Vatican Declares Gender-Affirming Operations And Surrogacy As Grave Threats To “Human Dignity”

Developing story – The Vatican condemned sex change operations and surrogacy, equating them with abortion and euthanasia. The declaration reinforces traditional doctrine on gender and reproduction while demeaning LGBTQQIP2SA (abbreviated LGBTQ+) people’s dignity.

On Monday (April 8), the Vatican, officially known as the Vatican City State, an independent city-state enclaved within Rome, Italy which serves as the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, declared that sex change operations and surrogacy violated God’s plan for human life.

The Vatican’s doctrine office issued “Infinite Dignity,” a 20-page declaration that has been in the works for five years, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

After substantial revision in recent months, it was approved on March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its publication.

Pope Francis is the Pope and head of the Catholic Church, the bishop of Rome, and sovereign of the Vatican City State.

Image credits: Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images

In its most eagerly anticipated section, the AP stated, the Vatican repeated its rejection of “gender theory” or the idea that one’s gender can be changed. 

Moreover, the declaration mentioned that God created man and woman as biologically different, separate beings, and said they must not tinker with that plan or try to “make oneself God.”

A reminder that it is the scientific consensus that sex and gender are separate issues.

A person’s sex is used as a classification, generally as male or female, according to the reproductive organs and functions that derive from the chromosomal complement.

Gender refers to a person’s self-representation as male or female (or a non-binary gender), or how that person is responded to by social institutions on the basis of the individual’s gender presentation.

A person might feel like their gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned with at birth, leading to gender dysphoria, and sometimes, to identifying as transgender.

Gender-affirming medical treatments and surgeries are available globally to help a transgender person with their often life-debilitating gender dysphoria. The treatments can help a person transition from one gender to another. 

Nevertheless, the Vatican has now expressed a strong stance against these forms of treatments, which have often been considered life-saving to trans people, as the document read: “It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”

According to the AP, the declaration distinguished between transitioning surgeries, which it rejected, and “genital abnormalities” that are present at birth or that develop later. Those abnormalities can be “resolved” with the help of health care professionals, it said.

It is possible that the Vatican may have been referring to people who are born intersex, individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.”

Oxford Academic stated that many intersex people experience nonconsensual surgery during childhood to alter their genitalia and other anatomy. Some intersex people who have experienced nonconsensual surgery develop subsequent mistrust in medical providers and avoidance of healthcare.

Moreover, the Pope’s document has been rumored to exist since 2019, and was confirmed in recent weeks by the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a close Pope Francis confidante, the AP reported.

Image credits: Simone Savoldi/Unsplash