Some of the Most Important Work We Do

by Jennifer Lahl, CBC President on November 12, 2018

Patrick Smith

I am pleased to announce that Patrick T. Smith, Ph.D., will be the recipient of the 2019 Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics. Dr. Smith is Associate Research Professor of Theological Ethics and Bioethics; and Senior Fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Along with his appointment at the Divinity School, he is also […]

The Dangerous Effects of Surrogacy: A Review of “A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India”

by The Center for Bioethics and Culture on November 7, 2018

by K. Blaine The structure of the surrogacy market does not enhance individual freedom. Surrogate mothers are willing to abide by the rules imposed by the clinic and the intended parents in their desperation to bring their families out of poverty. Imagine you live in India. You live in extreme poverty—poverty like most Americans have […]

Paul Ramsey Award Winner 2019

Patrick Smith

The Center for Bioethics and Culture and the Paul Ramsey Award Nominating Committee are pleased to announce Patrick T. Smith, Ph.D., as the recipient of the 2019 Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics. Dr. Smith is Associate Research Professor of Theological Ethics and Bioethics; and Senior Fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. Along […]

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International Impact

hands holding globe

When we launched the #StopSurrogacyNow project in 2015, our goal was to bring together and mobilize a global group of women and men who understood the harms of surrogacy and who would work to end the practice of surrogacy entirely. One very important aspect of this worldwide work is making information about surrogacy as accessible […]

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Watch #BigFertility with Me

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On Tuesday, October 30, I will be hosting a screening of our latest documentary film, #BigFertility, at the CBC offices. If you are in or near the Bay Area, please come and join us! We’ll have plenty of refreshments, we’ll watch the film, and there will be an opportunity for Q&A. This will be a […]

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Surrogate Motherhood Does Not Create Relationships, It Tears Them Apart

statue of mother with child

Surrogacy does not serve human relationships. Surrogacy severs human relationships, which damages our shared human future. Karen, a friend who watches over the Facebook page for a film Jennifer Lahl and I made, “Anonymous Father’s Day,” recently posted a HuffPost Personal article titled, “I Chose To Be A Surrogate Mother. I Didn’t Know It Would Break My […]

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On the Road to Take On #BigFertility

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It’s always nerve-racking to premiere your film on the Big Screen. We focus-group test our films as we’re making them, getting as much feedback as we can to consider the thoughts and reactions of a regular audience. Early on, we knew we’d have an uphill battle fighting against #BigFertility with the story of a three-time […]

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What are People Saying about #BigFertility?

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I am so pleased with the response to our new film, #BigFertility: It’s All About The Money! At the premiere, audience comments included, “a complex issue but it’s hard to justify treating children as a commodities,” “I didn’t know how exploitative surrogacy was,” and “a gripping horror story.” We’ve also received a number of official […]

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#BigFertility Now Available for Rent or Purchase

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Today is the day! #BigFertility: It’s All About The Money is now available, worldwide, for rent or purchase. Watch (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bigfertility) and Share (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bigfertility) We have two requests: First, please watch the film. This is an important story of how the distorted version of fertility medicine that is #BigFertility preys upon people in need, and it […]

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New Documentary Explores the Business of Big Fertility, Finds It’s All About The Money

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San Francisco, CA/Sept. 13, 2018 — Jennifer Lahl and The Center for Bioethics and Culture, producers of the award-winning Eggsploitation (2013), Anonymous Father’s Day (2011), and Breeders: A Subclass of Women? (2014), announce the theatrical premiere of their new documentary film #BigFertility. Like Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, Big Fertility is what happens when an […]

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Are Mommies Safe? Maternal Morbidity and Mortality in the United States

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In July, Alison Young wrote a compelling piece for USA Today on maternal mortality in the United States. The article tagline alone would make any healthcare professional cringe: “Hospitals know how to protect mothers. They just aren’t doing it.” Ouch. I have to admit, as a labor and delivery nurse who genuinely cares about each […]

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Support the CBC’s Worldwide Work

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I hope your summer afforded you some rest and relaxation—time away from work to recharge your batteries is important for us all. We are, after all, truly human. No matter what the biotech enthusiasts envision for our future, thankfully, we are not machines! The gears were grinding away at CBC this summer as we finished […]

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Newly Updated Resource

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I’m really excited to share with you today a great, newly updated resource put together by our summer legal intern Lois. As you probably know from following our work, when it comes to surrogacy, the United States is a patchwork of laws. Some might describe it as a real mess. We’ve been tracking all of […]

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Paul Ramsey Institute Scholar and Fellows Mark Ramsey’s Legacy

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August 3, 2018 – San Francisco, CA This year marks the 50th anniversary of Paul Ramsey’s delivery of the Beecher Lectures at Yale University, which led to the publication of one of the seminal bioethics texts, Ramsey’s The Patient as Person. In recognition of this important milestone, Paul Ramsey Institute Scholar Gilbert Meilaender and Ramsey […]

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FREE on Amazon Prime!

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I’m pleased to announce that our award-winning film Eggsploitation is now available FREE on Amazon Prime! In fact, all of the films in our third-party reproduction trilogy are now available FREE to Amazon Prime members. This is something we’ve been working on for quite a while, and we are very glad that we can make […]

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“Myth-Busting” or Misguided? Forgetting the Baby in Surrogacy Research

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by Lois McLatchie, University of Kent, CBC Legal Intern In late 2015, a team of “myth-busting” researchers from the University of Kent collaborated with Surrogacy UK to disprove some “common misunderstandings” about Britain’s reproductive technology industry. Praising an altruistic model of the industry, the scholars hoped to present ideas for legal reform that “centre on […]

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More Reality than Science Fiction: A review of the novel Mother of Invention

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by Hannah Ens In the past few years, there has been a fair amount of publicity surrounding high-profile women who continued their demanding careers while pregnant. Scarlet Johansson discussed filming Avengers: Age of Ultron while pregnant, as did Gal Gadot for Wonder Woman. Netflix recently tweeted about how director Claire Scanlon had her second child […]

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Fully Funded . . . And Then Some!

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For those of you who read or watched my Friday "This Week in Bioethics" you know that with 25 hours to go, our Kickstarter project was 101% funded. The project closed on Saturday at noon, and we ended with 102% funding! A total of 89 people gave through Kickstarter, and several others gave offline. And, […]

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