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.

Surrogacy and human trafficking concerns cannot be ignored. When women are recruited because of poverty, when brokers profit from pregnancies, when contracts control women’s bodies, and when babies are transferred through payment and legal arrangements, we must ask hard questions. Not every surrogacy arrangement is legally classified as trafficking. But commercial surrogacy can create conditions where trafficking-like exploitation flourishes. Human rights should not stop at the fertility clinic door.

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…

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.

Helen Lewis' latest for the Atlantic about surrogacy is worth a read. We were happy to be interviewed for it. Still, we wish that the article had, instead of providing a broad overview of the stakeholders in surrogacy, gone deeper into the ethical questions at its core, especially what happens to the children. Read the rest of our response on our blog now. cbc-network.org/2026/09/the-…

Surrogacy begins with a contract and ends with the transfer of a child. That should trouble us. Children are not products to be ordered. They are not contract deliverables. They are not proof of adult fulfillment. Every child deserves to be received as a gift—not transferred as the result of a commercial or legal arrangement.

“Regulation is not the answer” Written with @kal_fell @CBCnetwork stopsurrogacynowuk.org/2026/…

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…

Being against treating women’s wombs as rentable objects, or children as purchasable goods is a long standing feminist stance. Are the women in Ukraine carrying babies that are then left in clear tanks in ‘baby dens’ because the purchasers can’t reach them in time, doing it out of the goodness of their hearts for wealthy Irish D list celebs? Are the young women in Colombia or Mexico who are financially desperate doing it for the love of fulfilling a wealthy couples desires? Or is it because they doing it because they need to feed and house themselves? Are single mothers, young women with huge college debts, or military wives struggling to find work due to constantly moving bases, in the USA. selling their reproductive labour out of pure philanthropy for celebrities or is it the fact they have little mouths to feed? Consent is not borne of financial necessity, conflict, poverty. If it was truly about altruism, why didn’t Gaga’s celebrity friends offer to carry for her? Sure celebrities love showing off their altruism and philanthropy. Buying human beings is not progressive. Exploiting women’s reproductive labour is not progressive. Saying to women who can’t (or simply don’t want to) go through the risks and dangers of pregnancy and postpartum, to just outsource that risk to another, poorer woman, is NOT progressive. Objections to turning women’s wombs and babies into contractable commodities to be bought and sold to fulfil our wants is “tradwife” in any way.

My review of Anna Louie Sussman's new book, "Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty". The Family Is Not an Engineering Problem open.substack.com/pub/amref/…

When we say surrogacy needs to be banned, we mean it.

To watch the UNSR’s entire speech: piped.video/watch?v=7FpWR_oO…

We hear it all the time -- surrogate mothers are consenting to carry a baby for someone else, they're being compensated, they have free choice--they're empowered by their choice! But Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls reports the truth: surrogate mothers sign away their right to bodily autonomy and become subjects to very strict contracts. While it might sound hyperbolic, contracts can restrict a surrogate mother's ability to travel, her diet, the way she gives birth, even her relations with her own husband. And as we've seen in the news recently, they can compel her to terminate the child. The penalty for violating these draconian contract terms is inevitably financial ruin, and while these contracts may not always be legally enforceable, most surrogates do not have the money for lawyers or protracted legal battles. Just the threat of enforcing the contract is typically enough to keep the surrogate mother playing a rigged game.

Children are nothing more than a contract deliverable to the surrogacy industry.

🚨 A critical win for Jasmine Sussex, biological reality and child safeguarding. The former Australian Breastfeeding Association counsellor was taken to QCAT for alleged vilification after raising concerns about a trans-identifying male using drugs and hormones to induce lactation and feed the resulting substance to a newborn baby. As part of her defence, Jasmine sought details about the treatment used, the practitioners involved and the composition of the substance produced - critical information given the lack of evidence supporting its safety or nutritional adequacy. QCAT initially ruled these medical facts irrelevant. The Appeal Tribunal has now overturned that decision, finding errors of law constituting a “substantial miscarriage of justice” and affirming that the information is relevant to whether Jasmine expressed her concerns reasonably, in good faith and in the public interest. The substantive case is yet to be decided. But this is a significant step towards ensuring that legitimate questions about experimental practices involving vulnerable babies cannot simply be dismissed as “vilification”. 🗞️ Read more by @rachelbaxendale in the @australian: archive.md/kckEN #IStandWithJasmineSussex #Auspol #QLDpol

Surrogacy is often described as empowering. But who bears the risk? The woman who carries the pregnancy bears the medical risk, the physical burden, the contractual restrictions, the birth, and often the emotional consequences of separation. Meanwhile, agencies, brokers, clinics, attorneys, and commissioning adults may benefit financially or personally. Consent matters. But consent alone does not make exploitation harmless.

Reem Alsalem, United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, presenting the keynote address at a conference in Melbourne, laid out 8 myths about surrogacy. The first will shock you: That the majority of commissioning parents want a genetically related child to love and nurture for a lifetime. The available evidence, drawn from investigative journalism and civil society research, does not support this as the *predominant* profile, and children have in some cases been commissioned for abuse, trafficking or organ removal.

Yesterday Parliament debated a petition that would’ve seen surrogate mothers losing their rights at birth. The Government rejected it. Thread below. Our sincere thanks to all of you who helped secure this outcome.

Surrogacy is often marketed as love, generosity, and helping someone have a family. But surrogacy depends on treating pregnancy as a service, the woman who carries the child as a “carrier,” and the child as the intended result of a contract. That is not compassion. That is commodification. Women are not wombs for rent. Children are not products.

Excellent keynote speech from @UNSRVAW at the #ARMS2026 which brought refreshing clarity in language and destroyed 8 myths in #surrogacy. Watch the full speech here: piped.video/7FpWR_oOBZY?si=Jv9E…