May 6, 2019 Casualties of Surrogacy: Women for Rent, Infants for Sale, LGBT Rights for Hijacking
Political and social support for the sale of infants by women who need money is increasing in the United States, despite human rights campaigns to ban surrogacy and the parallel practices of organ sales and prostitution.
Monday, May 6, 2019
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
The Heritage Foundation
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Description
Political and social support for the sale of infants by women who need money is increasing in the United States, despite human rights campaigns to ban surrogacy and the parallel practices of organ sales and prostitution. Women who need money rent out their wombs to people who can pay as much as $200,000. This practice is promoted by a burgeoning fertility industry and uncritically cheered on by an expanding cadre of neoliberal LGBT activists. The public, our lawmakers, and even some health professionals are relatively fact-free regarding the adverse consequences of surrogacy for everyone except the purchasing parents and the businessmen who control fertility clinics.
Surrogacy is a medical, ethical and legal disaster. The deliberately ignored rights of human beings who are harmed by this cruel practice must be heard.
Join this expert panel for a discussion of why surrogacy in all its forms must be abolished.
Speakers
Jennifer Lahl is the Founder and President of the Center for Bioethics and Culture and producer of the several documentary films on third-party reproduction.Her films include Eggsploitation and Breeders: A Subclass of Women? In 2018 she released #BigFertility focused on one U.S. surrogate mother's harrowing story. She has addressed members of the European Parliament, the United Nations, and Legislative bodies across the U.S. on the exploitation of women's reproductive bodies and the best interests of children.
Gary Powell is a political activist and a district councillor in Aylesbury, England. A gay rights advocate for nearly forty years, he strongly opposes the trend to regard surrogacy as an appropriate campaign objective for the modern western LGBT rights movement: a movement that he feels has gone off the rails in several respects. As a student, he was taught Philosophy by the late Baroness Mary Warnock, who chaired the UK inquiry that led to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 1990.
Melissa Farley, Ph.D. is founder of the nonprofit organization Prostitution Research & Education (PRE) and author or coauthor of 40 peer-reviewed publications on prostitution and trafficking.PRE is collaborating with Stop Surrogacy Now to raise funds for research on the psychological harms to women whose wombs are rented to produce a child for a buyer.
FIRST PRINCIPLES 24 min read
COMMENTARY 1 min read
LEGAL MEMO About an hour read