More than anything else in the world, Erin Millender longed to be a mother. She already had a day care picked out, a Pack ’n Play stashed in her basement. She’d tried Chinese pregnancy teas and midnight fertility ceremonies under a full moon in the Caribbean Sea. Whatever it took to have a child.
Now in her mid-40s, Millender knew she was running out of time. She had already spent several years attempting in vitro fertilization, with no luck. She’d decided to give I.V.F. one more try.
“What’s a good day to come in?” Millender asked when she called the clinic in July 2023, hoping to have an embryo placed inside her uterus within a few weeks.
The doctor then delivered the news that would upend Millender’s entire future. Her husband had revoked his consent. She could no longer make a baby with his DNA.
And with that, Millender arrived at the center of a contentious new debate dividing courts and couples across the country. As more...
The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some “right” combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the...
By Anna Louie Sussman, The New York Times | 08.21.2026
Aggregated News
Since in vitro fertilization was invented nearly 50 years ago, at least 10 million children who would not otherwise exist have been brought into the world. New constellations of families — older moms, same-sex parents, single dads — have flourished...
President Donald Trump's latest effort to limit birthright citizenship could have consequences for the international surrogacy industry, potentially affecting thousands of intended parents from overseas who travel...
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