I’m excited to be able to write and keep you up-to-date on the work of the CBC. I gave a keynote address in New Hampshire last month, and it was very well received. The president of the organization came up to me after and said, “You were the best speaker we have had in five years!” I was grateful for his kind words and happy to have sold out of all our films I brought to the conference. More people educated and more people with useful resources in hand, thanks to your support!

We are now very busy preparing for what will be a CBC signature event for 2017: a conference that will take place in New York City during the 61st annual Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations.

The Commission on the Status of Women is a large gathering of activists, scholars, journalists, and others from around the world who work to address those issues that impact the lives of women and girls.

Our work on surrogacy and egg donation is a perfect fit for the audience that will be gathered in New York from March 13 to 24.

On Tuesday, March 14, from 1:00 to 3:00 PM, we will host two panel discussions in New York City under the heading “Trading on the Female Body.” The first panel is comprised of women who have been harmed by surrogacy and egg donation. The second panel will feature international feminist campaigners against surrogacy.

While the support of you and others has funded the bulk of the costs for this event, we are adding two speakers, and we need to raise their travel budgets. We are bringing in Kylee, an egg donor who suffered as a result of her donation, as well as Kelly, a gestational surrogate who recently contacted us for legal advice and moral support.

Adding two speakers means we need to raise an additional $3,000 to cover their travel costs.

Kelly has also agreed to sit down and do an on-camera interview with me and Matthew Eppinette, and we will be turning her story into our next documentary film. Kelly served as a surrogate for a same-sex couple in France and a heterosexual couple in Spain, and both of these stories had very bad outcomes.

Turning her story into a documentary film will require us to raise an additional $4,500.

Click here to see the flyer for the event, which has more details on this important and timely gathering.

For those who aren’t able to join us in person in New York, we will broadcast the event live on our Facebook page, and we will archive the day’s video on Facebook, YouTube, and our website. One way or another, please plan to join us!

Programs and projects like this are possible only because of your generosity. Please know how grateful I and the whole CBC team are for your ongoing support.

Warmly,

Jennifer Lahl
Founder and President

PS: Can you help us meet these additional $7,500 in expenses so that we can make the most of the time that we are in New York? You can give here on our website, through a GoFundMe campaign that we’ve setup, or through our Facebook page. Please contribute today to help us bring egg donor Kylee and surrogate Kelly to New York, and turn Kelly’s story into our next film.

You make our work possible

 

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.