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...
Fifteen people, including five doctors, have been charged in Maharashtra, India, following an investigation into the exploitation of financially vulnerable egg donors.
A nearly 5000-page chargesheet was filed before a court in Ulhasnagar. The investigation began in February after a...
KATHMANDU – When Padma was 22, she was diagnosed with cancer. What followed were three brutal cycles of chemotherapy—each necessary, each taking something from her. Doctors warned that the radiation would damage her ovaries. But Padma was fighting to stay...
By Nanette Elster, Kayhan Parsi, and Art Caplan, The American Journal of Bioethics | 05.06.2026
Aggregated News
“Better babies.” “Fitter families.” “Survival of the fittest.” “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” These phrases are not merely historical reminders of the United States’ regrettable eugenic past but are appearing in an increasingly eugenic present. Eugenics may have seemed...
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