Hungary’s bishops criticize government egg donation bill
A revised version of the bill is expected to be unveiled in 2026.
Hungary’s bishops have criticized a government bill to allow compensated foreign egg donation, in what commentators are describing as a rare public clash with the Orbán administration.
In a Dec. 3 statement, the Hungarian bishops’ conference called for the rejection of a bill that would authorize foreign egg donation and provide financial compensation to the donors.
Currently, Hungary only permits donation of oocytes — the scientific name for female egg cells — from relatives or close friends. Only a handful of such procedures are reported to take place annually. But each year, thousands of Hungarian women seek treatment in nearby countries such as the Czech Republic or Slovakia, in a practice dubbed “oocyte tourism.”
The Hungarian government introduced the bill after the country’s birth rate fell to record monthly low in June 2024, despite the state offering generous financial incentives to prospective parents.
In oocyte donation, women generally in their 20s donate mature eggs that are fertilized with sperm usually via in vitro fertilization, or IVF. One or more embryos are transferred to the recipient, while the remaining embryos are either frozen for future cycles or discarded.
The Hungarian bishops underlined that the practice contravened Catholic teaching, which stresses that a child’s best interests are safeguarded only by natural conception within marriage and firmly opposes the destruction of human embryos.
The bishops said: “Oocyte donation — and the experience of other countries where it has been introduced supports this — widely opens the way for surrogacy, the acquisition of a child ‘on demand,’ or access to children for same-sex couples.”
The current bill would not extend to same-sex couples or single people. The bill’s supporters argue that it would avoid commercializing the practice because it would cap compensation payments.
The bishops expressed support for alternative treatments for infertility in line with Catholic teaching, such as NaProTechnology.
They said: “The consequences of a wrong decision become embedded in social practice for decades. If we truly want to protect and help the family, we must not support paths that, in the long run, destroy the natural and divine order of the family itself.”
“We ask legislators, representatives of the scientific community, and all people of good will to truly take every correct step for the sake of having children, but while doing so, to always respect the child’s right to be conceived within marriage and to grow up in the love of their parents.”
Hungary, a country of around 9.6 million people neighboring Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine, has been led continuously since 2010 by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, leader of the Fidesz party. Orbán, a Calvinist, has presented Hungary as a defender of Christian values within the largely secular European Union, a supranational union of 27 member states.
A Dec. 5 analysis by the theologian Zoltán Csizmadia, published by the Hungarian Catholic website Szemlélek, said the bishops’ statement was a politically significant intervention.
“In recent years, the Hungarian Catholic leadership has rarely openly criticized the government’s bioethical or family policy decisions, even when they deviated from Church teaching,” Csizmadia wrote.
“This reaction also points to an emerging values-based tension between the government, which flies the flag of Christian Democratic identity, and the Catholic Church, a tension that has previously been masked by political caution.”
He added: “With this bill, the government is also stating that its previously proclaimed Christian value system is not absolute but an element that can be moved as the occasion demands. This not only affects the current issue but may have long-term consequences for the social role of the Church.”
“That a state decision is made against the Catholic Church on one of the most critical issues of Christian teaching can set a precedent: if no conflict arises now, it is even less likely later. The process is also a purification of values: a moment when political actors involuntarily reveal what they consider to be a genuine priority and what they use as an identity-forming communication tool.”
Members of Fidesz introduced the bill in the Hungarian Parliament in October as a proposed amendment to the country’s 1997 health care act. But despite passing its initial readings, the bill was removed from the parliamentary agenda Dec. 2, ahead of a scheduled committee hearing, amid internal ethical debates within Fidesz.
Péter Takács, Hungary’s State Secretary for Health, suggested a revised bill could be presented in early 2026, potentially after a parliamentary election scheduled for April 2026. The revisions would likely concern the question of compensation payments, rather than the practice itself.
The election will pit Orbán against Péter Magyar, leader of the opposition Tisza Party. Magyar is a former Fidesz politician with a Catholic background. Opinion polls put Tisza in the lead ahead of the 2026 election, but say Fidesz is narrowing the gap.