The Surrogacy Parenting Agreement Act of 2013 is currently under consideration in the District of Columbia. On Thursday, June 20, 2013, Kathleen Sloan, CBC’s special consultant, along with Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, testified against it, arguing that it is an open door to exploitation of women.

Kathleen described the experience in a recent interview with NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez:

Until my participation in the sham that was called a public hearing on a commercial-surrogacy bill before the Washington, D.C., city council, I would have said that it had the opportunity to uphold an ethical, human rights-respecting law on commercial surrogacy by maintaining its existing law, but any such notions were immediately revealed as naïve and grossly ignorant of the scheme underway.

My colleagues and I arrived to discover that the deck had been stacked against us — five scheduled to testify in opposition to the bill versus 21 in support. It is extremely important and germane to point out that every single party testifying in support of the bill — fertility industry representatives, two chosen surrogates (one of whom was a military wife), and buyers — was tainted by money, whether by buying, selling, or pimping — excuse me, being a third-party intermediary. The five of us who testified in opposition to the bill — all women — were treated by the committee chair and bill author with condescension, disrespect, and dismissal. Blatantly revealing the “fix” that was in for the bill, the committee chair and others repeatedly stressed that it was not a question of whether or not the bill would or should be passed, but whether any changes should be made to it. That is not democracy; that is autocracy.

Here are links to the testimonies against DC’s “The Surrogacy Parenting Agreement Act of 2013:”

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