MacArthur Grant Sheds Light on Reproductive Technologies
By Elayne Clift,
Sentinel Source
| 09. 18. 2014
[References CGS]
A couple has had miscarriages, considered in-vitro fertilization, discussed adoption and finally opted for a surrogate to bear their baby in India. They visit her before signing on and feel that the agency’s “gestational mothers” are well cared for and decently compensated. But how much do they really know about the practice of cross-border surrogacy?
Thanks to a recent MacArthur Foundation grant to the Center for Genetics and Society and Our Bodies Ourselves, the information gap surrounding surrogacy and other assisted reproductive technologies will be addressed, with an emphasis on human rights and social justice. Light will also be cast on the rapidly growing industry assisted reproductive technologies has spawned.
“Cross-border surrogacy raises thorny questions,” says Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society. “Some people look at women selling their eggs or reproductive capacity as an individual right within the context of wage labor. Others see these practices as deepening gender and class inequalities in a not-so-free market.”
“Most information available in the mainstream fails to paint a complete picture,” adds Ayesha Chatterjee of Our Bodies...
Related Articles
By Gaia Ghirardi, Arno Van Hootegem & K. Paige Harden , Nature Human Behaviour | 09.21.2026
Embryo screening for behavioural traits is no longer speculative. If you want to become a parent in the USA today, you can pay to use pre-implantation polygenic testing (PGT-P) of in vitro fertilization (IVF)-created embryos. PGT-P promises to optimize offspring...
By Ann E. Marimow and J. David Goodman, The New York Times | 09.22.2026
Justice Elena Kagan on Tuesday refused to intervene in a high-profile custody battle that involved difficult questions surrounding surrogacy and abortion, leaving in place a lower-court order that gave custody to the biological parents in the dispute.
The case drew...
By Gay Pasley, Essence | 09.04.2026
That is what makes the unfolding case of McKenna West so important. It is more than a disagreement about abortion or a dispute over a surrogacy contract. It asks whether an agreement signed before a pregnancy can become authority...
By Ava Kofman, The New Yorker | 09.15.2026
A WOMAN WHO ACTS AS A SURROGATE, carrying a child for someone else, is said to be going on a “journey.”
Kayla Elliott started her surrogacy journey at the age of twenty-six. She gave birth to a baby girl for...