I’ll be in DC this week for a bunch of meetings, mostly speaking with people about a bill that provides $3.4 billion in additional care for vets. I am involved because the bill currently includes an amendment to provide IVF benefits to wounded vets. These sorts of policy battles always start out with a rough […]
Sperm donation, egg donation and surrogacy: Third party reproduction seems to be a “done deal” in Western society. Even ardently pro-life people do not seem to see the problems. Hey, these techniques are making babies, not killing them. So what could possibly go wrong? A lot of things can go very wrong. Let me describe […]
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 […]
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 […]
In 2011, Yale sociologist Rene Almeling published Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm, a fascinating book that details how sperm and egg banks do business. Of particular interest are the different ways potential sperm and egg donors are marketed to during the recruitment process. Egg donors are told they are “an angel” […]
I have to confess, I hadn’t heard of Sofia Vergara or her ex-fiance, Nick Loeb, until the frozen embryo custody battle broke in the news. For those, like me, who aren’t familiar with these two, Vergara is an actress, mostly known for her role in the TV show Modern Family, and Loeb is a businessman […]
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 […]
Recently in my state of California, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that, beginning in 2016, will alter birth certificates in a dramatic way. Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) authored Assembly Bill 1951, which amends the California Vital Records Birth Certificate law in order to “modernize” California birth certificates by allowing each parent to self-identify as mother, father, […]
I think future generations will look back on our insane notion of “reproductive rights,” and they will be horrified. Back in the 70s reproductive rights meant terminating a life you already started. Today it also means creating life however you see fit and tossing out whatever doesn’t suit your desires. So not only have we […]
Last week the New America Foundation hosted a conference on “The Future of Reproduction” in Washington, D.C. Despite a few exceptions, the event was pretty much one large cheerleading session in praise of reproductive technology. A few highlights: Dan Kois, co-Host of “Mom and Dad Are Fighting,” Slate’s parenting podcast, offered praise of preimplantation genetic […]
In our long stride toward the inevitable designer babies, the first manipulation has been the noble goal of creating babies free of the mitochondrial diseases carried by their mothers. This series will examine the issue rather thoroughly in four basic segments: 1. The basic cell biology involved. 2. The problem of defective mitochondria. 3. The […]
Creating children with sperm donation has gone on for a long time. In fact, the first documented case of a woman becoming pregnant by donor insemination was in 1884. A Quaker woman and her merchant husband, not able to conceive, approached Dr. William Pancoast of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. When Dr. Pancoast presented this […]
It’s July 2008 and I’m strapped to a surgical table as a fertility doctor siphons three dozen eggs out of my ovaries through a long needle. Blood is coming from between my legs, as the needle repeatedly perforates my vaginal walls en route to my ovaries in search of viable eggs. In the next room, […]
The recent report by transhumanist Zoltan Istvan that scientists are well on their way to successfully creating artificial wombs has caused a stir in a number of circles. Ectogenesis, the scientific name for the process, was once merely a product of fiction. For most of us, however, the reality of artificial wombs is something we […]
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 […]
IVF Worldwide is an expansive online community that prides itself on being “the largest and most comprehensive in-vitro fertilization (IVF)-focused website for doctors, embryologists, nurses, and social workers.” While it’s meant to serve as a resource for those within the industry—because make no mistake about it, that’s what it is, an industry—couples considering using IVF […]
If you are like me (you probably aren’t) and have your google alerts set for “egg donation,” “sperm donation,” and “surrogacy,” you will have seen that it was a bad press week for the field of reproductive medicine. Here are several stories that caught my eye. Risks to Mother and Child The Daily Mail reports […]
Today the phrase “from the beginning of his/her biological development” accurately defines when the life of an individual human being begins to exist; the terms “conception” or “fertilization” do not. We have learned this is so because the fact is that not all human beings begin through sexual means; some are reproduced asexually. This concept […]
A new graphic novel, Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag, chronicles the pregnancy journey of a lesbian named Teek and her partner, Vee. While the novel is fiction, it’s based on the author’s own experience parenting her son. It’s a humorous take on the subject of lesbian pregnancies with one reviewer noting “This […]
In vitro fertilization is one of many procedures listed as a specialty in the field of reproductive medicine. Everything from treating pregnancy to aborting children to birth control to treating infertility is included. “Infertility” is the inability of a couple to achieve pregnancy the natural way. It is this condition that first generated the interest […]
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 […]
