New Vatican Document: Abortion & Gender Ideology Violate Human Dignity

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WASHINGTON, D.C. April 12 (C-Fam) This week, the Vatican released a declaration reaffirming the Church’s condemnation of abortion, euthanasia, prostitution, and gender ideology as contrary to human dignity and not compatible with human rights.

The declaration “Dignitas infinita” draws from both religious and secular sources: its first two citations are a 2023 exhortation from Pope Francis and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948.  Given the Holy See’s status as a UN observer state with diplomatic relations with other countries and a participant in international human rights negotiations, the document addresses many of the controversial issues being discussed at the national and international level.

The Catholic Church’s position on abortion is clearly reiterated, with an acknowledgment that “a widespread use of ambiguous terminology” serves to “tends to hide abortion’s true nature and to attenuate its seriousness in public opinion.”

The document condemns emerging attacks on the dignity of human life such as euthanasia and assisted suicide.  It also reaffirms the fact that gestational surrogacy is an affront to the dignity and rights of both mothers and children, an issue that is an emerging priority of Pope Francis, who called for a global ban on surrogacy earlier this year.  As the declaration states, “acknowledging the dignity of the human person also entails recognizing every dimension of the dignity of the conjugal union and of human procreation.”

On the subject of gender ideology, the declaration rejects sex-change interventions as “threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”  In the same section on gender theory, the document affirms the rights of all persons “regardless of sexual orientation” and condemns the criminalization of persons “solely because of their sexual orientation,” without clearly differentiating between inclinations and actions.

“Dignitas infinita” affirms the rights of workers while denouncing prostitution alongside human trafficking and other dehumanizing practices, in contrast to activists seeking to legitimize the concept of “sex work.”

The document’s clear denunciation of abortion and transgenderism prompted disappointment from the dissident organization Catholics for Choice, which has campaigned for the removal of the Holy See’s diplomatic status at the UN.

Dissident LGBTQ advocacy groups lobbying for a change in the Church’s teachings were outraged at the document, warning that it would lead to the deaths of transgender-identified people.  Meanwhile, Jesuit Fr. James Martin, who has advocated for the softening of the Church’s position toward LGBTQ-identified people, expressed gratitude for its criticism of the criminalization of homosexuality.  President Joe Biden, described as a “devout Catholic” by the Associated Press, had a similar reaction while ignoring the sections denouncing abortion and transgenderism, which his administration has been actively promoting both domestically and abroad since his inauguration.

The document acknowledges the ongoing effort by activists—including those in the UN system—to hijack human rights as they have been recognized internationally: “Regrettably, in recent decades, attempts have been made to introduce new rights that are neither fully consistent with those originally defined nor always acceptable,” which leads to “instances of ideological colonization, in which gender theory plays a central role” and “is extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”

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