Pope-A-Dope.

A Letter To Pope Francis On Surrogacy.

“I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.”

-Pope Francis

I would like Pope Francis to know that I would have named her Abhainn, had she stayed. My little baby bean who was only able to stay with me for less then a month.

It had been nearly 7 years, 1 Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) diagnosis, 1 Endometritis diagnosis, 8 IUIs, three embryo transfers, and a million prayers to Hashem; but I had finally, ACTUALLY gotten pregnant!

Being in my early 40’s, and after years of horrid hormone injections that made me feel like I was tiptoeing on the iceberg of psychosis, after weight ballooning, crying jags that seemed permanently imminent; it felt like we were finally going to get the chance to be parents after a long slog of IVF treatments.

I was so careful. I ate meat (I’m a vegetarian). I avoided all coffee (I’m a caffeine HOUND). I exercised gently. I withstood a tsunami of hormone surges coupled with a barrage of migraines and didn’t take a single Advil or Tylenol. My mind raced with what her room might look like. That I would have to explain to people how to pronounce her ridiculously, gloriously Celtic name correctly. I would sing to her as I rubbed my belly at night, too excited to sleep, my dreams flooding my wide-awake brain as I lay in the dark with the moon, celebrating that I was pregnant.

It was too soon to have all these thoughts. The doctor warned me to wait until we were past six weeks, and to test the hormone levels every day. Of course! Of COURSE! I nodded vigorously reassuring my doctor, all the while excitedly whispering to my Mother and my girlfriends: It’s really early, BUT…!

Surely after all these struggles, all these failures, this time, she would take? I am not an optimistic person in any way shape or form. I don’t even like getting up earlier than 10am on my days off. The sunlight of the dawn of a new beautiful day? GET LOST! Give me at least another hour to shut it out.

Yet parenthood was something my husband and I had been longing for since our early 30’s. I had longed for it even earlier than that, before he and I had met. I have known for years I was meant to be a mother.

In spite of that knowing, however, my little baby bean couldn’t stay. For the first time in my adult life I was really, truly pregnant! But one day I had the hormone levels tested after seeing some blood and then I really, truly wasn’t pregnant anymore.

I howled. I howled mournfully, full of spit, fire, rage, and grief. I curled up on my bed and sobbed until every single facet of saline in my body could no longer be expelled. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to me in that moment had already been expelled. My husband curled up beside me for a time. He cried softly next to me. He held me. He comforted me because he is the still point of my turning world and always will be. Then he let me be.

I refused to face the world. I lay there all night. And into the next day. Then for the next few weeks, I attempted to exist, but only in the way a burst balloon still technically exists. The beautiful purring of my two ancient striped brown cats, Mazel and Tov, helped make me feel a little calmer, and gave me some spiritual sustenance. My Mother, my Ride-or-Die, Best Friend Forever? She held me, hugged me, and gave me nourishment in the form of my favorite foods and in the form of understanding because she is one of the best humans I have ever met, and always will be.

My Rabbi wrote an incredibly empathetic letter to me in sympathy, in prayer, and with lev (love) because she is my spiritual touchstone, my Jewish Yoda, one of my personal women sheroes and always will be.

Yet in spite of all the love, support, and concern which was so kindly sent my way; what nobody including my own body could do, was give me my daughter back.

I am now 44. I still have PCOS. I have already undergone multiple IVF procedures. The hormones have taken longer and longer to leave my system each time I do it. It is hell on my body and my heart. I don’t know that I could emotionally take another miscarriage. My body has been through so much as it is. So have our wallets, which are not endlessly lined. All of this stuff is hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck level scary-expensive, and insurance doesn’t cover most of it.

Does this mean I shouldn’t pursue other avenues of Motherhood? Does this mean that another woman who is able to grow and sustain life in her, but does not want to be a parent themselves (or has already become one) is somehow evil? Is she being exploited simply because she is willing and able to help us (or any other person in this same situation) become the parents we have longed to be and are trying so hard to become?

I am not Catholic. I am in fact Jewish, but it doesn’t matter what faith I am, or what the faith of millions of other people is (or isn’t) who are trying to have children through IVF, Surrogacy, or Adoption. Nor should their race, their gender, or their sexual orientation be a factor. What someone believes religiously should not be written into law simply because that is what that person or group of persons believe God demands of us.

Freedom of religion, certainly in the United States, is supposed to mean that our legislation shouldn’t be created based on what the deeply specific dogma of one religion says should happen and then force everyone who isn’t a part of that dogma into having to live by those rules. This isn’t an anti-religion screed. I’m not an Atheist, I have genuinely have a belief in a higher power myself (albeit in a rather Deist format). That doesn’t mean I think everyone else should, or that their bodies should be governed solely based on what I think a higher power wants. That’s now how the law is supposed to work in a country based on freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.

To put it another way: imagine if I were the major governing body of a huge religion that had legions of devotees all over the world and serious influence on lawmakers who are also a part of that religion. These leigions of my flock will often try to push their ideology into leigslature. Then, suddenly one day, I publicly declare not just to my followesr, but to the world, that the terrifying ocean deity Cthulhu (written about by that infamously horrid antisemite and brilliant horror writer H.P. Lovecraft) has awakened from his underwater sleeping death. After pouring over the Necronomicon, I have come to the conclusion that my beloved God Cthulu feels it is only right, only MORAL, that all cisgender men walk to the ocean so that Cthulhu can suck their souls dry to help replenish his slithery splendor. I announce that it is imperitive all countries incorporate this gender-specific physical act into law, as the Great Octopus demands it of us! (Never mind that such a rule of law does not affect me, a cisgender woman).

That sounds utterly absurd, right? Ridiculous. Crazy, even! But to millions of people who are not Catholic, or some other kind of Christian, or might not be any kind of religious at all, some of the rhetoric Pope Francis has leveled at people trying to have children through surrogacy can sound equally outlandish. Why should what one religious leader believes God wants dictate what I, who am not even a member of that religion, am able to do to become a Mother?

It is because the Pope has tremendous political and cultural, as well as religious influence, that his vocal condemnation of surrogacy as “deplorable” and then his directly beseeching lawmakers the world over to legally ban surrogacy is horrifying. Even though I am not Catholic, his Catholic views deeply affect me because they could well be imposed through the law on my ability to finally be able to become a Mother. My Jewish womb could well be rendered mute against his Catholic might.

This deep-seated need of religious figures (usually cisgender, heterosexual men, and usually Christian) to impose their narrow-minded, ignorant, completely apathetic, medieval sensibilities on what is and isn’t acceptable for people, usually women, to do with our bodies by legally barring complete autonomy over them is simply unacceptable. This draconian and punitive need to control our reproductive abilities is so far from compassionate it astounds me that they still claim to love Jesus Christ. Even to many of us who are not, and have never been Christian, Jesus Christ is still synonymous with kindness, compassion, and empathy. Let us also say the quiet part out loud: wasn’t Mary a surrogate for God to carry His son? Even though she was married to Joseph, the Christian world’s first stepdad? If I recall, she didn’t exactly get to consent to the immaculate conception. Was that not a bit exploitive on God’s part? Shouldn’t the Pope consider God “exploitive” in this case? Of course not, becuase in this scenario, God is male.

How dare an 87-year-old man in a hat shaped like a penis who lives in a tower all the way in Italy; who isn’t married and never will be, isn’t even in a relationship, and isn’t a woman say that my need to seek other ways to become a mother is “deplorable”. He will never be confronted with such a barrier. He has no concept of trying for parenthood, or of the struggles women worldwide go through to get pregnant. He will never be intimately aware of the suffering women who cannot keep a baby due to health issues go through.

He will never experience women preventing his dreams through the law of having complete bodily autonomy. All the restrictions on his own body are ones he has chosen to follow: there is no law preventing him from getting married or from adopting, or from finding a partner and trying to expand his family through IUIs or IVF. He will never be pregnant. None of these things are things he will ever have to deal with, nor does he have a partner/spouse who will ever have to deal with it.

Why are we still allowing people who will never deal with pregnancy in all its messy avenues whether it is regarding abortion, miscarriage, surrogacy, adoption, or same-sex families to expand to dictate/influence policies and laws that directly control what avenues are open to us and which are closed to us when it comes to having (or not having) children? Why in 2024 is it still acceptable to publicly shame women who have PCOS? Who have to get an abortion due to health complications for them or their child? Women who have only miscarriages and cannot sustain a pregnancy?

Why in 2024 is it still acceptable for men to have the power to legally restrict women’s autonomy?

I would like Pope Francis to know that I would have named her Abhainn if she had stayed. I want him to know that if my husband and I are able to afford another attempt at parenthood through surrogacy, I don’t know what we will name him or her if we are lucky enough to have them stay this time, but it will definitely not be “Deplorable”.