Dear Friend,

Our Fall is off and running! Members of a new cohort of Paul Ramsey Fellows already met in San Francisco to begin the fourth year of our Paul Ramsey Institute. I am so pleased with this new group, which includes students from the University of Chicago, Cornell Medical School, Claremont Graduate University, and New York University, to name only a few of the highly regarded institutions represented.

The Paul Ramsey Institute is a vital part of our education programming at the CBC. Here we train and produce future leaders—physicians, scientists, scholars, policymakers, and advocates—who will promote and advance ethical biotechnology and bioethical research within their respective fields. You can learn more about our Paul Ramsey Institute at our website.

Leaders like this are needed now more than ever. As I’m sure you’ve seen, our home state of California legalized physician assisted suicide last month. A friend put it well when he said, “This isn’t compassion. There’s nothing in this law that supports or promotes the common good.”

We will continue to work to educate the public in California and other states that have bought into the false compassion that this practice involves, encouraging them to reject and push back against it. And we will continue to work to oppose efforts to legalize the practice in other states. In fact, I traveled to Minnesota last month to debate physician assisted suicide as they consider legislation similar to California’s.

I also spoke last month on the ethical problems of surrogacy. Minnesota, New York, and the District of Columbia all continue to pursue legalized surrogacy, and we continue to work with those in each location who oppose legalization.

If you haven’t already, you should be seeing pieces of a major push we are making in both the traditional media and through social media to inform and educate the general public, press and media gatekeepers, activists, and legislators on the issue of surrogacy, and on the importance of banning rather than regulating the practice. Keep up with this push at our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Last week, I was at Princeton University, joining several colleagues, and speaking at a conference entitled “Sexuality, Integrity, and the University 2015.” Students know that they are a prime market for an industry in search of egg and sperm donors and they want to be sure their peers leave school with their health intact.

We could not do any of this work without your financial partnership. Without you, these things simply would not happen!

To keep moving forward I do need your help this month. Your special gift at this time is needed and most appreciated.

Sincerely,
Jennifer

Your generosity will make a difference!

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

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.