Making Life

This Week in Bioethics #106

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1. Surrogate Pregnancies are Different Our friend K, a labor and delivery nurse, wrote a summary overview of an important new study that appeared in the journal of Fertility and Sterility. While the study isn’t perfect, it is, as she says, a big deal. The bottom line is that gestational surrogacy pregnancies put both women […]

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This Week in Bioethics #103

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1. Pregnancy Outcomes for Surrogate Pregnancies are Significantly Different A recent journal article highlights a number of crucial differences between surrogate pregnancies and non-surrogate pregnancies.  2. Storage Issues at Fertility Clinics Two fertility clinics suffered failures in their frozen storage tanks last week. Reports by NBC, the Washington Post, and People magazine.   3. Romanticizing Double […]

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This Week in Bioethics #102

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1. Welcome to GATTACA The United Arab Emirates’ Khaleej Times reports on the near future of reproductive technologies. Genetic engineering of the embryo could mean that people will soon be able to produce ‘super babies.’ “People can start modifying embryos, for example, activating certain genes and replacing others or like removing all defective genes that […]

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Britni’s Experience as a Surrogate Mother

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Because of our films and how outspoken we’ve been about surrogacy—particularly through the #StopSurrogacyNow coalition—we are regularly contacted by women who find themselves in the midst of surrogacies that are in the process of going wrong or who are living with the aftermath of a situation that went wrong. Some of these women want to […]

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This Week in Bioethics #100

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To celebrate the 100th This Week in Bioethics (TWIB), Jennifer and I did a 10 minute Facebook live version of TWIB! 1. How Many? How many? This was Jennifer’s simple question in her testimony before the Washington State House Judiciary Committee yesterday morning. How many women . . . how many children . . . […]

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This Week in Bioethics #99

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To mark the 99th issue of This Week in Bioethics I decided to make a video version to accompany the written version. Take a few minutes to watch it and let us know what you think. 1. Surrogacy Legislation Debate in New Jersey A bill that would legalize commercial surrogacy in New Jersey was advanced […]

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This Week in Bioethics #95

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1. Jennifer in Washington State On Tuesday, Jennifer testified before the Washington State Senate’s Law & Justice Committee. They’re considering SB 6037, The Uniform Parentage Act, which would, among other things, legalize surrogacy in and encourage reproductive tourism to Washington State. In just over two minutes, Jennifer attempted to summarize the full scope of the […]

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A Small but Mighty Book—Renate Klein’s Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation

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Reviewed by Kallie Yeoman, MS, BSN, RN It is clear, even from the title—Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation—how Dr. Renate Klein feels about surrogacy. She has spent many years studying, writing, and educating on women’s health, reproductive technologies, and feminist philosophies, and she cofounded Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE). […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. Latest on the Sherri Shepherd Surrogacy Saga A Pennsylvania appeals court has ruled that TV personality and actress Sherri Shepherd cannot get out of the surrogacy contract into which she and her former husband entered. The couple split up during the surrogate’s pregnancy, and so Ms. Shepherd sought to get out of her commitment […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. Matching Gift Challenge On Monday we announced that some of our very generous donors are matching $30,000 in donations given between now and the end of 2017. The CBC (like most nonprofit organizations) relies heavily on end-of-year giving in order to start the new year on a strong footing. We have already raised $4,023 […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. We Won’t Back Down The CBC (like most nonprofit organizations) rely heavily on end-of-year giving in order to start the new year on a strong footing. We’ve had an amazing year, although one not without its difficulties. We’re up against powerful interests that profit handsomely from their exploitative work. We truly need your financial […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. #StopSurrogacyNow Jessica Allen’s surrogacy story picked up even more press this week: Washington Post, BBC, People magazine, Inside Edition, PopSugar, The Independent, LiveScience, Mom.me, and more. You may remember that she was pregnant with a baby for a Chinese couple and with her own child at the same time, and she had to fight […]

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A Case for Abolishing all Forms of Surrogacy

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Our friends at #StopSurrogacyNow have picked up and republished an article that tackles head-on the common idea that unpaid or “altruistic” surrogacy may be okay. This is an argument we often hear: it’s really the money that corrupts things, if surrogacy is done without the money or with only reimbursement for actual expenses — not […]

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Consuming Fertility

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The Washington Post recently ran an article outlining a whole range of ways in which the business of fertility is reaching new heights of consumerism as consumers go about consuming more and more fertility products and services. Would-be parents seeking donor eggs and sperm can pick and choose from long checklists of physical and intellectual […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. Another Surrogacy Nightmare Yesterday’s New York Post profiled a young California mother who served as a surrogate mother for a Chinese couple. When she saw the twin boys she’d delivered she said, “Wow! They look different.” One of the boys was Chinese, the other was half-white, half African-American, the child of Jessica and her […]

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Surrogacy: Messy and Complicated

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Today’s New York Post profiles Jessica Allen, a young mother from Perris, Calif., who served as a surrogate mother for a Chinese couple. Spoiler alert: this surrogacy case is particularly messy and complicated. Jessica carried and gave birth to twin boys, Mike and Max. Because the delivery was made via C-section, Jessica was not able […]

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An Absurd Fate: What Happens to Abandoned Embryos?

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it almost always starts with an emotional story. The latest situation is an embryo custody battle in Arizona. It highlights the depth of real human emotions connected to having children and building a family, and the ways in which human lives are affected by a justice […]

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Artificial Wombs: What’s Really Needed

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A recent article in Nature Communications announces the development of a kind of artificial womb (or extracorporeal gestational system). So far it has been used to further the development of premature lambs. Technology website Gizmodo breaks down the technical journal article in more understandable terms. The research team, led by Alan Flake from the Children’s […]

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