#BigFertility

LOG LINE:

Kelly was lied to, lied about, bullied, used, exploited, and nearly ruined financially. In the end, she barely escaped with her life.

SYNOPSIS:

Kelly Martinez served as a surrogate mother for three different couples and was threatened with financial ruin after nearly dying during her third surrogacy. But each of her surrogacy journeys had a price to pay. Kelly’s story exemplifies everything that is wrong with the distorted version of fertility medicine that is Big Fertility. It truly is all about the money.

SALES:

Available worldwide beginning Monday, September 17, 2018, through Vimeo On Demand:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bigfertility

TOP LINE CREDITS

Featuring (in order of appearance)
Kelly Martinez
Jay Martinez
Jennifer Lahl, R.N., M.A.
Anthony S. Diehl, M.D.
 
Written by
Jennifer Lahl
 
Directed by
Jennifer Lahl
 
Produced by
Jennifer Lahl
Matthew Eppinette
Chris Miloslavich
The Center for Bioethics and Culture

BROADCAST INQUIRIES:

Broadcast rights are available through the Center for Bioethics and Culture.

EDUCATIONAL INQUIRIES:

Educational Licensing for #BigFertility is available through the Center for Bioethics and Culture.

COMMUNITY & FESTIVAL SCREENING INQUIRIES:

We encourage university, civic, church, and local community groups to use this film for outreach and engagement on the important issues addressed in the film. Please contact the Center for Bioethics and Culture for public performance rights.

TECHNICAL INFO:

Running Time: approx. 45 minutes
Exhibition Format: Digital/Online
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Shooting Format: HD
Color, English
© 2018. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR BIOETHICS AND CULTURE

The Center for Bioethics and Culture addresses bioethical issues that most profoundly affect our humanity, especially issues that arise in the lives of the most vulnerable among us.

ABOUT STOP SURROGACY NOW

Stop Surrogacy Now brings together a worldwide, ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse group opposed to the exploitation of women and the human trafficking of children through surrogacy. We invite everyone to join us and add their signature in support of the #StopSurrogacyNow campaign.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING ABOUT #BIGFERTILITY?

#BigFertility is one of the most important films you will ever see. Think surrogacy is a ‘right’ for the women doing it? Believe that everyone has the ‘right’ to their own biological child? Convinced that surrogacy can be regulated? Watch this dystopian tale and be horrified and educated to the realities of this human rights violation.
— Julie Bindel, journalist, feminist campaigner, and author of The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth (2017)

The fertility business is, well, a business and anyone who think it runs on altruism instead of dollars and cents is fooling themselves. #BigFertility exposes the dark and seedy underside of surrogacy that treats human infants and the mothers who bear them little better than widgets in a supply chain.
— Scott Carney, New York Times bestselling author of The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers (2014).

Exploiting a couple’s financial troubles by having a woman sell her body as an incubator so rich people can buy children, is a human rights violation. Kelly’s heartbreaking and infuriating story exposes the lies, bullying, and blackmail by the Fertility Industry, but also the life-threatening dangers for both egg providers and birthmothers.

#BigFertility is mandatory viewing for anyone who thinks surrogacy is just about beautiful babies and selfless women. It is about a ruthless industry whose coffers swell from human misery, deceit, ill health, and children as commodities who never consented to become take-away babies. Surrogacy needs to be stopped NOW.
— Dr. Renate Klein, author of Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation (2017) and a long-term women’s health advocate

Surrogacy is not about creating families—it is about enforcing a lifelong separation between mother and child. The surrogacy industry sees women as mere vessels and children as products. The result might be happy buyers, but the consequences for women who undergo surrogacy are dire. Trauma, dissociation, infertility, and in documented cases even death. #BigFertility is about what the surrogacy industry does not want you to know.
— Kajsa Ekis Ekman, journalist, activist, author of Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self (2014)

#BigFertility should serve as a warning to all those considering surrogacy as an option, whether as a surrogate or as hopeful parents. This is yet another industry that relies on the ‘have nots’ to risk their health, humanity, and lives for the ‘haves.’
— Meghan Murphy, Founder & Editor, Feminist Current

Women and girls should not be forced to live in a world where the only way they can make a sustainable income is to sell their bodies, either as prostituted women and girls or surrogates for the rich and the privileged. Sexual and reproductive slavery assaults the dignity and worth of women and girls. It is humiliating, dangerous to their health, and leaves lifelong physical and emotional scars. Surrogacy, like prostitution, must be illegal and abolished.
— Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, author of America: The Farewell Tour (2018)

#BigFertility is a moving and shocking documentary at the same time. It sheds light on the new slave-market in the reproductive industry where embryos, babies, mothers, and women are treated like commodities.
— Regula Staempfli, Doctor of Philosophy, Consultant, and Political Scientist, author of the bestseller (in Switzerland/Germany), The Algorithmic Perception of Women/ Die Vermessung der Frau

#BigFertility exposes what many won’t admit about surrogacy—it’s all about the money. When you look beyond the glossy photos and celebrity headlines, the commodification of women and children through surrogacy is undeniable.#BigFertility tells the story of one surrogate who details three of the thousands of ways that surrogacy can go terribly wrong. Of course, for the babies who lose a relationship with the only parent they know upon birth, surrogacy can never go right.
— Katy Faust, Founder & Director, Them Before Us

#BigFertility exposes the deception and greed behind the business of surrogacy, and the harm knowingly and unknowingly inflicted on women who function as surrogates for people who want babies and can pay for them. This brave and shocking film must be seen if you want to learn about a cruel practice that is increasing wherever women are in economic stress and where there are no laws preventing surrogacy.
— Melissa Farley, Ph.D., clinical psychologist, researcher, founder of Prostitution Research and Education, San Francisco, CA

Kelly’s powerful and heartbreaking story demonstrates how the trade in human babies is just as unethical as the trade in human organs. It demonstrates Big Fertility’s success in hiding the legal, medical, ethical, and emotional minefields that endanger the women who become involved in this frighteningly uncertain and dangerous process. Kelly’s journeys expose surrogacy as a human rights violation, fraught with potential tragedy and fueled by dishonesty, threats, and exploitation of the financially vulnerable. This compelling documentary gives a voice to one of Big Fertility’s many traumatized and re-traumatized victims, and exposes the human misery caused when vulnerable people are treated as mere commodities.
— Gary Powell, gay and lesbian equality campaigner and public administration activist, UK.

There is no way, out of the blue, that “surrogate mothers” can conceive of themselves as wombs for hire without other social conditions reducing women to objects to be used in exchange. For a woman to be able to think of her body as a carrier of someone else’s baby, women must dissociate from their bodies, thus allowing their bodies to be used separate from their own humanity. This fact is fundamental to all aspects of male domination of women, including rape, prostitution, sexual harassment and assault, pornography.

In #BigFertility we see Kelly Martinez victimized by sleazy corporations who appropriate her body for their profit, and customers for whom baby-buying is nothing more than another acquisition of merchandise at the expense of the birth mother. No doubt that Kelly and her husband would have rejected the entire premise of surrogacy had they known the exploitation on which it is built.
— Kathleen Barry, Ph.D., author of Female Sexual Slavery and The Prostitution of Sexuality 

THE CHRISTIAN POST

In a compelling 45 minutes, [three-time surrogate] Kelly bravely shares her vulnerabilities and hesitations she had as she faced hurdles she didn’t see coming when she signed up to be a surrogate. From firsthand experience she authoritatively exposes the bullying and other abusive dynamics that were set in motion when artificial reproductive operators and their clients became the overseers of her life in such intimate fashion.
—   Brandon Showalter, Reporter at The Christian Post

THE INDEPENDENT CRITIC

Truly riveting . . . after watching Lahl’s thought-provoking and emotionally jarring #BigFertility, it’s abundantly clear that the romanticized imagery often associated with surrogacy is often far from the actual truth and the actual experiences of countless women and families from around the globe.
—   Richard Propes, Film Critic at The Independent Critic

SALVO

What could go wrong? As it turns out, almost anything can go wrong and often does. Jennifer Lahl at the Center for Bioethics and Culture has long been sounding alarms about the problems of ethically questionable medical practices, and her latest film, #BigFertility, addresses gestational surrogacy through the long and winding saga of Kelly Martinez, a three-time surrogate.
—   Terrell Clemmons, Salvo

Press Resources:

• Press Release (PDF)
• Press Kit (PDF)

Promotional Materials

• Standard Poster (PDF)
• Poster with space to add screening information (PDF)

Spread the Word on Social Media

• Facebook Cover Image
• Facebook Share Image
• Twitter Header Image
• Twitter Share Image
• Square for Instagram

Resources on Surrogacy

• 3 Things You Should Know About Surrogacy
• Telling the Truth about Surrogacy in the United States
• Interactive State-by-State Summary of Surrogacy
• 3 Things You Should Know About Third Party Assisted Reproduction
• #StopSurrogacyNow

Our Third Party Reproduction Trilogy

• Breeders: A Subclass of Women?
• Anonymous Father’s Day
• Eggsploitation
• Third Party Reproduction Study Guide (PDF)

We are currently scheduling screenings. If you are interested in hosting a screening, please contact us at info@cbc-network.org.

Host a Screening

We welcome small home and community screenings of #BigFertility. Here are a few guidelines to help you get your screening set up:

• Email us at info@cbc-network.org, tell us about yourself, your organization, and your screening plans. Who is your audience? When and where you will hold your showing?
• Confirm details with us so we have the option to make your showing information available on our website.
• Let us know if you would like one of the filmmakers present at your showing to discuss the film. Travel costs and honorarium must be covered.

Screening Rules

• Community screenings must be free and open to the public (you may not charge an entrance fee, or make a profit of any kind from the screening).
• Broadcasting over television or internet—including audio/video recordings, live web streaming, and posting to the web—is strictly prohibited.

Promotional Materials

• Standard Poster (PDF)
• Poster with space to add screening information (PDF)

Past Screenings

Premiere
Sun, Sep 16 @ 7:30 PM*
Princeton Garden Theater
160 Nassau St
Princeton, NJ 08542
609-279-1999
Purchase Tickets ($10)
(Promotional Poster)

Tue, Oct 23 @ 7:00 PM*
UNIR Teatro
Arapiles, 16, 28015
Madrid, Spain
Tickets €5.00

St Mark Lutheran Church Encinitas
552 S El Camino Real
Encinitas, California 92024
Free event. Childcare provided.

*Filmmaker Q&A following the screening