My daughter and her husband need to use Natural Family Planning right now, but with her irregular cycles, the training they received before they had their first child doesn’t seem adequate. One priest recommended they just not have sex until they’re ready to conceive again, and that has not been helpful advice. Can you recommend any resources to help them—both to navigate her cycles better and to understand the goodness of the Church’s teachings.

Your daughter is not alone. I have known so many women who have gone through similar struggles. Fortunately, there are some wonderful resources which can help.

First, if she has access to one, a good NaPro Technology doctor might help your daughter get to the roots of her irregular periods and correct them. Many people think NaPro doctors only help women struggling with infertility find ethical ways to conceive, but they do so much more, including helping women identify and heal the causes of irregular cycles. You can find a listing of NaPro doctors here. It also might help her to follow Dr. Naomi Whittaker (@Napro_fertility_surgeon) on Instagram, just to get her more familiar with what NaPro can do for women.

In the meantime (and along with talking to a NaPro doctor), it sounds like she needs better training in Fertility Awareness Based Methods of family planning. While there are lots of different methods, the majority of women I know with irregular cycles prefer the Marquette Method. They say it helps them more accurately pinpoint the end of their fertile window and feel confident in their decisions. To find an instructor, two places to go are Vitae Fertility and Whole Mission, which can connect her with instructors in the Marquette Method (including virtual instruction).

On Instagram, I recommend your daughter follow Emily Frase of @totalwhine, who is a terrific resource for straight talk about Natural Family Planning. Emily has her own Substack and Podcast, and previously did a podcast with Mary Bruno (@whitelotusblooming), called “The Intersect,” that I think your daughter would find particularly helpful. Maybe suggest she start by listening to their interview with Louise Boychuck of Vitae Fertility. It’s called “What if I can’t afford to be in the 2 percent failure rate of Fertility Awareness-based Methods?”

As for the second part of your question—how she can better understand the Church’s teaching as not just a “no” to contraception, but a “yes” to God’s plan for marriage, life, and the dignity of the female body—the study I wrote on Humanae Vitae for Endow should help. It is accessible, but thorough, and will give her a solid, compassionate introduction to the Church’s teachings and the reasons behind them.

Miscellany

1. After a two-week Easter hiatus, Chris, Kate, Casey, and I are back with a new episode of Visitation Sessions. This week, we tackled the hot button issue of modesty, but hopefully in a way that is helpful, nuanced, and not triggering for anyone (except for possibly me).

2. Chris and I watched “The Miracle Club” this week, and we both absolutely loved it. It was much better than any reviews would lead you to believe. It’s not pious, but it’s very real and the acting (Maggie Smith, Laura Linney, Kathy Bates) was wonderful. It also did a beautiful job of illustrating one of the most profound truths of the New Testament: Jesus came to heal our souls. He came to reconcile us to God and one another. All the miracles He performed were ordered to that—to showing us that the One who could heal bodies could do the much more difficult work of healing souls. The movie gets that. The reviewers not so much.

3. I disagree with Batya Ungar-Sargon on a lot of things—for example, the wisdom of the mob….I don’t believe that mobs have much wisdom at all, let alone that I should trust a mob. But, she does have some important things to say about the plight of the working class and their experience of America in 2024. I live in a neighborhood full of the people she talks about in her new book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women, and appreciate her giving voice to their struggles. If you have time, read her book. If not, listen to her recent podcast with Bari Weiss. It will be an hour well spent.

4. As the wife of a high school teacher, I was shouting a loud “Amen” while reading this New York Times essay on the devastating effects technology in the classroom has on students’ ability to learn. Next time someone asks why we’re sending our kids to a Montessori school, I’m just going to send them this essay.

5. Like every other normal, red-blooded American, I love Dolly Parton’s song, “Jolene.” I most definitely do not, however, love Beyonce’s new version of the same. In this fantastic little essay over at Unherd, Kat Rosenfeld perfectly captures what’s good about the former, bad about the latter, and why Beyonce’s seeming celebration of feminine strength in her rendition is actually a betrayal of what makes women magnificently and beautifully strong.

In Case You Missed It

Making Home: On the Redemption of the Ordinary (Full Subscribers Only)

Signs of Contradiction: On Trad Wives, Keyboard Warriors, and Saving the World While Losing Your Soul (Full Subscribers Only)

The Sources of Our Discontent: On Happiness, Feminism, and Grandmothers (Full Subscribers Only)

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^[i] Dorothy Day, All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010), 452.

1. Edited for clarity. Since adoptions through foster care don’t generally involve large amounts of money or an arrangement between the birth mom and foster parents, these types of adoptions are not what is being compared to surrogacy.