In March I spoke on Mother Erasure at the ‘Broken Bonds and Big Money’ International Conference on Surrogacy, held at RMIT. Featuring a stellar line-up of international and local speakers – with input from two Australian women used in surrogacy – we forged alliances and planned new advocacy centred on our concern for the human rights of women and children against the moneyed power of the surrogacy industry. You can read the Conference Summary here. 
Jennifer Lahl, Dr Caroline Norma, Professor S. Caroline Taylor AM, Dr Sheela Saravanan, Dr Renate Klein, Professor Kate Rose, Dr Susan Hawthorn, and others spoke about various aspects of the trade. 
Powerful and moving testimony was generously offered by the experts on the harms of surrogacy and egg procurements; those who endured it themselves. We are especially grateful to Kelly Martinez (USA), ‘Odette’ (Australia), Maggie Eastman (USA) and Rob (partner of a birth mother in Australia) for courageously sharing their experiences. 
The impact of severing maternal-infant bonds was related by Dr Catherine Lynch, Jo Fraser and Penny Mackieson, asking why we in Australia had an apology to those removed from their parents when we are repeating the same thing again in the global practice of surrogacy, often involving multiple people the child will never be able to trace. Our new book, Broken Bonds: Surrogate mothers speak out, edited by myself, Jennifer Lahl and Renate Klein and published by Spinifex Press, was launched by Professor S. Carolyn Taylor AM. We gathered fifteen stories from nine countries, including women who were ‘surrogate’ mothers, egg ‘donors’, and one partner of a ‘surrogate’ mother. You can purchase your copy here. The documentary Big Fertility, by Jennifer Lahl and The Center for Bioethics and Culture was shown at the conference. The horrific story of Kelly Martinez puts to rest any idea that “surrogacy is just about beautiful babies and selfless women. It is about a ruthless industry whose coffers swell from human misery, deceit, ill health, and children as commodities who never consented to become take-away babies”, as Dr Renate Klein said. You can rent or buy the film here. Join our international campaign Stop Surrogacy Now! and the Australian campaign Abolish Surrogacy Australia (details to come).
Listen to this interview featuring Jennifer Lahl of The Center for Bioethics and Culture in the USA, speaking with Sarah Dingle on ABC’s The World Today. Carolyn Overington wrote this comprehensive piece in The Australian (March 11) discussing the feminist argument against surrogacy. 
