Coercive sterilizations and castration are at the extreme end of a spectrum that also includes criminal sanctions for drug use during pregnancy and barring LBGT individuals from in-vitro fertilization services and adoption, as well as a host of other policies geared at making pregnancy and parenting difficult for those deemed unworthy.
For many committed to intercountry adoption, it is unfortunate that since the year 2004 the practice has declined more than 50%. An important question is: what is happening? The answer is complex. To begin with, the unfortunate reality is that intercountry adoption has a mixed history.
Trigger Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of infant and child abuse.
The death toll from parents following Michael and Debi Pearl’s teachings continues to mount. Another child is has been “biblically chastened” to death via corporal punishment, and Michael Pearl is defending his teachings in the mainstream media while promoting his new book.
A well-known surrogacy attorney in California used her networks and well-financed practice to dupe families into paying over $100,000 for a child based on a fraudulent scenario. Basically, those looking to secure a child were told that a surrogacy arrangement had fallen apart—the intended parents backing out of the arrangement. This was false and a story constructed for fraud.
Even after the Silsby affair, when ten American missionaries were arrested in Haiti for attempted child theft, the Christian adoption movement is unchastened.
A British Columbia judge has ruled that anonymity for gamete donors in the Canadian province is unconstitutional and that the law is discriminatory because it does not give donor children the ability to identify their biological parents.
Washington may become first in the nation to establish statewide regulation of “Limited Service Pregnancy Centers,” ensuring women know exactly what they will – and won’t – get when seeking care.
As global surrogacy grows largely unregulated, the effects of celebrity surrogacy arrangements may have deeply adverse consequences for poor women worldwide.
A man has no remaining trace of HIV after a stem cell transplant; PEPFAR agreements with South Africa; parenting consequence lessons in Texas; Australia’s adoption rate plummets.
In the twelve years that I have worked as a pregnancy options counselor, no story has ever been told to me in exactly the same way, and no question has ever been so simple as to require a rote response.
