Moments after speaking before a sea of families in Rome about the dangers of commercial surrogacy, an Italian reporter asked why I was being so vocal in a country where it is already illegal. Isn’t that like preaching to the choir, she wondered? While the notion of speaking to hundreds of thousands of people who […]
Yesterday, the Council of Europe rejected a report on surrogacy that proposed regulation of the practice rather than a full ban. This is excellent news for those of us who have been campaigning for so long to Stop Surrogacy Now in all forms and in all places. This comes at a time where Europe is […]
The hidden camera footage reveals the Indian restaurant is crowded, and the ambient noise of fellow diners all around makes it hard to hear. But Gianna Toboni, an investigative reporter from HBO’s documentary show VICE, slowly begins to understand what is being offered to her by a woman sitting across the table. Toboni is in India to […]
I can’t help but read many of the articles related to the Indian government’s recent ban on commercial international surrogacy with a certain amount of irony. “The move has dismayed childless couples worldwide,” noted one article in The Telegraph. Others referred to “the panic” caused by the decision. Another noted that this ban would lead […]
The Catholic Church is perceived to be anti-science. That perception is completely false, of course. The Church is one of the few institutions left that actually looks at human biology and acknowledges the facts. And I am not just talking about the fact that a new genetically distinct human organism is created when fertilization is […]
Dignity is a word that is creating a stir in some philosophical circles, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. For example, one writer tells his readers that “Dignity 1.0, the older conception shared by Christians, natural law theorists and others, refers to the idea that humans have ‘inherent worth of immeasurable […]
Pattharamon Janbua is a surrogate mother who carried twins for an Australian couple. Upon learning that one of the twins had Down syndrome, the couple pressed Janbua to get an abortion. She refused and the couple chose to abandon that child and take only the healthy baby. This is a chilling story, but one with a happy ending […]
After two weeks of media reports on baby Gammy, is difficult to discern which version of the story is the one we should believe. Is it true that the Australian couple, who used the services of a Thai “surrogate mom”, upon learning that one of the two children that the “surrogate mom” was expecting suffered […]
“A small error in the beginning leads to a multitude of errors in the end” – Aristotle, De Coelo The small error in this case is the assumption made long ago by the members of the United States Supreme Court that they had the power to play God. First, the court ignored the science on […]
I’m writing from Delhi, India, where I’ve spent the last week meeting with various experts and officials that work on the issue of surrogacy here. In short, it’s a booming enterprise, by some reports estimated to be worth $3 billion U.S. dollars. Medical tourism has been popular in India for over a decade now, but […]
Recently, Christopher White wrote a commentary on the ethical problems associated with “surrogate parenthood for money.” He argued that paying for surrogate parenting is actually a form of human trafficking. His position is an interesting one, particularly because he presents his perspective in the context of many surrogate mothers who have later regretted their decision to carry […]
There are those hushed, polite conversations when people wondered why Tag Romney and his wife, who already had three children naturally, chose to have three more children via gestational surrogacy. The celebrity surrogate pregnancy stories always raise more eyebrows. Why did Sarah Jessica Parker, already a proven birth mother, use another woman’s body to have […]
The Huffington Post reports that the Food and Drug Administration has been asked to approve creation of “genetically modified children.” The FDA announced a meeting aimed at analyzing the proposed practice of “oocyte modification in assisted reproduction for the prevention of transmission of mitochondrial disease or treatment of infertility.” In other words, a type of […]
Today’s Daily Mail features an article titled “Wombs for Rent” and praises the surrogacy enterprise as a means of “transforming the lives of poverty-stricken women” in India. India has been a hotspot for commercial surrogacy since the early 2000s, particularly for couples from the UK, Australia, and the United States looking to avoid the costly fees associated with surrogates […]
My taskmasters at the CBC never allow me to rest on my laurels. Fresh off several years of stellar prognosticating, I am now forced to answer the question: “But what have you predicted, lately?” Okay, let’s take a look. Oh! Oh my. Please remember, the following predictions are what I see happening. They do not […]
Can you believe a year has come and gone since I last told you what would happen, before it happened, in bioethics? Maybe it’s my increasing age, but time is passing too fast! So, how did I do? Not as well as in years past, but still an A-. Let’s take a look: The Affordable […]
Good science fiction tells a morality tale about the dangerous directions in which contemporary society is heading. For example, Brave New World—perhaps the most prescient novel ever written—warned against the dystopian impact that using biotechnology to perfect the human race would have on society. Similarly, the Dune novels—which feature a breeding device known as an […]
In Must Not See TV news, last night NBC debuted its latest attempt at humor: The New Normal, a 30 minute sitcom about a young, single mother who agrees to become a gay couple’s surrogate mother. In the trailer for The New Normal, there is a scene in which the gay couple is speaking to someone […]
When the news broke that Mitt and Ann Romney welcomed grandchildren numbers 17 and 18 this past Friday via “gestational surrogacy,” those of us here at CBC central—who oppose commercialized conception—wondered where the bottom is in these murky waters of assisted reproduction. Tagg Romney posted this on his facebook page after the twins were born: […]
We’re all well aware of the fact that the “adult entertainment” industry rakes in major profits by exploiting women and their bodies, but they aren’t the only ones. Recently, Rebecca Taylor explained how the cloning/embryonic stem cell research industry is dependent on women putting their bodies on the line in order to obtain the “raw materials” needed […]
