Volume 6, Issue 42                               October 11th, 2011

Reason #11 and #12 of 77 Non-Religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage

11. Every child is entitled to a relationship with both parents.
12. Every child is entitled to know and be known by both parents.

These two reasons demonstrate the sometimes selfish nature of artificial reproductive technologies. When children are created to fulfill the desires of the parents, the needs of the child are often forgotten.

Find all 77 Reasons here.

As heard in a Kindergarten classroom, Part 2

While passing a bird’s nest around for my students to touch and explore, one of my students raised her hand: “Shouldn’t we all wash our hands after we touch this?” I assured her that was the plan, and one student raised her hand, “How come we need to wash our hands after touching bird’s nests?..." Keep reading.

Babies for Sale: Buyer Beware

Infertility can bring so much heartache to couples desperately wanting a baby. Sadly, desperation opens the door for exploitation. Recently, two high-profile surrogacy attorneys, Theresa Erickson and Hilary Neiman, were caught exploiting surrogates, stealing from California taxpayers and, most horrifically, selling babies.

by Jennifer Lahl

This article was first published at Tothesource.org on August 17, 2011.

It had already been a bad week for the moral credibility of the infertility industry. The Mumbai Mirror reported that cops were making arrests in a thriving racket involving local gangs, civic officials, and medical professionals all teaming up to traffic infants from India to countries where commercial surrogacy is illegal. It sounds like a plot to yet another movie, such as Google Baby and Made in India, showing the dirty underbelly of the booming billion dollar illegal baby making industry.

If you think this is too far from home to be interesting, and that selling babies is a rare event isolated to developing countries, please read Alan Zarembo’s piece in last week’s Los Angeles Times. Theresa Erickson, internationally renowned surrogacy lawyer in Southern California, has just pleaded guilty to being a co-conspirator in a three-ring baby-selling scheme. Erickson’s ring included Maryland based attorney, Hilary Neiman, and Carla Chambers, who served as a surrogate in the operation on multiple occasions and recruited other surrogates.

Erickson has relentlessly attacked my documentary, Eggsploitation, as over-sensationalized hype from a conservative organization whose larger agenda was to shut down the industry. Eggsploitation tells the stories of women who have been victimized by the fertility industry. Last year it won best documentary at the California Film Festival. Perhaps because of the film’s impact and success, Erickson and her colleagues wrote several negative commentaries and devoted air time on her radio program to criticizing the documentary as inflammatory and misleading.

Erickson continually comforts her listeners by assuring them that she is an advocate for the “the absolute best practices”, and that the claims in Eggsploitation are specious and insulting. In short, I have been distorting the truth about how unethical her practices are, and I have overstated the health and economic challenges inherent in the infertility industry.

The truth has now come out and as it turns out, it is Erickson who has been doing the lying. The public relations damage to the industry has been done, and who better to do it than the industry darling. Needless to say, the fertility industry is reeling.

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