Broken Bonds and Big Money is an international conference to draw attention to the human rights abuses committed through surrogacy.
The aim of the International Conference on Surrogacy organised by FINRRAGE (Australia) and Spinifex Press is to showcase the human rights abuses committed through surrogacy arrangements – commercial and altruistic – against so-called surrogate mothers, egg ‘donors’ and the children resulting from surrogacy.
Speakers will draw attention to the Big Money that drives the cross-border surrogacy trade in which IVF clinics, surrogacy brokers and lawyers make huge profits, while the ‘breeder’ women pay the price with harms to their health as well as ongoing loss and sorrow over the child(ren) they grew in their bodies, gave birth to, and had taken away.
Speakers will include an Australian surrogate mother and her lawyer, Maggie Eastman an egg ‘donor’ from the USA, as well as Dr Sheela Saravanan from India, author of A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India. Surrogacy expert, Jennifer Lahl, from Stop Surrogacy Now will address the conference about the state of surrogacy in the USA and internationally. Dr Catherine Lynch, Jo Fraser and Penny Mackieson, who are members of organisations critical of adoption, point out the close connections between surrogacy and discredited adoption practices, asking the pertinent question: “Why are we making the same mistakes again?” Other speakers include Dr Caroline Norma ‘Setting the Scene’, Associate Professor Kate Rose from China on ‘Mary Daly and Surrogacy’; Pauline Hopkins on ‘Surrogacy and the Myths of Womanhood’; Dr Susan Hawthorne on ‘Misogyny Fuelling Gay Surrogacy’; Melinda Tankard Reist on ‘Mother Erasure; and Dr Renate Klein, author of Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation on ‘CRISPR Eugenics’.
Highlights of the conference will be the launch of the new Spinifex Press anthology, Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out (edited by Jennifer Lahl, Melinda Tankard Reist and Renate Klein) and the Australian debut screening of #Big Fertility: It’s All about the Money produced by Jennifer Lahl.
Conference participants will also discuss local and global strategies for the abolition of surrogacy.
Conference organisers FINRRAGE (Australia) and Spinifex Press are supported by sponsors Stop Surrogacy Now, Women’s Bioethics Alliance and the Center for Bioethics and Culture. Find out more on the FB event page, at Eventbrite or email promotions@spinifexpress.com.au
Broken Bonds book launch
The launch of Broken Bonds: Surrogate Mothers Speak Out, co-edited by myself, Jennifer Lahl and Dr Renate Klein and published by Spinifex Press will take place on the Friday at 5.45pm. Professor S. Caroline Taylor will launch the book.
In our book, courageous women from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Austria and Russia share their stories of becoming ‘surrogate’ mothers out of kindness and compassion (or need for money), only to be deceived, neglected, abused, harassed, or abandoned by ‘baby buyers’, clinics, and lawyers. Their stories are tragic, shocking, and revelatory of a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and women’s compassion.
