A Texas surrogacy dispute involving McKenna West, who refused to abort a fetus diagnosed with a heart condition against intended parents’ wishes, highlights how post-Dobbs abortion laws complicate surrogacy contracts. Legal scholars at UVA and GWU examine how fetal-personhood arguments, state-by-state legal patchworks, and bodily autonomy clash, leaving unresolved questions about enforceability and whose interests surrogacy law ultimately protects.
Category: Global
US: Man Who Brutally Murdered Female Hiker Blames ‘Gender Identity’ Struggles, Avoids Death Penalty | Genevieve Gluck
An Arizona man who fatally stabbed a woman 15 times and blamed his “gender identity and sexuality” for the brutal slaying has now avoided the death penalty.
Source: US: Man Who Brutally Murdered Female Hiker Blames ‘Gender Identity’ Struggles, Avoids Death Penalty
I was a surrogate mother for a wealthy gay couple: They left me penniless, abandoned me with C-section wounds in the street and literally ran away with my baby | Daily Mail Online
Now, several years after giving birth to a baby boy named Piero, Belén speaks to me from her home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, about her heartbreaking experience as a surrogate and why she is now campaigning to make the practice illegal.
“Whole body gestational donation” for surrogacy: creating new life from death. What could possibly go wrong? – Guest Post from Paula Boddington |
There has been considerable attention to a paper by a Norwegian philosopher, Dr Anna Smajdor, in the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, outlining the case for what she calls “whole body gestational donation” (WBGD) as a form of surrogacy. This astounding paper was picked up first by Reddux, and since has received attention not just on social media but also in publications such as the Daily Mail and Cosmopolitan.
The gist of Dr Smajdor’s argument is as follows: In 2000, Rosalie Ber suggested that women who have been diagnosed according to the brain death criteria, or who are in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) could be used as gestational surrogates. Yet, “surprisingly”, says Smajdor, this seems not to have been implemented anywhere in the world. Smajdor makes a few adjustments to Ber’s proposal, limiting it to women diagnosed as brain dead, and argues that with prior consent of the woman, it could provide a useful means to achieve pregnancy for those unable to carry a child to term, or, indeed, as an alternative to pregnancy for any woman, given that pregnancy is not entirely risk free.
. . .
Will it be left to the rest of us to explain that, no, human beings are not simply biological creatures to be manufactured to order; the dead are not simply vessels to be used to satisfy the desires of others for children. We need to explain to these “bioethicists” that, as significant as a child’s birth day is, so is their journey from inside the womb of great significance, and not just to the child but to the mother; just as the journey we all take out of this life is significant, and not just to the individual, but to all who love and care for us.
U.S. surrogate for Chinese billionaire says she trusted agency to “protect surrogates” amid questions surrounding its CEO – CBS News
A surrogate carrying a child for Chinese billionaire Xu Bo — a man reported to have over 100 children — said she trusted her agency to “protect surrogates.” Now, the business practices of California-based Patriot Conceptions and its CEO are facing fresh scrutiny.
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where the company’s CEO Haotian Bai formerly served as a fellow, cut ties with him last week, shortly after a CBS Sunday Morning investigation featuring the surrogate put a spotlight on loopholes and accusations of questionable practices in the commercial surrogacy industry.
During his 2024-25 fellowship, Bai focused on veterans’ access to in vitro fertilization. He frequently advertises his surrogacy agency as veteran-founded.
Bai said in a 2019 court declaration, filed in a dispute with a former business partner, that he served in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan until 2017 and that he’d been diagnosed with PTSD.
A U.S. Army spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that Bai served as a chemical operations specialist from November 2013 to October 2017. However, the Army said that while he assisted with units that were preparing to deploy, he never deployed himself.
After leaving the military, Bai co-founded another surrogacy agency in 2018. He ended up in a court battle with his co-founder a year later. The case was later voluntarily dismissed. Bai founded Patriot Conceptions in 2019.
Bai’s surrogacy agency caters to international clients, who make up 40% of its business — with an emphasis on intended parents from China.
The U.S. is the only developed country where commercial surrogacy is widely legal, attracting foreign nationals who don’t have the option in their country, with a large percentage coming from China.
A single mother, Judy said she decided to become a surrogate because she wanted to use the payment to create a better life for herself and her daughter.
Judy said the agency told her after she matched that the intended parent was a “single father looking to expand their family.”
Judy said when the agency mentioned a large family, she was picturing something from a movie.
“‘[The] Sound of Music.’ Do you know that movie? My immediate first thought, ‘Oh, that would be really cute,’ like a family of 10 kids,” she said.
Consent Is Not Enough – Clive Hamilton
Of course, consent must be an essential condition of sex. But the law and the public discussion give the impression that the question begins and ends there. There are deeper and more awkward questions when consent arises in a culture in which sex and intimate relations have become cheapened and degraded.
Consider the ubiquity of pornography, imagery that often normalises fetishes such as bondage and the degradation of women through acts such as hair-pulling, slapping, “facials” and choking.
In August we saw an anguished but brief public conversation in Australia about choking during sex after a 16-year-old girl died. Six in ten young men and women have engaged in the practice. Young women say they “consent” to being choked because it is an expected part of sex, even though they do not like it. Some young men say they do it because they have been led to believe that is what they are expected to do.
When bodies are regarded as no more than pleasure machines, and sex is a performance scripted by social expectations, the question “Did she say yes?” becomes remarkably weak. It may tell us what is not rape under law; it cannot tell us what is respectful, caring or even desired.
When consent becomes the only test of whether an act is right or wrong, we adopt the logic of the marketplace: two parties agree, no one is wronged, and nothing further can be said. It is a moral vocabulary borrowed from contract, and it leaves no room for the idea that a body, or a person, has a worth that no agreement can add to or subtract from.
Consent education that teaches procedure—asking, checking, recording—yields compliance and risk management; it does not teach care, mutuality or respect for another person’s vulnerability, a respect that the young men at Cornell had not been taught.
French Feminist Convicted Of The Crime Of “Public Insult” For Refusing To Call Transgender Mayor A “Woman” | ZeroHedge
Dora Moutot is a feminist who has dedicated much of her life to fighting for women’s rights and has built a following on social media. Like other feminists, Moutot does not view transgender women the same as biological women. She has now joined others who are facing criminal charges for expressing those views. Transgender advocates have demanded that she be punished for her views in France.
A cancel campaign led to her brand partnerships being canceled. In 2022, she was invited on a French TV program to discuss transgender issues with Marie Cau, France’s first transgender mayor. On the program, she was asked if she thought Cau was a woman. Moutot responded, Cau “is a man, a transfeminine man.”
That was all it took. Transgender advocates had their case and filed charges for “public insult,” which is a crime in France with a maximum punishment of one year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000 for insults committed against a person because of their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.Moutot describes the Orwellian take on free speech in France today:
“The judge did not impose the course, but in May, I was found guilty of ‘public insult’ and fined €4,754. The judge found that though my statements were made in the context of a debate, they constituted an ‘abuse of freedom of expression warranting the imposition of a criminal penalty commensurate with the harm thus caused to the values protected by our democratic society.’ In other words, the judge concluded my intent had been to cause harm.”
New Case Precedent: Violent Fathers Have a Right to Custody (UK) | Women’s Coalition
In a unanimous decision this week in the “Re: C” case, the Court of Appeal for England and Wales unanimously decided that a violent father gets custody, and this now serves as binding precedent for all future custody cases.
The main villain in this story is Appellate Justice Stephen Cobb, who led the gang and wrote the opinion.
He is also—wait for it—the President of Family Court! A clear conflict of interest. Cobb was passed the torch after the infamous Judge Andrew McFarland retired.
They got the big guns out for this case. Justice Andrew Moylan also serves as the Head of International Family Justice for England and Wales. He is the country’s leading judicial voice on how British family courts interface with cross-border laws, the Hague Convention, and modern European legal structures.
The “Re: C” case originated in the Wrexham Family Court in Wales. There are four children of the divorced parents, whose ages presently range from 6 to 14 years-old.
The father admitted to physical violence, emotional abuse, and coercive control of both the mother and children, so the judge could not do the usual: discredit the mother. The question was simply what legal custody and visitation should the father be given considering the serious abuse.
The mother requested sole legal custody, which would give her decision-making authority, so she would not have to communicate or negotiate with her abusive ex. In the UK, that means asking to end his parental responsibility. She also requested the children have no direct contact with the father.
The child protective services (social) worker agreed with the mother and recommended cutting off all direct contact between the father and children. However, the guardian (aka guardian ad litem), who serves as the legal voice for the children, recommended the father be allowed supervised visits.
Judge John McKendrick refused all the mother’s requests and gave the father what amounts to joint legal custody. He did order supervised visitation, but allowed a female friend (girlfriend?) to be the supervisor. Obviously, since he is a violent coercive controller, this friend will likely have little power over the situation.
This is a common strategy in family courts around the world. Fathers who are seriously abusive get to have friends and family “supervise” them; while mothers falsely found to be abusive are stuck with strict, professionally supervised visits.
As a last resort, the mother appealed.
Notably, the opinion stated that the judge had adequately factored in the father’s abuse history when making his orders. This makes it crystal clear that a judge has discretion to give men custody even if they are violent.
The Re: C case now serves as binding precedent for all custody cases, so not only did the mother in this high-profile case lose, all mothers lost. There is now case law that entitles fathers to custody, even when they are violent.
Ironically, this father-entitling precedent was set in the very first custody case heard at the appellate level under UK’s new Child Focused Court (CFC) protocol. This protocol was implemented largely as a solution to the problem of mothers being unable to protect their children in custody cases.
The CFC was adopted to put focus on early investigations and avoid “adversarial” trials, relying heavily on the opinions of the guardian (child’s legal representative) and social worker. In practice, this just gives judges more cover when they make unjust rulings, as they can blame the investigators.
Two of the appellate justices and the Family Court judge (McKendrick) were directly or indirectly involved with the “Child Focused” model. This allowed them to keep control, while disguised as concerned about child safety. These men are not stupid—they know custody cases are, at their core, about men’s power, not child safety, and that they are there to uphold it.
Although this trickery by the power elite (Old Boy Network) is occurring in the UK, it is happening in various forms in family courts everywhere. Women are continuously misled and hopeful about new “child safety” laws and policy that, in the end, make zero difference.
Source: (15) New Case Precedent: Violent Fathers Have a Right to Custody
An Australian soldier taught Andrew Tate’s inner circle to ‘recruit’ billionaires. He’s now turned his back on the manosphere | SMH
Joule Sullivan, who became one of Tate’s closest friends and advisers, told this masthead he had now turned his back on Tate and the so-called “manosphere”, having grown concerned “there might be something” to the charges of sex trafficking, abuse and rape Tate and his brother Tristan are now fighting in multiple countries.
Tate and his inner circle of War Room generals have cultivated close relationships with US President Donald Trump’s sons and advisers and other wealthy figures in America. As the Tates sit in detention in Miami fighting an extradition request from British prosecutors, their War Room network and university “The Real World” continue to run, charging subscribers thousands of dollars a year for access to Tate’s “secrets to getting rich”.
Data leaks show many of their students are teen boys, including from Australia. And this masthead can reveal at least three Australians were key generals and “professors” inside Tate’s operation.
They include the former Australian Defence Force soldier-turned-security specialist Sullivan, who taught the “penetrating the elite” and “operator” classes to Tate subscribers, adapting covert intelligence skills for networking, personal security and financial gain. He denies they were “blackmail courses”.
Another wealthy Australian in Tate’s inner circle is ex-porn star Stirling Cooper, who teaches courses on how to sexually dominate women and has also been revealed by this masthead as a senior figure in Australia’s main neo-Nazi group.
For many years, Cooper and Sullivan were two of Tate’s staunchest defenders, frequently pictured with the Tate brothers smoking cigars on private jets and partying on yachts.
Inside Tate’s exclusive War Room, leaked chatlogs previously published by the BBC and obtained by this masthead suggest Cooper and Sullivan both took part in discussions about grooming women into online sex work in order to make money and disciplining those who stepped out of line. Neither man has been charged as part of investigations into Tate’s alleged trafficking operation. The Tates deny any wrongdoing.
Sullivan quickly became a leader in the War Room, which he still defends as a place of mentorship and brotherhood. His video lessons on “penetrating the elite to get paid” were available only to a small group of War Room members and leaders.
“Ultra-high net worth will have hookers and mistresses or sugar babies, they’ll always have mistresses, typically they’re always paid,” he says in one video. But “hotels often have issues [with] privacy”.
“If you’ve got a big house, let them know that they can bring their chicks over to your house and f— them … And ‘if you want ladies, this is the number to call’ … Partake in taboo activities with them. If they’re going out in the town to pick up some hired help, go do it with them … something that could get you into trouble. It does cement the trust.”
EXCLUSIVE: Former WPATH President Linked to Multiple Pro-Pedophilia Academics and Activists Over Several Decades, Previously Advocated for Sex Offender Rights – Reduxx
Reduxx can reveal that a leading figure behind the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), an organization which promotes the medical ‘transitioning’ of children, has a long history of working with pro-pedophile academics. Eli Coleman, a former WPATH president who oversaw and influenced the Standards of Care for transgender medical protocols for decades, has professional ties to multiple academics who either defended or advocated favorably for adult-child sexual relations, and had himself previously drafted Standards of Care for sex offenders.