It would be difficult to come up with a better example of our technocracy and throwaway culture in action: a same-sex couple in Ontario is suing the surrogate mother they hired to help produce a baby for them for refusing to kill the child at 22 weeks of gestation — an age at which he could have lived outside his mother. The reason? “Medical experts” told the would-be purchasers of the baby that he had a cleft lip and possibly had genetic abnormalities. The mother, who had been carrying him in the most intimate way possible for more than five months (and had been exchanging cellular material in the process), refused to kill her child and gave birth to a generally healthy boy, aside from the cleft lip. But now the purchasing couple is seeking hundreds of thousands in damages, saying that she failed to keep them informed, put the child “at risk,” caused emotional distress, and violated confidentiality. I’ve been writing about situations like this for two decades. This isn’t primarily a contract dispute, but rather a window into how surrogacy turns both women and children into commodities. The two males involved had to hire two biological mothers required for their project. Not just the surrogate mother, but the mother whose eggs they purchased for IVF. Having treated these women as products, it is hardly surprising that they treated the child as one as well. Once the child didn’t meet their quality-control expectations, they simply assumed they could discard him like garbage. The surrogate mother herself said she felt “used” and “thrown away” because the child wasn’t “perfect.” She was not valued by the same-sex couple or the broader culture in Canada as a person with inherent dignity. She was instead reduced to a rented uterus meant to be used to produce an outcome for someone else. Because of her profound connection to her son, she was not willing to subject him to unimaginably painful dismemberment (the likely fate of a prenatal child this far along) simply because he had a disability. Admirably, she stood up and refused to be used. We in the pro-life movement have made a concerted effort in recent years to focus on protecting and loving both mothers and their prenatal children. But notice how in the technocratic paradigm presumed in today’s re-production, the very concept of a mother simply falls out of the story. This little person was to come out of the technological project of two men. In an address to diplomats this past January, Pope Leo XIV said, “By transforming gestation into a negotiable service, this violates the dignity both of the child, who is reduced to a ‘product,’ and of the mother, exploiting her body and the generative process, and distorting the original relational calling of the family.” Both Pope Leo and Pope Francis have called for global bans on surrogacy. Pope Francis was particularly aggressive in his criticism: “I consider despicable 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.” Insisting that the gift of a child can “Never be the basis of a commercial contract,” he made an impassioned plea to “prohibit this practice universally.” This may seem like a far-out idea in Canada and the United States, the Wild West of violent and eugenic reproductive practices. But many other countries, including those that are very friendly to same-sex couples, have already recognized what is going on here and banned the practice. For instance, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain prohibit all forms of surrogacy, both commercial and altruistic. Countries like India, the U.K., and Australia have banned commercial surrogacy. Thailand, China, and other countries have passed strict limits, especially on commercial arrangements, which put economically vulnerable women at risk for exploitation. They reflect a growing international consensus that surrogacy commodifies women and children in ways no civilized society should tolerate. Canada and the United States are major outliers. Our technocratic reproductive practices are violent, eugenic, and reduce human beings to mere things to be discarded as trash. The U.S. recently celebrated the 250th birthday of a founding document that calls us to more fully live out the theological truth that all human beings are equal, not because of any traits they may or may not have, but because they share a nature created by God. This Ontario case should be a wake-up call. The United States and Canada must join the civilized world in banning these barbaric practices. Children are not defective merchandise. Women are not bodies to be rented out to the highest bidder. Disability doesn’t justify violence against children. No one has the right to purchase a child on the open market. Ban surrogacy now. *** Charles Camosy is professor of moral theology and bioethics at the Catholic University of America.