Addressing bioethical issues that most profoundly affect our humanity, especially issues that arise in the lives of the most vulnerable among us.
Joined January 2010
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CBC Network retweeted
**Update** on another US scandal uncovered in 2023 by @FingerLakes1:
"Woman accused of forging documents to arrange a surrogacy without her husband’s knowledge has pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges."
fingerlakes1.com/2026/10/25/…
MaryBeth Lewis, a 69 year old nurse from NYC already had 13 children (including children born from donated gametes) when she commissioned twins through #surrogacy using donor embryos.
She allegedly forged her husband's signature on legal documents and impersonated him during a court hearing to secure parental rights.
The twins were placed in foster care during the legal proceedings. Since then, the children have been returned to the care of Mr and Mrs Lewis while the foster parents continue to contest the outcome.
The New York Times is paywalled so we share this for more background:
people.com/mom-who-faced-fel…
CBC Network retweeted
Here's our weekly round up of news in #surrogacy:
🇬🇧UK - an international agency has been ordered to pay a British couple $87,415. Floridian Judge Judge Thomas Ramsberger issued a default judgment against World Center Group Corp as former and current representatives failed to respond to the lawsuit. A second lawsuit alleges another commissioning parent paid $40,000+ for medical procedures in Mexico that never took place.
occrp.org/en/investigation/i…
🇺🇦 Ukraine - A woman is suspected of selling her baby for $20,000, allegedly using a fictitious surrogacy agreement to disguise the transaction. Ukraine’s Ombudsman reports that 22 children have been officially recognised as trafficking victims so far in 2026. Read the report.
zmina.info/news/v-ukrayini-v…
🇪🇺 Europol - an investigation reveals the suspected exploitation of Vietnamese women in surrogacy arrangements during an international operation involving investigators from 20 countries.
This operation identified
✅ 51 female potential victims
✅ 6 potential criminal networks & 5 suspected human traffickers identified
✅ 26 online platforms & 77 social network accounts checked
✅ 166 entities (individuals, usernames, locations, and phone numbers) checked
europol.europa.eu/media-pres…
CBC Network retweeted
Baby Poppy was born through surrogacy and was just over 2 months old when along with among 20 other children, she was removed from a California mansion amid serious child-abuse allegations.
Mother Tronderrica James, says she was lied to, suffered a life-threatening birth and was prevented from saying goodbye to her baby.
This is #surrogacy.
She nearly DIED giving birth to their baby.
After a massive haemorrhage and emergency C-section, she wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye to the little girl she’d carried for nine months.
That baby ended up in a mansion with 20 other children, all later removed amid horrific abuse allegations.
The couple? They ran their own surrogacy agencies.
How many more women and children have to suffer?
BAN SURROGACY.
elpais.com/us/2026-10-25/la-…
CBC Network retweeted
Well, this is rather fabulous.
“A blood donor gives blood. A kidney donor gives a kidney. A surrogate mother does not give parenthood. She transfers a child…It is remarkably easy to celebrate a woman’s sacrifice when it is somebody else’s body being sacrificed.”
Bravo @cleancitybird 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
"When a woman is poor and hungry, the humane thing to put in her belly is food, not a baby."
I have published my opening speech from my panel on surrogacy at @acadofideas this weekend.
Read at link below:
CBC Network retweeted
Ted Hudacko's minor son believed that he was really a girl.
His mother went along.
Ted fought tooth and nail to block the medicalization of his son.
The judge who celebrated her own's son rejection of his sex, gave him a bone. She gave custody to the child's mother with ONE EXCEPTION. That EXCEPTION was that no gender-related surgeries could occur without Ted's consent or a court order.
USCF's Drs. Stephen Rosenthal, Diane Ehrensaft, and Janet Lee really really really wanted to surgically give the boy puberty blockers. UCSF's attorney Asaf Orr said go for it. The child's counsel. Dan Harkins, who is supposed to advise based upon the best interest of the child green lit the surgery.
The teenage boy was chemically castrasted. The hell with Ted's parental rights. The hell with the court's order. The figured Ted would just go away. But he didn't. He sued. And now the Supreme Court is deciding whether to take his case.
I filed not one, but two briefs to support Ted with help from my friends, @ebclaw @_CryMiaRiver @genspect @JonniSkinner -Full brief links and excerpts from the Brief 2 follow. supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/2…
CBC Network retweeted
Last month, along with our co-campaigners, we wrote to the Joint Committee on Health and to the Board of the Assisted Human Reproduction Regulatory Authority in Ireland.
All three questions were left in answered in their reply (received 13th October).
There is no statutory bar, no checks on coercion abroad and no declarations of interests.
See our joint letter here:
abolition-ms.org/en/news/ire…
CBC Network retweeted
The trial of the Mediterranean Fertility Institute opens on 14 October in Chania, Crete: 98 women exploited as surrogate mothers, 71 subjected to egg extraction, 26 defendants, 17 charges including participation in a criminal organisation and human trafficking.
It was Greece's largest surrogacy provider, licensed and supervised, and the trafficking happened inside that legal framework. Regulation did not prevent it; it built the infrastructure for it.
With To Mov and our partners, CIAMS demands one thing: that this trial proceed on 14 October and not be postponed.
In Greece, trafficking trials are routinely delayed for years until dispersed migrant witnesses can no longer testify. Every adjournment is a step toward impunity.
Read more: abolition-ms.org/en/our-acti…
#SurrogacyIsHumanTrafficking
abolition-ms.org/en/our-acti…
CBC Network retweeted
Increasing numbers of men, especially older men, are paying vulnerable women in various countries for babies. I invite all those concerned about this vile industry to forward these letters to me, I will compile and continue to raise this matter in the House.
We believe surrogacy is child trafficking.
If you do too, please send this email to your MP.
Followers abroad may also find the text helpful with your own politicians.
surrogacyconcern.uk/take-act…
CBC Network retweeted
The Marks #surrogacy agency scandal in Arcadia was first exposed by @CBCnetwork, this interview with Kayla Elliott is well worth a watch.
youtube.com/watch?v=MUAou2sI…
CBC Network retweeted
Surrogacy raises serious questions about human dignity, motherhood, children, and commercialization.
Tomorrow at 12 PM PT, join the WSCC and Kallie Fell for Made to Order.
🔗 Register before Noon tomorrow: bit.ly/3L3dMT3
CBC Network retweeted
Our speaker, Kallie Fell, brings experience in reproductive physiology, molecular biology, nursing, women’s health, and bioethics.
She serves as Executive Director of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (@CBCnetwork).
CBC Network retweeted
📆 Wednesday, Oct. 7
⏰ 12–1 PM PT
📍 Online via Zoom | Also livestreamed on Facebook
🔗 Register before Noon tomorrow: bit.ly/3L3dMT3
Can’t attend live? Register to receive the recording.
Also livestreamed on our Facebook: @WACatholics
#LifeJusticePeace #Surrogacy
CBC Network retweeted
Deeply disturbing connections shown here between #surrogacy #eggharvesting and pornography and prostitution in Colombia.
The ‘choice’ and body autonomy arguments do not justify what is actually happening and if you are reluctant to see beyond the surface it’s because you want to miss the real harms happening to women.
This is absolutely insane and heartbreaking...
A major Swedish newspaper has just investigated the surrogacy industry in Colombia, and honestly every paragraph gets worse.
214 egg donors investigated.
61, almost ONE IN THREE, had also sold sexual performances online. The clinics present these women as young, educated, “altruistic” donors.
Meanwhile a recruiter tells the newspaper that the women generally come from poor areas and the lowest socioeconomic groups.
And guess what? She gets a COMMISSION for finding them.
- About $260 for every egg donor recruited.
- Up to $1,300 for every surrogate mother.
She looks for women on Facebook, WhatsApp, social media and through her own acquaintances. There are people being financially rewarded for finding poorer women willing to provide their eggs or carry someone else’s child.
Then eugenics kick in to make things worse. The clients get a catalogue.
Blonde. Blue eyes. Fair skin. Tall. Beautiful. Educated.
And the “right” genetics cost more.
One woman was 21, broke and unemployed when she underwent hormone injections and had 15 eggs retrieved. She got around $530. Her conclusion afterwards? “What I actually did was contribute to an extremely profitable business. Just like the live-sex websites.”
And she is absolutely right: the recruiter makes money., the clinic makes money and the intermediaries make money.
And the woman whose body makes the entire transaction possible gets recruited precisely because she needs money.
Where do I get to throw up?
dn.se/sverige/de-saljer-sex-…
CBC Network retweeted
Finally watching the second half of #StolenBabies last night, it was difficult not to see a parallel with #surrogacy.
When systems focus on the desires of others, the best interests of the mother and baby at the centre disappear.
Once the mother and her child are invisible - the child as property, the mother as a means to an end or a useful ‘gestator’ - it becomes much easier to overlook and dismiss their individual rights.
Framed as providing a ‘better life’ for the child, the mother’s health, her consent and her voice become irrelevant.
This from former social worker Wes Cuell is striking. It is revealed later that he himself was adopted.
The whole 1.5 hour documentary is harrowing and had us in pieces, but this stood out for us.
Watch on iPlayer, this is from 45 mins in:
CBC Network retweeted
Someone asked whether IVF conceived children are more likely to experience infertility as adults.
Current evidence does not show that IVF itself broadly causes infertility.
But her question exposes something bigger:
The fertility industry spent decades asking whether it could create us.
Now that we’re adults, I have another question:
Did anyone bother asking what happens to us afterward?
✨ We are not procedures.
✨ We are not success rates.
✨ We are not babies forever.
We grew up. Start studying us like our lives matter too.
CBC Network retweeted
Another surrogate mother has died during her pregnancy.
Yana died in Albania in April, along with her unborn daughter. She was 27 years old and is survived by her young son.
@NGLmediaua
ngl.media/en/2026/09/12/chil…
CBC Network retweeted
A surrogate, believing she was carrying a child for a single father, is actually having a baby for a Chinese billionaire who allegedly has more than 100 kids. CBS News broke the news to her.
Leaked documents obtained by CBS News named the intended father as Xu Bo, a Chinese billionaire and video game executive. Xu Bo has been reported to have over 100 children through U.S. surrogates, granting them American citizenship at birth. A former partner involved in a custody lawsuit against Xu Bo claims he has as many as 300 children. He has disputed these numbers, and has said in a statement that he has custody of 12 children born through surrogacy in the U.S.
CBS News' @KatrinaSari interviewed the surrogate – who we are referring to as "Judy" to keep her identity private – who said she was blindsided to learn about Xu Bo. CBS News spoke to 32 surrogates for an investigation into the industry. Head to the linked article for more on this investigation.
CBC Network retweeted
THIS is the United States.
The country we are constantly presented with as the “safe”, “ethical”, well-regulated model of surrogacy. The one with supposedly the best safeguards.
CBS News investigated the industry for an entire YEAR.
Women say they were misled. Some had no idea what they were really getting into. Two surrogates who initially refused to hand over the babies they had carried were sued for $1 MILLION each, by intended parents whose 21 children, most born through surrogacy, had already been taken into state custody.
And CBS’s conclusion?
“Few, if any, meaningful protections” exist for surrogate mothers.
So please, spare me the argument that we just need to “regulate surrogacy better.”
This IS the model we are constantly told is the best.
cbsnews.com/projects/2026/su…
CBC Network retweeted
It sounds like Lena Dunham suffered seriously with pain from endometriosis and chose to have a hysterectomy. She no longer has a womb, but she has money. So she outsourced pregnancy to a #surrogate.
That baby has lost the only woman, the only person, they've known for nine months. The attachment clock has to restart. If the baby is like other surrogate children, the baby may suffer future abandonment issues.
We can empathize with Dunham. But adult struggle does not justify forcing children to struggle.
people.com/lena-dunham-welco…
