Jennifer Lahl, CBC President

Are Disabled Children Worth Less?

I read with bone-chilling despair “The Last Child of Down Syndrome” by Sarah Zhang in the December issue of The Atlantic magazine. The title alone conjured images of P.D. James’s novel, “The Children of Men,” which was made into a film, “Children of Men.” If you are unfamiliar with this story, I highly recommend it. […]

Read the full article →

Human Experimentation Without Consent Is Basis of a Growth Industry

That we would allow humans to be experimented on without their knowledge or consent sounds like something out of the past. But in the world of assisted reproduction, more commonly called in vitro fertilization (IVF), it happens by the tens of thousands each day, all around the world, to human embryos. Allow me to explain. IVF is […]

Read the full article →

With Surrogate Mothers, US Citizenship Is for Sale

The international surrogacy market is fraught with problems, but one major problem that goes largely unnoticed is that U.S. citizenship is being bought and sold to international couples who hire U.S. surrogate mothers to carry their children to birth. Here is a short primer on how one becomes a U.S. citizen. First, most Americans have birthright citizenship, meaning anyone […]

Read the full article →

Man’s Final Conquest

I recently read, “The Future of Everything: The Cutting Edge of Health,” in The Wall Street Journal. I was a pediatric critical care nurse for many years, working in high-tech health care, where we were always pushing the technology envelope while trying to stay on the right side of the razor-thin line of ethics. Could […]

Read the full article →

Are the Kids Alright?

For the little girl who seemed to have everything, little Monroe Christine Lewis is now front and center of a nasty separation and custody battle, and her father, Jeff Lewis, is reporting that she needs counseling. Monroe was born on Oct. 25, 2016, and is nearly 4 years old. She was the product of a four-party commercial contract […]

Read the full article →

‘Cuties’ Exposes the Rot in Our Culture

I wasn’t planning on watching the new Netflix movie, “Cuties,” but as I write and speak a lot about the best interests and rights of children, given all the controversy around this film, I thought I should comment. In order to comment more fully, that sadly required me to watch the hour and a half […]

Read the full article →

New Project in the Works!

Dear friends, What a rough year 2020 is proving to be! It is a contentious election year during the global Coronavirus pandemic. The long-term economic fallout will not be seen for years as businesses scramble to keep afloat and people try to eke out a living. Depression, suicide, and domestic violence are soaring as it […]

Read the full article →

Summer Reads: “Little Fires Everywhere”

Do you ever pick up a book that you know nothing about and just start reading?  That is what happened to me when I purchased Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.  I had heard some buzz about the TV show adaptation of the book on Hulu. Then I saw some comments on Twitter about the […]

Read the full article →

Giving for Impact

I have met Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, on two occasions. Both times, I invited him to do a public debate with our then Chairman of the Board, Dr. Nigel Cameron. The first debate, “The Debate of the Century: What Does it Mean to Be Human” can be viewed on […]

Read the full article →

Women As Guinea Pigs in Biotechnical Research

From remarks delivered at the Heritage Foundation’s recent panel, “Bioethics: What It Is and Why It Matters“ In 1985, just seven years after the birth of Louise Brown (1978), the world’s first ‘test tube’ baby, Gena Corea published her very important book titled, The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs. In […]

Read the full article →

Spreading our message across the U.S. and beyond!

We are falling right into the fall season here at the Center for Bioethics and Culture! We welcomed our ten new Paul Ramsey Fellows to the first meeting of their two-year fellowship, and boy are they an impressive group of young men and women. Our reading for this meeting was William May’s “The Physician’s Covenant: Images of […]

Read the full article →

Is Egg “Donation” and Surrogacy the Newest Form of Human Trafficking?

I’m in Spain at the time of this writing, where I have been invited to speak on the topic of “Reproductive Exploitation.” One of the slides in my talk made the claim that reproductive exploitation is the newest form of human trafficking. Another speaker at the conference, an attorney, disagreed with my claim. This attorney […]

Read the full article →

New project launching soon!

Boy how time flies! I hope you had a restful summer and were able to squeeze in a bit of vacation and time away. In our 24/7 world it seems harder and harder to unplug and summer just seems to fly by.  Things were especially busy over the summer for us at the CBC. Some […]

Read the full article →

Casualties of Surrogacy

This essay is adapted from remarks delivered at the Heritage Foundation. We have no business building a multi-billion-dollar fertility industry at the risk of the health and well-being of women and children. A woman’s body is not designed to carry another woman’s baby. The media and Hollywood celebrities, like Kim Kardashian and Jimmy Fallon, present […]

Read the full article →

Greetings from Down Under!

It’s been a very busy March for us at the CBC and I wanted to send you a quick update. The first week of March, I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland where I addressed an international group at the United Nations. I was invited to speak on a panel of experts where my role was commenting […]

Read the full article →

A Letter to NY Gov. Cuomo from Stop Surrogacy Now

This letter will be hand-delivered to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office. March 11, 2019 The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo Governor, State of New York Executive Chamber New York State Capitol Albany, NY 12224 Dear Governor Cuomo, We are writing to you as signers of the international group Stop Surrogacy Now. We number more than 10,000 and come […]

Read the full article →

Memo to New York State Senators: Commercial Surrogacy Undermines the Child-Parent Relationship

With a Democratic majority in both the New York Senate and Assembly, along with a Democratic Governor, victory for the surrogacy industry is within reach. A bill that would make commercial surrogacy contracts legal and enforceable in the Empire State has been slipped into the state’s 2019 budget, buried deep on page 392. On November […]

Read the full article →

2018 Winners and Losers

It’s that time of year again, when I look back over the past twelve months with an eye toward identifying those whose lives and contributions actively promoted and affirmed our shared human future (winners), and those who did not (losers). You can review last year’s picks here. Winners: Patrick T. Smith, Ph.D., will receive the […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →