The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network

Recently, a colleague sent me a new report published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, which is the professional journal of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. The report is a retrospective cohort study on all assisted reproductive technology cycles reported to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology via their Clinic Outcome Reporting Systems. Data was gathered on embryo transfers done to U.S. gestational surrogates from 2014 to 2020 and compared surrogacy between surrogates and commissioning parents in both domestic and international arrangements.

First, it struck me as strange, that the report referred to the patients who were in fact the intended parents. Seems to me the surrogate mother and by extension, the baby(s) she carried would be the patient. But this is just another example of diminishing the mother-child dyad and centering the moneyed interests as the focus of the report.
The actual results were striking too, in reporting not only the rise in international purchasing parents using American women, but also who these people are who are hiring American women.

Of 40,177 embryos transferred during 2014 to 2020, 32% of these arrangements were foreign contracts. In 2014, the figure was 22%. In 2019, it was 39.8%. And then in 2020, the figure decreased to 31.8%, which was probably due, in part, to the Covid travel bans. The profile of the international intended parent(s):

• More likely to be a male (41.3%)
  Largely from China (41.7%) then France (9.2%) and Spain (8.5%)
• U.S. gestational carriers for international arrangements were younger than 30 years (42.8%)
• Cycles for international arrangements more often used donor eggs (67.1%)
• More often used introcytoplasmic sperm injection (67.1%)
• Preimplantation genetic testing used (79.0%)

As many countries prohibit surrogacy, these restrictive (and good) laws only encourage the explosion in Big Fertility here in the U.S. I can see all sorts of ethical and legal risks in the role the U.S. plays in the international reproductive tourism landscape. First, it should be a red flag that many of these arrangements are with single men. My pedophile, baby trafficking radar is on high alert. Second, the high percentage of Chinese nationals hiring women to buy a baby that has the bonus of U.S. citizenship, what is commonly referred to as “anchor babies.” As we fight for the abolition of the baby trade, we would do well, to close our borders to these international nefarious arrangements that exploit women at home. What a big dent we could make in the multi-billion-dollar baby markets if we just closed our borders. Seems like something our State Department should investigate.

The post The Rise of International Gestational Surrogacy in the U.S. appeared first on The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network.

My thanks to the Casablanca Declaration for your kind invitation to be with you at this historic moment in surrogacy law.

I’ve been asked to speak today on The Market Based on the Exploitation of Women – being from California, I have a front seat on what this market, that I call Big Fertility, looks like. The laws in California that govern the selling of eggs and the renting of wombs, protect the monied interests of the Baby Markets. The agencies. The lawyers. The brokers. The fertility doctors. And most importantly, the purchasing parents. 

Most recently, we had a horrific surrogacy case break in the news in the United States.  A veterinarian in Chicago has been accused of distributing child pornography and detailing his plans to sexually assault his unborn child, carried by a California surrogate, in messages he shared online.  What will become of this child once it is born, we do not know. What we do know is legally/contractually, she has no claim to this baby once she gives birth.  I can’t imagine the trauma this surrogate mother is experiencing, knowing that in her thinking she was “helping to build a family” she was in fact, helping a child predator molest a little baby.  I’ve been asked, “will the surrogate be able to keep the baby?”  Sadly, I don’t know and I don’t know if she would even want to.  Many surrogates do surrogacy first for money, not to have more children.  And it is common legal practice, in the United States, that before a surrogate mother is even pregnant, she legally severs her maternal rights or any claim to the child she has been paid to gestate. The market dictates that the child is the product being ordered, bought, sold, and paid for and the woman is just the vessel to fulfill this transaction.

Here is another story from Linda, a California surrogate.

Linda is a two-time surrogate. As is common, her first surrogacy arrangement, according to Linda went without any problems, so as a young married mother, with her own children, she decided to do another surrogacy.  This time the contract was between her and a couple from China. During her pregnancy, carrying twins for this couple, the purchasing parents told Linda that they were now getting a divorce and wanted Linda to terminate the pregnancy. They told her they would pay her an additional $80,000 to do this.  Linda was shocked and offered to adopt the twins once they were born. The purchasing mother, who was quite wealthy explained that she didn’t want her children to be raised in a lower income household.  Linda refused the termination, gave birth to the twins.  She does not know the end of the story but was told the little boy twin was given up for adoption but the Chinese mother kept the little girl.  Linda now struggles with PTSD because of the trauma of her surrogate pregnancy.

A whistleblower contacted me once to tell me about what was going on at the California agency where she worked. She had been hired to work only with their VIP clients. I asked her who these VIP clients were and she said, “Oh they come from China and they have buckets of cash!”.  She described how it was common that they would get three surrogates pregnant at a time and once pregnancies were confirmed along with sex of the babies and if it was a case of twins, then they would decide which pregnancy to keep and which two women would be told to terminate the pregnancy.  She said, once an ultrasound appeared to show a baby was missing a finger, so the surrogate had to terminate the pregnancy since the baby was defective. When you treat human reproduction as a financial transactional market, these sorts of abuses happen regularly.

Another California surrogate who was hired to carry twins for a couple in China suffered more trauma when she delivered the twins.  The purchasing parents were mad that they didn’t get the babies they ordered and demanded the surrogate pay back half of the costs.  They requested $5000 be returned for the baby they didn’t order. They wanted her to pay $3000 to share the cost of the cesarean section required to deliver a twin birth and wanted the surrogate to pay them $5000 for “mental damage” since they did not receive what they ordered and paid for. Of course the surrogate did not have this money as she had spent the compensation for the pregnancy to cover her bills each month.

The list of casualties from surrogacy in the U.S. is long and growing. 

We have had surrogate mothers in the US die.  Sometimes even the babies they carry for the purchasing parents have died too.

There have been two surrogate mother deaths in California that we know of.

Michelle Reaves – mother of two – died, amniotic fluid embolism. Michelle’s husband lost his wife and their two sons lost their mother.

Crystal Wilhite – also mother of two – died of complications from her surrogate pregnancy, again leaving her husband a widow and their two children motherless.

Brooke Brown was pregnant with twins, being paid by a couple in Spain to carry their babies. Brooke and the twins died – a full term pregnancy that died of emergency complications, leaving Brooke’s husband a widow and their 3 sons without a mother.

Lydia Cox – a wife and mother – died like Michelle Reaves, from an amniotic fluid embolism.

Some surrogate mothers who die are nameless and referred to only as “Jane Doe”.  I only discover these deaths when I discover a death announcement online which is associated with fundraising campaign to help provide financial support for motherless children.  When Brooke Brown died, her “surro sisters” couldn’t even raise their $10,000 goal.

What is the Solution?  Big Fertility wants regulation.  While those of us here today call for a total abolition of renting wombs and buying children.  To the regulators I ask:

How do you pass laws that will regulate surrogacy so that you prevent health risks to mother and child?

How do you regulate to prevent trauma such as PTSD and depression and anxiety, to mother and child?

How do you regulate to prevent the death to women and children?  What law could our lawmakers write and pass that would save lives?

How many women and how many children need to be harmed or died before the rest of the world stands with us to Stop Surrogacy Now?!

I will close with thanking the Italian Government and Prime Minister Meloni for doing the right thing and being the example to the world on how to protect women and children. Let us resolve to Stop Surrogacy Now.

The post Founder Jennifer Lahl’s Speech on Surrogacy to the Casablanca Declaration appeared first on The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network.

After birth, Gloria desired privacy away from anyone besides her own family. It was here that a nurse hesitantly approached Gloria with a post -it note, “she handed it to me and it just said, ‘thank you’ and that was it.” 

 From then on “the agency never came to see me. They called here and there, but again, I wasn’t really their issue anymore. They got their money.”

 Gloria continued to bleed for 19 weeks after delivery. “We’re talking huge blood clots, the kind that they tell you if you’re passing these, you need to come to the hospital immediately.” She struggled to get proper care. That is, until the IPs needed something from her: her birth certificate.

“I was turned away every time… It felt like ‘look, you delivered, you’re not our issue anymore’… I was begging for permission to go see an out of network OB and was denied every time. Until the issue of the birth certificate came up. The parents decided halfway through my pregnancy that after the baby was born, they were going to move to Spain and because the father is a Spanish citizen, the baby qualifies for dual citizenship.” However, in Spain, surrogacy is illegal. The IPs needed Gloria’s original birth certificate for the Spanish Embassy. She refused. It wasn’t in her contract and not something she felt comfortable giving to the IPs.  Then, the IP’s lawyer offered Gloria the money she needed for a second opinion, that is if she handed over her birth certificate immediately. 

 Gloria refused, and her mental health declined. 

Throughout her entire “journey” Gloria was pressured and gaslit and now she was denied access to support networks and support meetings. She was used, silenced, and ignored. 

 “It actually destroyed me… Once I delivered, once the bleeding finally stopped, it’s almost like the world caved in on me. I had this moment of realization of, ‘oh my God, what the hell just happened to me?’ I was dismissed. I was treated like garbage. I was talked to in such a disgusting way. I was sent pictures of my house by the intended mother. I lived in a state of, ‘Is she watching me right now? Is she stalking me?’ I absolutely snapped and I had to check myself into a mental health facility because I stopped functioning.”

 Gloria tells me: 

 When I was disappearing into the hospitals, my youngest child, who was five at the time, kept running into the room every morning to check if I was still there… I felt horrible that I would do this to my family. I felt like I was contributing to an industry that might not have the best interest of the surrogates, regardless of how they paint it to you and how they sell it to you. I just felt so lost and I was terrified to speak out because I know the heat that comes from this multi-billion-dollar industry when you try to stand up against it.

 My marriage went through the ringer. And then to have this thought of, okay, when I deliver, it’ll be over. And that wasn’t the case. I am still dealing with medical bills and, and you know, my mental health. I will forever be impacted by this. I’m on antidepressants. I’m on mood stabilizers. I go to therapy once a week. Um, my children are in therapy. It just feels like I can’t move on from that. And it’s, it’s like I’m being crushed slowly.

When I asked Gloria if she felt like the agency or anyone else adequately informed her of what could happen during a surrogate pregnancy, Gloria responded: 

 Absolutely not. Absolutely not. One of the things that they do go over is the risk of losing your life, the risk of possibly losing your reproductive organs. And there’s a set price list for any reproductive organ that you lose. I think it’s crazy because how do you really put a price on your fallopian tubes, your ovary? How do you put a price on a full hysterectomy? The intended parents are required in the state of California to pull out an insurance policy for you in case of death. However, what they don’t tell you is the intended parents can add themselves to that policy. So your family will not get the full amount of money that that policy is worth sometimes.

Finally, I asked Gloria what she would want those mothers considering becoming a surrogate mother to know about the industry. We’ll end on her response as it should be echoed through the world and deserves a standing ovation: 

I would want them to know that it’s not just you going through this. It’s your entire family. Your body is going to change forever. Whether it’s a good experience or a bad experience… Everything in your life is now controlled by the [intended] parents and because agencies are so terrified of looking bad, they will scare you into compliance. And you have to be ready to be nothing but a womb, and I don’t think women are told the reality of that. You do not exist… You might possibly be putting your family and children through the ringer for the sake of, you know, a few thousand dollars and it’s just ultimately, you can’t put a price on it.

I am irreplaceable. You are irreplaceable to the role that you play for your family. You are a mother before you are a surrogate. 

Watch the full interview with Gloria on our YouTube channel.

This is part five of a five part series. Over the several weeks we will be releasing a write-up based off of our exclusive interview with Gloria. 

The post Gloria’s Surrogacy Story: Road to Recovery & Warning to Others appeared first on The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network.

The post Lost Boys Screening and Panel Discussion in London, May 29th appeared first on The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network.

With this pregnancy came a wave of complications she had never experienced before. The first was extreme nausea and morning sickness with an eventual diagnosis of hyperemesis gravidarum. “You’re throwing up all day long, you lose five percent of your body weight almost immediately, you can’t drink water, you can’t eat anything, and it was horrible.” Gloria had to leave her family for hours at a time to visit hospital triage rooms to receive treatment and IV hydration. Not receiving the care she needed from the insurance policy that was provided “set forward this emotion” of “having a mental breakdown.” 

 Adding to the stress of her physical condition and not being able to care for her family at home, Gloria was also “told that the dad was not happy he had a boy”. An added detail that would make anyone hoping to provide a dream child disheartened and emotional. Can you imagine being pregnant with someone else’s dream child, feeling as if you are giving someone a gift of life, and the father is upset about the child’s sex? 

 Gloria’s pregnancy continued, but in the second trimester more complications began. Gloria found herself in a situation where taking care of herself and the pregnancy while trying to abide by her contract and insurance restrictions became increasingly difficult: 

“The agency has a lot of rules. Everything that I do has to come with a written note from the OB, or I’m in breach of contract.” She recalls her treating physician encouraging her to take care of herself during this pregnancy, saying, “‘You’re a grown woman. You’re a mother. You’ve been pregnant before. If you feel like you need to go do something, then do it. As long as it follows the pregnancy guidelines, you should be allowed to do it.’”  Gloria continued, “Unfortunately, that’s just not how the contracts are written. And if I do anything on my own, I am in complete breach of contract.” 

Gloria was not able to operate under the same autonomy that a normal patient would have in their own medical setting. She had signed away those basic rights under her contract. Gloria had no protections. In fact, the intended mother had requested Gloria’s private patient healthcare portal. The OB had declined this request, but the agency had Gloria’s password and could access it at any time. 

At 28 weeks pregnant, Gloria went into preterm labor. Able to sustain the pregnancy longer, at 32 weeks pregnant, Gloria wakes up in her home “covered in blood” and is “rushed to the hospital of my contract,” but due to contract and insurance confusion she is denied care and sent to another facility an hour from her home. Desperate, Gloria reached out to the lawyer that assisted her during her contract and, out of kindness, the lawyer informed Gloria that she had a “right to sign yourself out and go to any hospital that’s willing to treat you and put you first.” 

 Gloria did just that: 

 I… signed myself out and made it back to the hospital that was in contract. I explained to them the situation saying, ‘look, I’m a surrogate, this, this policy that I have hasn’t helped me the entire time, I have hyperemesis, I, I can’t keep holding on to this baby, I’m gonna die.’ So then they said, ‘we’ve done everything we can, we’ve given you the shots, we, we’ve tried to stop your labor multiple times, it’s not stopping, we’re just gonna let you have this baby.’ So they stopped my medicine on a Sunday and by Monday at 4 a.m. I was in full blown labor.

 Meanwhile, it was expected that Gloria updates the IPs, “this entire time I am supposed to be updating the parents on what’s going on, even though I am focused on not dying because my kids need me. I have to be the one texting them.  I remember reaching out to the caseworker and I was like,’ What do you do?’ You know, ‘where are you at?’ I’m trying not to die and now it’s my job to make sure that they’re updated.” 

 The intended parents were unresponsive, “They did not text me back the entire time I was in labor… When it was time to push, the OB said, where are they? What are we doing with baby afterwards?” It was decided that the baby would go to the nursery and focus was placed back on Gloria’s labor and bleeding.  

 Gloria gave birth vaginally at 34 weeks. 

This is part four of a five part series. Over the several weeks we will be releasing a write-up based off of our exclusive interview with Gloria. 

Watch the full interview with Gloria on our YouThttps://youtu.be/8JZR09oCxg8ube channel.

The post Gloria’s Surrogacy Story: Pregnancy & Birth appeared first on The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network.

The first ever public screening of “The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood”, directed and produced by Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell, took place on 9 March at the Annual Conference of the Scottish Union for Education (SUE) in Glasgow, Scotland.

SUE campaigns to replace indoctrination with education in Scottish schools and is battling valiantly against the woke, pro-gender-ideology Scottish National Party Government. The conference included sessions such as “What’s wrong with Scottish Education?,” “Challenging transgender ideology in the classroom,” and “Education not Indoctrination: Where do we go from here?” 

As the film’s co-writer and the European Special Consultant at the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, I was invited to attend the screening and speak on the discussion panel. The chairman asked me to introduce the documentary, which is Jennifer Lahl’s eleventh film and the third in her trilogy that deals with the harms being caused by the medical promotion of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries. The session was well-attended, the film was positively received, and the ensuing discussion was energetic and insightful.

The panel chairman, Joe Bryce, a lawyer and passionate campaigner for gay rights and for the protection of boys and young men from gender ideology, began the discussion by declaring his revulsion at the so-called conversion therapy ban legislation that the Scottish Government is intending to introduce, condemning it as homophobic legislation that will lead to the transitioning of young gay people and the castration of young gay males: a “trans the gay away” measure that is far worse than anything that opponents of gay rights in earlier decades ever tried to inflict on gay people, and a measure that will also set many other vulnerable young people on a pathway to sterilisation and amputations. 

Dr Jenny Cunningham, also the speaker at an earlier session entitled “Challenging transgender ideology in the classroom”, addressed some of the serious questions raised by the audience in this session, adding to what she had said in her earlier session. Jenny is a retired community paediatrician, with expertise in neurodevelopmental disorders and autism diagnostic assessment. She is a board member of the Scottish Union for Education and authored the SUE pamphlet, “Transgender ideology in Scottish schools: what’s wrong with government guidance?”

Jenny identified the scandal of gender-affirming “therapy” that is promoted by the Scottish Government and adopted by Scotland’s only GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) clinic and associated services, where an extremely harmful approach is the norm that disregards the very large proportion of referred children who suffer from mental illnesses or neurological disorders, such as autism (representing 35% of referrals to the GIDS clinic), as well as a very large number of “looked-after” children and of children with trauma.  

Furthermore, almost 80% of young people who go through transitioning are actually same-sex attracted, and if they were left alone instead of being subjected to transitioning, then a large number would move beyond their gender dysphoria and come to terms with being gay or lesbian. The unwillingness to consider whether the problems with which young people present may have nothing at all to do with thoughts and feelings about “gender” is very alarming. 

Jenny spoke about the “affirmative approach” to young people who present for gender identity services, which starts from the position that their self-understanding with regard to their gender identity should be affirmed. It is perfectly natural for children to be anxious about puberty, but nearly every young person on puberty blockers will go on to take cross-sex hormones, followed by the possibility of amputations. This is an extremely harmful approach that has been very widely adopted by gender identity services in Scotland. This approach is particularly destructive given that 60-80% of children with a formal gender dysphoria diagnosis will find that their feelings resolve during adolescence if they are simply supported without any attempt to transition them, socially or otherwise. 

During my own replies to audience questions, I responded to the question “How do we fight back?” by suggesting that, in my view, it will be the parents who ultimately stop the march of gender ideology in its tracks, given the natural instinct of parents to protect their children from harm. I also promoted the value of challenging the oppressive state and establishment enforcement of gender ideology by encouraging more and more people to “come out” as opponents, in the same way that the early gay rights movement encouraged gay people to “come out” as a political act to challenge stereotypes, establish visibility, embolden others to do the same, and to protest against injustice. 

The theme of “toxic masculinity” and of the potential harm caused to boys by over-reaching blanket negative narratives about males had also been picked up from the film by the audience, and I spoke about the shame and guilt that sexual feelings have the potential to evoke, especially in young males going through the intense storm of puberty, stating that it was important for people to develop an accepting attitude towards their sexual feelings, combined with an ethical approach to how they are expressed. I contrasted this with the starkly anti-sexual culture of the gender ideology movement, where people are encouraged to make themselves anorgasmic and sexually numb as a result of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital amputations. 

Readers who would like to know more about the work and current campaigns of the Scottish Union for Education might like to read this Substack article, written by SUE’s Chairman, Dr Stuart Waiton: Scotland’s schools: where indoctrination trumps education. A very powerful feeling of determination, enthusiasm, and comradeship pervaded SUE’s conference, and we are very grateful for their invitation to screen and promote our new film. SUE is a dynamic, effective, and inspirational organisation that certainly has the potential to inspire people in other countries and states to set up their own Unions for Education in an attempt to protect child safeguarding and replace indoctrination with education in schools. 

The post “The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood” screened in Glasgow at an educational conference opposing indoctrination in schools appeared first on The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network.