Category: Global

They knew – by Graham Linehan – The Glinner Update

JK Rowling said that taking down WPATH would be the gender critical Battle of Stalingrad, and here’s what makes this case more than just another skirmish in an endless war. The evidence for it arrives on three separate levels, any one of which would be damning on its own. Put together, they close every exit for the trans movement.

The first level is what WPATH told the public, in writing, under its own name. That medical transition is “medically necessary,” not cosmetic, not elective, but necessary in the way insulin is necessary. That it’s “lifesaving.” That puberty blockers are “fully reversible.” That cross-sex hormones improve mental health, that mastectomies on teenage girls are safe and effective and reliably raise their quality of life, that the whole programme prevents suicide. These are the talking points you hear from trans activists every day. It’s signed, it’s dated, and WPATH can’t disown a word of it.

The second level is what those same people said in private, and it’s the one that rules out an honest mistake. Among themselves, the authors of the Standards of Care admitted that “a global consensus on puberty blockers does not exist” and that a recommendation was “not supported by the data.” A former board member, Dr Erica Anderson, has since conceded there’s barely any long-term research on what blockers do to a developing child. They claimed to use GRADE, the recognised system that forces every recommendation to carry an honest label of the evidence behind it. They rated the evidence for blockers “moderate.” Then, they deleted that rating from the final version, so a “strong recommendation” would imply the high-quality evidence they knew they didn’t have.

And then there are the age limits, which give the game away completely. The draft Standards had minimum ages for surgery. The office of Rachel Levine, at the top of Biden’s health department, leaned on WPATH to take them out, not because the evidence had changed but to deny critics a usable headline. One chapter author laid out the calculation in writing: leave the ages in and “the conservatives” will say WPATH supports “cutting off healthy girl breasts at 15 years old,” take them out and “it doesn’t give them the headline.”

The third level is what all of this did to real children. The case is built partly on sworn statements from the casualties. Detransitioners who were started on this path as kids and are now adults living in the result. Parents who were told to choose between a dead child and a living one. A woman who had her breasts cut off in Texas at fourteen, now grown, who gave written permission to publish the photograph of her scarred chest.

Take the three together and you can see why this is different in kind from everything that came before, because each level shuts a different escape route. The public claims kill any pretence that the language was careful or hedged. The private record kills the “wrong but well-meaning” defence, because they knew. The human evidence kills the idea that the harm was ever theoretical.

It’s worth saying plainly that this is a complaint and not a verdict. These are allegations; WPATH will fight them, and it may yet win. But a defendant whose own emails are the prosecution’s best material is not in a comfortable place.

Source: They knew – by Graham Linehan – The Glinner Update

Landmark Declaration Calls for International Moratorium on Surrogacy – ADF International

A group of states has today launched a political declaration calling for an international moratorium on surrogacy, as part of broader efforts to promote the abolition of the practice in line with international human rights law.

Spearheaded by the governments of Italy and Chile, the declaration sets out a shared commitment to achieving the global abolition of surrogacy, promoting an international moratorium on the practice as a stepping stone towards an international legally binding instrument.

The declaration highlights the severe human rights violations and abuses inherent in surrogacy, noting especially the commodification of human life and women’s reproductive capabilities, as well as the harm to the rights of children caused by their deliberate separation from the women who carried and gave birth to them.

The document was presented at a high-level event held on the sidelines of the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, co-hosted by the governments of Italy, Chile, Cameroon and the Holy See and moderated by ADF International.

Source: Landmark Declaration Calls for International Moratorium on Surrogacy – ADF International

Surrogacy Market Size, Growth Trends 2026 – 2031 | Global Report

Surrogacy market size in 2026 is estimated at USD 28.91 billion, growing from 2025 value of USD 23.66 billion with 2031 projections showing USD 78.68 billion, growing at 22.19% CAGR over 2026-2031.

Growth stems from delayed parenthood among millennials, higher infertility prevalence, and wider acceptance of diverse family structures. Legal reforms in the United States, Thailand, and several European countries are redrawing international patient flows, while rapid gains in in-vitro fertilization (IVF) success rates shorten treatment timelines.

Fertility centers continue to integrate artificial-intelligence embryo selection, cutting costs and increasing reliability. Cross-border demand is expanding toward lower-cost, regulation-light destinations in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia as intended parents search for clear parentage rules and favorable pricing.

IVI RMA Global, Virtus Health, Bourn Hall Clinic, Circle Surrogacy and New Hope Fertility Center are the major companies operating in this market.

[Ed: This must be stopped.]

Source: Surrogacy Market Size, Growth Trends 2026 – 2031 | Global Report

The Maternal Gap. How systems fail mothers and what must change | UN Human Rights Council

Babies need women | Jean Hatchet | The Critic Magazine

In their lifetime not all women have babies, not all can, and not all want to. Yet every person who gives birth is a woman and all mothers are female. Feminists in the UK fought very hard for reproductive rights, and we defend them fiercely just as we do the right to retain the word “woman” and “mother” exclusively for female people. 

You can’t and shouldn’t force women to be mothers, then, but at the same time men should not be allowed to completely replace women in the parenting of children, whether that is by adoption or surrogacy. Given the statistics on male violence against children, it simply isn’t safe for the child — and especially for babies — to be raised exclusively by male strangers.

This week saw the horrendously distressing court case of Baby Preston. Preston Davey was 13 months old when he was brutally murdered after serious sexual and physical cruelty, by two men who were allowed to adopt him.  

There are on average 63 child homicides a year. Infants under 1 are over-represented in statistics, accounting for between 19 and 20 homicides each year. Most of these are committed by a parent or step-parent, and this murderer is most often a male.  Over 90 evident of all homicides in the UK are committed by men. It is statistically evident that it is significantly safer to place a child in a home with a woman or multiple women.

The sexual risk to children from men makes this even more necessary. Last year a sensational revelation from Gavin Thomas, the President of the Police Chiefs Association was that there are so many child sexual offenders that it would be impossible to jail them all and he called for “softer measures”. Around 98 per cent of child sexual offenders are male. The National Crime Agency meanwhile revealed that it is possible that 750,000 men are interested in sex with children.

A 72-year-old widowed man was granted permission in Scotland to become a parent to a surrogate child. The question anyone evaluating his suitability needed to ask is why he wanted this? His answer could never have been sufficient to make it primarily about the benefit to the child. Men like this make such a demand due to their own selfish needs — and in some cases those “needs” will be very much against the interests and safety of the child. 

As Sanchez Manning discovered via FOI, since it became legal 43 men over 60 have applied to become the parent of a child born to a surrogate mother. These men are taking babies from women and some of these men will be a sexual and physical risk to those babies. It is an evil practice and governments are morally and ethically empty in allowing it to proliferate. 

Ian Watkins targeted and seduced women with babies in order to be able to rape the infant. He was sentenced to 35 years for some of the most hideous crimes against very young children and few shed a tear when he was in prison killed last year. Men with depraved sexual needs will do whatever is available to ensure those needs are met whether it is grooming or adopting. 

Gay men are not any less risky than straight men, despite a willingness by some diversity and inclusion devotees to suggest otherwise. They are still men. For this reason, it is crucial that babies and young children are never adopted into homes where there are only men. It is vital that the government makes moves to ban surrogacy altogether. No one should be buying children or renting women’s wombs (including women and not even if those women are famous).

Source: Babies need women | Jean Hatchet | The Critic Magazine

The uncomfortable science in the womb: How biological experience disrupts surrogacy narratives – Bar‐Am – Medical Anthropology Quarterly – Wiley Online Library

Abstract

The discourse surrounding surrogacy portrays pregnancy as a temporary process, depicting surrogates as neutral “carriers” whose involvement concludes at birth. This narrative minimizes gestation’s biological significance despite evidence of its lasting effects on both women and children. We interviewed 47 retired Israeli surrogates using thematic analysis to examine how they navigate biological experiences. Surrogates employ frameworks that dismiss gestational bio-ties and emphasize genetic kinship, empowering their act of giving by rendering gestation inconsequential. This framework benefits surrogates, intended parents, and the industry by allowing narratives that overlook certain bio-ties. Two instances challenge this: bodies “talking back” through biological disruptions and intended mothers confronting surrogates about lasting bio-imprints on their babies. These challenges produce “embodied dissonance”—biology clashing with social expectations—and lead to “collaborative biologies,” forcing recognition of connections the dominant framework erases. This study addresses bio-ties in surrogacy, paving the way for new frameworks reflecting human reproduction’s complexities.

Source: The uncomfortable science in the womb: How biological experience disrupts surrogacy narratives – Bar‐Am – Medical Anthropology Quarterly – Wiley Online Library

This Never Happens: June 17 2026 – by Graham Linehan

The original This Never Happens documented 236 cases of trans-identified males — biological men — committing acts of violence, sexual assault, and predation against women and children.

Of course, these cases continue to pour in and we’ll continue to record them.

Harvey Marcelin (born Harvey Marcelin)

On Wednesday, June 10, 2026, 88-year-old serial killer Harvey Marcelin, a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Brooklyn, New York. Marcelin was convicted of first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and concealment of a human corpse for the gruesome March 2022 slaying and dismemberment of 68-year-old Susan Leyden, a vulnerable New Jersey jeweler.

This horrifying crime represents Marcelin’s third killing of a woman. He previously spent over 50 years in state prisons: first for shooting an ex-girlfriend to death in 1963, and then for stabbing another ex-girlfriend to death in 1984 and dumping her body in Central Park shortly after being paroled. He was released on parole once again in late 2019 after promising to stay out of trouble, only to murder and dismember Leyden, as detailed in the official statement from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

‘Paula’ Stanton

While seated in the waiting room awaiting a mental health assessment, Stanton put his hand down his leggings and began masturbating “in full view” of the nurses’ desk. The prosecutor, Lewis Ball, told the court that staff witnessed Stanton holding his penis and moving his hand up and down, periodically making direct eye contact with a female nurse on duty, as reported in the WalesOnline coverage. When arrested, Stanton claimed “I did nothing wrong” and refused to answer questions during interviews. Stanton is a serial sex offender with 12 previous convictions for 19 offenses, including five sex offenses committed between 2019 and 2025.

‘Amanda Joy’ Cooper

On Monday, June 15, 2026, the Federal Court of Canada in New Brunswick heard a judicial review petition on behalf of 58-year-old Amanda Joy Cooper, a biological male and designated “dangerous offender” currently seeking a transfer from a maximum-security men’s prison to a federal women’s facility. Cooper was convicted in 2001 of four counts of sexual assault, three counts of assault, forcible confinement, and uttering threats; all of her victims were women, including a vulnerable 14-year-old girl. While serving her sentence, Cooper came out as transgender in 2020 and underwent full gender-affirming vaginoplasty surgery in 2024.

Source: This Never Happens: June 17 2026 – by Graham Linehan

FTC and four states sue WPATH over gender-affirming care | AP News

The Federal Trade Commission and four states sued the World Professional Association for Transgender Health on Wednesday, in the latest push by President Donald Trump’s administration and others to limit gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

The suit alleges the group, known widely as WPATH, made deceptive claims about gender-affirming care for minors and its members profited off the claims. Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas filed along with the FTC.

The suit also alleges the group didn’t disclose the side effects of certain pediatric medical transition services, including those related to hormone treatments, and doctors then repeated to consumers “false, misleading or unsubstantiated statements about safety and efficacy found in WPATH guidelines.”

It asks a federal judge to block WPATH from “future violations of the FTC Act” and other laws, and to award civil penalties and other financial awards to each of the states.

The suit comes following an investigation by the agency into WPATH. The group sued to block the probe, alleging the agency was violating its First Amendment rights. A federal judge in May ruled in favor of WPATH to temporarily block the probe from continuing.

The FTC also launched investigations into the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society over their guidelines on gender-affirming care. Both of those groups also sued.

WPATH noted in a statement that a federal court has already ruled against the FTC over this effort when it blocked the investigation.

While the nation’s largest professional organization for plastic surgeons in February recommended that gender-affirming surgeries be delayed until patients turn 19, most other major groups have stood by their guidelines to act on a case-by-case basis and use caution when considering surgery for minors.

Source: FTC and four states sue WPATH over gender-affirming care | AP News

This iniquitous drive to sanitise surrogacy must be resisted – The Conservative Woman

LAST week the House of Lords debated the adequacy of the law on the regulation of fertility treatments and broadly agreed it wasn’t fit for purpose.

Introduced by crossbench peer Baroness Ruth Deech, former chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), peers examined proposals for reform from two separate sources: the HFEA’s recommendations for updating the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act, and the proposals put forward by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission for reform of surrogacy law.

Many stakeholders in the fertility sector have sought to dovetail these areas of law as part of a single programme of reproductive law reform.

But the distinction matters enormously. For years, organisations with a vested interest in liberalising surrogacy to exploit the market have attempted to present it as another ‘type’ of fertility treatment. The implication is that surrogacy should be considered alongside IVF under a single framework of assisted reproduction and ‘family creation’. This move aimed to pull surrogacy away from other forms of state-sanctioned parenthood, such as adoption and fostering, towards legal parenthood achieved through natural conception. 

A straightforward packaging of reform of IVF and surrogacy law into a single legislative project would be the ideal result for many.

The examples of surrogacy arrangements in countries such as Ukraine and Nigeria – now the UK’s most popular surrogacy shopping destinations after America – illustrate how difficult it is to balance the desire for a child with the realities of economic inequality and exploitation.

In 2022, the government increased the maximum storage period for embryos, eggs and sperm from ten years to 55 years, subject to periodic consent renewal. Advocates celebrated this overnight change as expanding reproductive choice, but there was little public discussion regarding the practical consequences.

Up to an estimated 1.2million embryos in the UK may now remain preserved for decades. The physical space required to store them in vast banks of liquid nitrogen containers receives remarkably little attention.

Researchers have produced offspring from two male mice cells through sophisticated cell manipulation. We now see womb transplants in the UK from both living and deceased donors. One Chinese biologist, Dr He Jianku, was imprisoned and fined for breaching international ethics codes through the creation of genetically engineered babies created to avoid the passing on of HIV. He secretly recruited couples where the father had HIV and the mother did not and his experiment led to the birth of twin girls, Lulu and Nana, in 2018. A third anonymous gene-edited baby was born in 2019.

Around the world, a profitable fertility industry connects clinics, lawyers and brokers across international borders to facilitate the wishes of adults to make their ‘dreams come true’, with women reduced to egg providers and ‘gestational carriers’; the children are inevitably the ‘end product’ of a production line. Even the ‘two dad’ mice relied on a female mouse to give birth.

These concerns over surrogacy deserve far greater public attention as motherhood is increasingly being dissected into component parts. But so too are donor-conceived individuals, raising important questions about identity and the psychological consequences of being intentionally separated from your biological origins.

Just because we can does not mean we should.

Source: This iniquitous drive to sanitise surrogacy must be resisted – The Conservative Woman

Is ‘baby brain’ real? A neuroscientist explains | The Conversation

Pregnancy reshapes the brain in quite dramatic ways. In fact, we can tell if someone has been pregnant by looking at their brain structure.

There are changes in the brain’s grey matter volume. These are in regions that control complex thinking, mood and “social cognition”, or our ability to understand the needs and wants of others.

These changes are long-lasting. They’ve been detected in women six years after birth. Large-scale population studies have even shown this grey matter signature of pregnancy decades later.

More recently, a remarkable study scanned one woman 26 times from before conception through to two years after birth, to map these changes as they actually unfolded.

The researchers watched the volume of her grey matter decline across the pregnancy. The outer layer of her brain, the cortex, also got thinner. These changes were a response to the enormous rise in pregnancy hormones, and the brain changes tracked these hormone surges closely.

At the same time, her brain’s white matter, the wiring that connects different brain regions, was strengthened during pregnancy. This means brain signals can travel faster and more efficiently. This strengthening occurred during the first and second trimesters before settling back to pre-pregnancy levels after birth.

It might sound alarming that the brain loses grey matter during pregnancy, but this is almost certainly not damage.

Instead, scientists think this reflects a kind of fine-tuning, with the brain preparing itself for the demands of motherhood. This is in a similar way to the adolescent brain reorganising itself during puberty.

So far from breaking down, mothers’ brains appear to be purposefully remodelling.

If the brain is undergoing such substantial structural change, you might expect problems to show up when we test how new mothers actually think – but mostly, we don’t see such problems.

The largest study of its kind, published recently by Australian and US scientists, measured memory, thinking and processing speed in 150 new mums and 150 new dads. They then compared them to women and men who did not have children.

New parents performed just as well as everyone else, with no sign that becoming a parent impaired memory or thinking. These skills also didn’t worsen or improve over time, with similar performance over the first two years of being a new parent.

This comprehensive study is the latest to confirm a mismatch between what mothers report experiencing and what we see on objective tests.

Some studies do find subtle changes, particularly in memory during pregnancy itself. But the effects are small and inconsistent, and rarely match the experiences mothers describe.

The brain changes are real and lasting. The memory and attention decline is likely mostly fiction, or at least, far less of a culprit than the stereotype suggests.

Source: Is ‘baby brain’ real? A neuroscientist explains