Dear Friend,

This summer the Supreme Court handed down a decision that will forever change the nature of our work at the Center for Bioethics and Culture. Now that same-sex marriage is allowed in all 50 states, the movement for “marriage equality” has shifted to a push for “family equality.”

This is a game changer for us—and for the way the world thinks about children.

I need your help as we adapt to this new landscape.

Immediately after the decision was announced, a prominent California law professor took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times lamenting, “marriage equality doesn’t immediately or necessarily erase cultural and legal attachments to biological, dual-gender parenting.”

Translation: those of us concerned about assisted reproductive technologies and the harm they cause to women and children need to quickly rid ourselves of such quaint “attachments.” For this law professor, the battle for equality won’t be finished until there’s an equal right to children that’s enshrined in the law.

Such a right will require the use of young women as egg donors and surrogates, and will result in children who are brought into this world intentionally separated from their biological ties.

I need you to stand with me against such abuses.

Over the past decade, the Center for Bioethics and Culture has led the fight for women and children in the space of assisted reproduction. We have taken a consistent, principled stand that no one—gay, straight, single, or married—has a right to a child.

Children are gifts to be received and cherished, not products to be designed, bought and sold, and discarded when quality control standards are not met.

As our work of writing, speaking, and filmmaking has illustrated, the use of egg donors, sperm donors, and surrogates is about the desires of adults rather than the needs of the children created from these methods.

The push for “family equality” is the next battlefront.

We are not backing down.

I need you to join me on the front lines.

In recent years, a massive media narrative has been constructed in an attempt to show that children created from all sorts of reproductive arrangements are happy and live full, satisfied lives. Even Justice Kennedy declared that a “basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families.”

But here’s what Justice Kennedy and the media fail to mention:

  • Children born through assisted reproduction are more likely to suffer from low birth weights and are at heightened medical risks.
  • The practice of surrogacy often depends on the exploitation of poorer women. Such unequal transactions result in uninformed consent, coercion, poor health care, and severe risks to the short- and long-term health of these women.
  • Children conceived through assisted reproduction often suffer genealogical bewilderment as they long for a connection to their biological parent.
  • The practice of egg and sperm “donation” is not helping someone else have a baby—it’s helping someone else have YOUR baby.

We are committed to telling the other side of these stories and making these facts known—regardless of how politically incorrect these truths may be. That’s part of the reasons why our documentary films have been so effective in changing the minds of students in classrooms and legislators in statehouses throughout the United States and around the world.

I need your help to continue to tell these stories and make these facts known.

More than ever, the tide is against us. Can you help us put an end to the creation of a market for the buying and selling of children? Can you help us protect women?

As we head into the fall, we’re gearing up for a full academic year of campus screenings, legislative hearings, conference addresses, writing for various outlets, media interviews, and more.

All of this requires funding. I need your help to compete with those that are intent on forever changing the terms of reproduction.

Make no mistake. Those pushing for “family equality” are building a war chest of funds to continue to push for their agenda.

Through our documentary films Eggsploitation, Anonymous Father’s Day, Breeders: A Subclass of Women?, and our newest film Maggie’s Story, we have become the leading voice bringing attention to and advocating for women exploited through egg donation and surrogacy and for children conceived through these practices.

Do we really want to build a society that promotes a false banner of “family equality” and that trades on the female body through egg donation, that exploits women as breeders through surrogacy, and that severs children from their biological parents through the use of anonymous sperm and eggs?

I. Do. Not.

That is why we at the CBC continue to take a strong stand against these very practices.

That is why I am asking you to join us.

How can you help? Challenges like this are met through gifts both big and small. We need gifts of $250, $500, $1,000, $5,000, and more. But we need $5, $10, and $20 gifts too.

The need has never been more pressing. The stakes have never been higher.

Please consider carefully how much you might be able to give today.

With Great Urgency,
Jennifer Lahl

Please give today. This new battle is already underway. The stakes have never been higher.

The Center for Bioethics and Culture is a non-profit 501(c)(3) public benefit educational organization. All gifts are tax-deductible.

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