New Challenges for the Orthodox Canon Law: Surrogate Motherhood, Assisted Reproduction, and Gender Reassignment
New Challenges for the Orthodox Canon Law: Surrogate Motherhood, Assisted Reproduction, and Gender Reassignment

Summary/Abstract: This article presents a pioneering challenge to yet unexplored areas of Canon Law, namely the impediments to marriage that might result from surrogacy and assisted fertilization; and the baptism and administration of the holy mysteries and the hierurgies to those who have had gender reassignment. These themes are pressing because medical techniques continue to advance, and in their pastoral work, Orthodox clerics are confronted with concrete situations for which there are no canonical answers. This paper is, therefore, an analysis of the implications of these issues and evaluation of the potential application of the Church doctrine to them, and, at the same time, an invitation to an open debate, with the aim of awakening interest in these unexplored themes among canonists.

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