The Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s governing body, the Holy Synod, has spoken out against in vitro fertilisation and surrogate motherhood as clearly at odds with the Orthodox Christian understanding of the origin and meaning of human life.
 
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church said that it did not deny the scientific achievements involved, but said that it was clear that assisted reproduction showed that families with fertility problems had lost their Christian hope. 
 
In the opinion of the Holy Synod, this amounted to a severe form of "impiety and blasphemy."
 
The Synod said that it condemned in vitro fertilisation because the church had "extreme reservations about any human intervention against the will of God".

According to the church, surrogacy and in vitro fertilisation not only undermine the foundations of the family, but make it possible for people in same-sex marriages or homosexual households – as the church put it – to produce a child from a single parent.

The Holy Synod called on families with fertility problems to pass their love on to children deprived of parental care instead of resorting to assisted reproduction.
 
The church’s comments come against a background of further evidence of Bulgaria’s continuing demographic decline. Overall, the country’s birthrate has been falling since 1950.
 
After 2003, the birthrate began to rise, but dropped again in 2010, when the number was 5000 less than in 2009. In 2011, the number of births was about 5000 less than in 2010, adding up to about 69 000.