This webpage is http://www.thelizlibrary.org/surrogacy/index.html
 GESTATIONAL SURROGACY
|
|
The Effects of Pregnancy http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/004.htm The Risks of Egg Donation http://www.thelizlibrary.org/surrogacy/risks-of-egg-donation.html 
The
New Sexual Predators
by Alana S. Newman, 09/12 Witherspoon Institute
PDF
"Value depends on scarcity. In the world of human reproduction, the most valuable entity is the fertile female -- specifically, her eggs and her womb. The fierce politics surrounding female fecundity and women's reproductive rights rests not only on a woman's ability to create new life, but also on the incredible amount of commitment and risk involved when her eggs and her womb are accessed for procreation. Since women are fertile for a shorter period than men, since gestation takes forty long weeks, and since labor and delivery pose life-threatening risks, young women always will face disproportionately high demands for access to their bodies. But those demands are rising in unexpected ways, and from unexpected people..." 
Don't
-- Eggsploitation interview with Jennifer Lahl
PDF
"I grew up in foster care and aged out at 18 without ever having a family. I was a good kid, talented in the arts and academics. I worked hard with the hope that a family would want me. I was never adopted so needless to say I've been desperate to be a part of a family my entire life. ...A few years ago, I gave my eggs to good friends with the naive belief that this was a way for me to be part of a family -- and I would even have a genetic connection! I was promised that I would always be part of the family and the child's life. I was told that I was 'always meant to be part of their family and that their family never felt complete until I came along.'... I thought, 'When would I ever have a chance to make such a huge difference in someone's life again?' And I would be part of a family too. How could I not do it? I was so eager for love and had no one looking out for my best interests which made me easily exploited, even if unintentionally..." The Other Side of Surrogacy: What does it take... to carry another's baby? by Sarah Block "...but we're talking about gestational surrogacy, I said. 'That is so beside the point,' she retorted. But the surrogate has no genetic connection; the surrogate is not the mother. Wrong, she said. 'If you are pregnant with a baby, you are the mother of the baby that you're carrying. End of discussion. The nutrients, the blood supply, the sounds, the sweep of the body. That's not somebody standing in for somebody else to that baby. That's the only mother that baby has.' My own grandmother seconded this with a stark visual. She carried my twin aunts and somehow only gained four pounds. 'They were eating me, basically. You're going to tell a woman that her body is feeding these babies and they're not hers?'..." Mothers for Hire by Amrit Dhillon PDF Egg Donation and Exploitation of Young Women: Death and Infertility 
Surrogacy in America by the Council for Responsible Genetics LBGT Demands For Other People's Children Are Misogynistic by Rivka Edelman PDF Oh Baby Baby: The Problem of Surrogacy by Matthew Tieu PDF Surrogacy: Pregnancy and Babies in the Modern World by Matthew Tieu PDF Abuses of Women's Human Rights in Third Party Reproduction by Kathleen Sloan PDF Breeders: How Gay Men Destroyed the Left by Robert Oscar Lopez, 03/11/14 PDF Reproductive Predators PDF Wombs for Rent? Gestational Surrogacy and... the Global Market" by Rachel Blatt PDF Pregnant surrogates "left in the lurch", RCMP raids fertility business 02/12 National Post PDF Illegal Surrogacy Operation the "Tip of the Iceberg" 03/12 Psychology Today PDF Surrogate mother dies of complications 05/12 India Times PDF 17-year-old egg donor dead; fertility center questioned 07/12 Indian Express PDF Surrogate mum dies after giving birth 01/05 Daily Mail UK PDF IVF now a leading cause of maternal mortality in Britain 08/12 Aljazeera UK PDF Egg donor Louise now can't have her own child 09/12 MailOnline PDF "On September 9, 2000, Louise received a phone call from a nurse at St. Barts telling her that a baby boy had just been born, conceived from an egg Louise had donated. The nurse wasn't able to give her any further details, and it was only when Louise put the phone down that the full implications of what she had done sunk in..."Christie's veto of NJ gestational surrogacy law was right call by Kathleen Sloan PDF Statement of the American Congress of Gynecologists and Obstetricians by ACOG PDF Babies in Limbo: Laws Outpaced by Fertility Advances WaPo (1998) Science on the Ethical Frontier PDF Surrogates and Their Discontents by Christopher White PDF Popular IVF treatment found to double birth defects by Jo McFarlane PDF Surrogate stuck with twins when couple backs out by Heloise Archambault PDF Sperm donor of 43 passed on genetic defect by Hilary White, 09/12 LifeSiteNews PDF Research: Congenital Malformations Associated with Assisted Reproductive Technology: A California Statewide Analysis by Lorraine I. Kelley-Quon, M.D., et al., American Academny of Pediatrics, paper presented 10/12. PDF "IVF independently contributes a significant risk of congenital malformation in addition to known maternal factors. In particular, defects of the eye, heart and genitourinary system are more likely in infants born after IVF..."IVF Linked to More Birth Defects by Alexandra Sifferlin, 10/12 Time PDF Ethics Debate: Assembly Line Embryos by Alan Zarembo, 11/12 LATimes PDF What about embryonic stem cell research? It also requires the harvesting of astronomical numbers of eggs from young women. Watch the video clips at http://www.linesthatdivide.com/. Going too far? Making and Selling Designer Human Beings Outright (For sale: Donor embryos newest addition to world of artificial procreation) by Sharon Kirkey, 12/12 Postmedia News PDF Research: Children born through reproductive donation: a longitudinal study of psychological adjustment. Golombok, S., Blake, L., Casey, P., Roman, G. and Jadva, V. (2012), Children born through reproductive donation: a longitudinal study of psychological adjustment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Parenting and children's adjustment were examined in 30 surrogacy families, 31 egg donation families, 35 donor insemination families, and 53 natural conception families... Although children born through reproductive donation obtained SDQ scores within the normal range, surrogacy children showed higher levels of adjustment difficulties at age 7 than children conceived by gamete donation. Mothers who had kept their child's origins secret showed elevated levels of distress. However, maternal distress had a more negative impact on children who were aware of their origins. The absence of a gestational connection to the mother may be more problematic for children than the absence of a genetic link.Surrogacy exposed by Kathleen Parker, 05/24/13. Washington Post PDF "...While no one wishes to cause pain to people who, for whatever reason, can't have a child on their own, there are more compelling principles and consequences in play. Human babies are not things; their mothers are not ovens. But bartering and selling babies-to-order sure make them seem that way. By turning the miracle of life into a profit-driven, state-regulated industry, the stork begins to resemble a vulture." |
|
Lisa Macci's Justice Hour Radio Shows on these topics:
Aug 21, 2012 - SurrogateParenting.wma or SurrogateParenting.mp3 - Attorney Elizabeth Kates discusses the lesbian in-vitro custody case scheduled to go before the Florida Supreme Court in October 2012. This unique case involves two lesbian partners who used in-vitro fertilization to have a child and later separated. The fertilized egg of one woman was implanted in her then-partner, who gave birth. A legal battle over parental rights began when the woman who gave birth stopped allowing her girlfriend to have contact with the child. 
The 5th District Court of Appeal last year ruled that
the woman who provided the fertilized egg should have parental rights,
which led to the dispute going to the Supreme Court.
Nov 24, 2012 - ClaudiaCorriganDarcy.wma or ClaudiaCorriganDarcy.mp3 - Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy discusses her life as a "birthmother." 25 years ago, Claudia gave up her baby for adoption. She has spent years as an activist to educate young women against being duped into giving up their babies and to expose private adoption for what it is -- a money making business that treats female reproduction as a commodity. Claudia's website is at http://www.musingsofthelame.com. Nov 27, 2012 - Lahl.wma or Lahl.mp3 - Jennifer Lahl, founder and President of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, discusses ova "donation" and the exploitation of women. http://www.eggsploitation.com. |
|
A common theme underlying nearly all the problems in the family courts is the sloppy float away from the "rule of law" to "rule of man". The "rule of man" describes such things as dictatorships, decision-making by whim, discretion without oversight, vague standards that cannot predictably be anticipated or applied, faux-expert recommendation-making and opining such as with mental health professional parenting evaluations, and the panoply of therapeutic jurisprudence interventions such as parenting coordination and special mastering. All of these abrogate due process, and the fundamental principles on which our system of jurisprudence was founded. The ideas have been pushed by the mental health lobbies and by individuals who either don't understand or don't care about some higher priorities. "Rule of man" is a concept that we ditched with the formation of this country in favor of "rule of law". Our founding fathers recognized that there is no way to regulate or oversee individuals given too much discretion or dictatorial authority. With regard to the family courts, I keep hearing and reading what are essentially inane pleas to fix the various misguided ADR programs via "guidelines" (aspirational only, and with immunity from sanction for misfeasance), and for "trainings", and for getting rid of those who are "incompetent" -- all of which suggestions exhibit an astonishing lack of appreciation for the stupidity inherent in these extra-judicial ideas -- ideas which Thomas Paine and our founding fathers would have abhorred (see, e.g. Common Sense). Dictatorship cannot be permitted not because there couldn't (theoretically) be some wise and beneficent dictators who would be better and more efficient than the messy system of due process and checks and balances we idealize, but because under that dictatorial system we inevitably and primarily will suffer the fools, the tyrants, and the corrupt. And that's without addressing the panoply of other constitutional defects. Besides, no scientifically sound research actually establishes "harm" from the adversarial system -- or benefit to families' well-being from applied therapeutic jurisprudence. These ideas were invented in mental health trade promotion groups as lobbying talking points. (If you doubt this, feel free to contact me for more information.) Yikes. What are we doing. To the extent we've been sold a bill of goods, swampland, snake oil and the voo doo of "expertise" by the mental health professions, at least until relatively recently, the stuff wasn't harming our legal system. Now it is. Wake up, and wise up. What we do need are some realistic changes in the substantive laws addressing divorce and child custody. What we don't need is a revolution in procedural rules and the overthrowing of individuals' constitutional rights. -- liz 
Our favorite mottos: 
|
SITE INDEX
| LIZNOTES
MAIN PAGE | COLLECTIONS
| WOMENS
HISTORY LIBRARY | RESEARCH ROOMS
| THE READING ROOM
FATHERLESS CHILDREN STORIES
| THERAPEUTIC JURISPRUDENCE
| WOMAN SUFFRAGE
TIMELINE | THE LIZ LIBRARY
ENTRANCE
The "mother" of any given child -- and in fact the only natural parent of any mammalian offspring -- is the female
who gives birth to that offspring.
