The federal government is being urged to broaden a new inquiry into a South Korean adoption program found to have a history of corruption and fraud.
Behind the push are numerous inter-country adoptees who arrived in Australia from the 1970s onwards as international adoption grew in popularity.
But many later learned stories about their biological parents were false or parts of their adoption paperwork had been fabricated.
Hackettstown-based Genomic Prediction and Livingston-based Cooper Genomics face federal class action lawsuits alleging false advertising of PGT-A embryo testing.
Allison Freeman, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said patients purchase the testing because it’s sold as having “high percentages of accuracy.”
The testing, which is rarely covered by insurance, is offered as an optional add-on during the IVF process. Although it’s marketed as increasing pregnancy and live birth rates, major medical organizations have stated that further research is necessary to establish its value.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine published a practice guideline in 2018 concluding “there is insufficient evidence to recommend the routine use of preimplantation genetic testing-aneuploidy in all infertile women.”
Despite this, the proportion of IVF cycles using PGT-A increased from 14% in 2014 to 44% in 2019, according to national data from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.
All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
The fall is astonishing. At its height, the global fertility rate hit 5.3 births per woman in 1963, but it has been in near-constant decline ever since. Sixty years on, it is now only around 2.2. In many countries, it is far lower than the roughly 2.1 babies per woman that would sustain current population sizes, known as the replacement rate.
With the birth rate now sitting at about 1.4 to 1.6 in countries like the UK, Australia and the US – and as low as 1.2 in Japan and 0.75 in South Korea – our understanding of the global fertility decline has so far been driven by demographers, who take whole-population views and try to predict the future.
What this misses, argues Paula Sheppard, a cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford, are the nuances: which groups of society are having fewer children, and the different reasons why.
Penny Sarchet: There seems to be a lot of panic about birth rates at the moment.
Paula Sheppard: There’s a misconception: people think they’ve never been this low before, but they’re actually not [a record low]. After the second world war, rates were very low as well, and demographers, politicians and policy-makers were panicking. Demographers were trying to project what the population would look like – would birth rates recover? But the projections made in the late 1940s, when people weren’t having many babies after the war, were lower than what actually turned out to happen. Nobody got it right, because no one predicted the baby boom.
I’ve wondered if women simply don’t want to have the replacement level of children, and women with more education have more control over how many children they have. But your work has found that they are having fewer children than they would like?
People still want two or three kids. Not everyone does – there are always some people who don’t want kids at all. But in the UK, for every three babies that are wanted, only two are born.
However, higher-educated women are quite prepared not to have kids unless they’re sure that the father is going to invest as heavily as they are as a co-parent. I think it is because women take a higher career penalty.
It famously takes a village to raise a child and, due to urbanisation, more people than ever don’t have that village.
This is the crux of the matter. Social support was the most important thing in the study. A defining feature of our species is that female humans are able to have multiple dependent children at once. You don’t see this in chimpanzees, for example.
This cooperative breeding is literally what makes us human, and in every group I studied, they wanted support from their partner or their parents. The higher-educated women also wanted friends’ support – they wanted to know that there were mothers’ groups they could join and that their friends were also having kids.
You found that higher-educated women see it as unusual to have children before their 30s, which is quite old, anthropologically speaking. What’s driven this?
I think the reason people are waiting that long is because families are struggling to have all their proverbial ducks in a row before they’re ready to have a family – or have another child. If you made work and parenting more compatible, I think people would have kids younger.
Amid all the headlines and political commentary around birth rates, what’s the one thing you wish people could know about the issue?
It is about making parenting and working compatible, whatever that means for different people, and stopping pitting them against each other. They always used to be compatible. Women have always worked and they have always had kids. It’s just that now we live in this patriarchal setting: the office is the office, and children don’t go there. Instead, let’s change this whole culture.
All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
A federal bill introduced in Congress would create a system where pregnant women are not only targeted for increased vaccination but also tracked through a federally coordinated surveillance network that activates during pandemics.
H.R. 7973—the “Momnibus Act”—authorizes a staggering $2.46 billion overall, with $715 million of that specifically allocated to build this structure: combining mass vaccination initiatives with a real-time data tracking system designed to monitor health status, outcomes, and demographic characteristics during declared public health emergencies.
The bill constructs a pipeline to identify the population, increase medical intervention, and track the results—continuously, at scale, and under federal coordination.
From a health freedom standpoint, this represents a shift away from individual consent-driven care and toward a system where specific populations are identified, targeted, and monitored during crises.
The legislation was introduced on March 18, 2026 by U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood (D-IL-14) and immediately routed to multiple House committees, including Energy and Commerce.
It remains at the earliest stage of the legislative process, with no hearings or votes.
Campaign finance data shows support from healthcare systems, insurance networks, and pharmaceutical-aligned interests—industries that would directly benefit from:
The same entities positioned to carry out the bill’s mandates are among those funding its sponsor.
Funding is explicitly tied to expanding these efforts, with hundreds of millions authorized specifically for awareness and equity campaigns that prioritize populations with “low rates of vaccination” and “racial and ethnic minority groups.”
The federal government is authorized to identify which groups are not complying with recommended vaccination schedules and focus massive resources on increasing uptake in those populations.
That is a shift from informed consent at the individual level to behavioral targeting at the population level.
All collected data must be categorized by “race, ethnicity, gender, primary language, geography, socioeconomic status.”
Rather than just tracking disease, the bill would allow tracking of mothers who have the disease, where they are, and what demographic group they belong to.
That enables targeted interventions and creates a framework for population-level categorization tied to medical status.
In an unprecedented court judgment an Australian woman has been awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars compensation after being pressured into a vaginal examination during labour — a ruling that will rock the maternity system.
The Supreme Court of Victoria on Friday accepted the plaintiff’s claim of assault and battery as she did not consent to the vaginal exam.
Leading obstetricians say the ruling will send “shivers down the spines of anyone who works in the maternity sector” and make young doctors too scared to take on an obstetric specialty.
The mother was awarded $275,000 as it was ruled that Bendigo Health breached its standard of care by failing to obtain true informed consent and was negligent in its “dual messaging” during the antenatal period.
The court was told that the woman was repeatedly reassured that her written birth plan to avoid vaginal examinations without urgent medical necessity was “achievable” and the defendant negligently failed to warn her of the risk that hospital policies might still require the examination out of hours without an urgent medical reason.
The court records detail how hospital staff allegedly withheld admission, pain relief and the midwife until the woman submitted to the examination to prove she was in active labour.
National body the Maternity Consumer Network told The Courier-Mail that the judgment sends a clear message into all birthing wards across the country.
“If women continue to be subject to vaginal exams or any other procedure under coercion, the law has recognised it is battery and assault and negligence,” the network’s Alecia Staines said.
“It happens far too frequently and if it, continues health services should expect an influx of litigation. Every maternity staff and service needs to understand that not only does no mean no, using strong arm tactics to get a yes does not equal consent in the eyes of the law,” she said.
Private obstetrician Gino Pecoraro said that Bendigo Health would likely appeal the decision.
Source: Bendigo Health ordered to pay $275k for birth exam assault ruling | The Courier Mail
Following decades of calls for action, the Education Select Committee has recommended the government provides a formal apology and begins working with survivors.
Fielder said her mum “had no other choice” other than to give her up “and as a result of that she was dead by the time she was 38”.
After reading her adoption files, she said: “It’s quite heartbreaking to see the letters that go from the adoption agency to her asking her to sign her rights away knowing that she was desperately trying to find somewhere to live so she could keep me.
“I think an apology will go a long way towards acknowledging the fact that there was harm done,” said Fielder, adding that this would make it easier for those affected to access mental health support.
The adoptee said she would also like people like her to have a marker on their medical records because having to repeat her background to medical professionals “is very, very triggering”.
In the report published on Friday, the Education Select Committee recommended the government must provide an “unqualified formal apology” to all those affected by forced adoption in the UK.
Source: ‘My mum took own life after forced adoption – now I want an apology’
All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
THE Vatican has called for an end to surrogacy worldwide, saying that it risks reducing children to “commodified products” and women to “service providers”.
“The issue of surrogacy is an urgent one — the technology and practice have run laps around law and ethics,” the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations and Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, the Most Revd Gabriele Caccia, told the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York last week.
“Many view surrogacy as a compassionate solution for those wishing to be parents. . . Yet when a child is the object of a contract and transaction, how can commodification be avoided?”
Although prohibited as a form of human trafficking in most European countries, commercial surrogacy remains widespread in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and is projected to have a net value of £150 billion by 2032, Global Market Insights says.
Women who agreed to be employed as surrogates could find themselves in a “perverse competition for commissioning parents”, he said, while a child diagnosed with a disability became “a flawed product or problem to be solved”.
A French campaigner, Olivia Maurel, told Austria’s Kathpress agency that surrogate mothers had been forced to have abortions if the child “developed differently than ordered”, and typically received 20 per cent of the 200,000 euros paid by European clients for a child, the remainder going to agencies, clinics, and lawyers.
The demand for surrogacy’s worldwide abolition was, she said, “one of few issues on which Vatican representatives and radical feminists are united”.
Source: Vatican hopes for end to surrogacy ‘in all its forms’
All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
The United States was isolated in its opposition to the adoption of “agreed conclusions” at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) on Tuesday, recording the only “no” vote at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Monday.
The US sought the removal of “controversial social issues” from the document, Devex reports. US objections included “ambiguous language promoting gender ideology”, “vague, unqualified commitments to sexual and reproductive health that can be interpreted as implying abortion rights”, and “censorship language on regulating artificial intelligence”, according to the UN media release.
Earlier, Nigeria and Egypt called for more time to reach consensus – the usual route for UN decision-making and the only route the CSW has taken in 70 years. Pakistan later proposed voting separately on each of the US’s eight amendments.
However, CSW chair Maritza Chan Valverde from Costa Rica said that “every effort has been made to listen to delegations and to reflect the diversity of views expressed”.
“We are convinced that the text represents the most balanced outcome achievable at this stage,” Valverde said, adding that her Bureau has decided to put the text to a vote.
The CSW, which was established in 1946, is the main global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality, and the rights and the empowerment of women.
Source: Only US Votes Against Women’s Rights Document At UN Commission – Health Policy Watch
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GENEVA – The so-called ‘Epstein Files’ contain disturbing and credible evidence of systematic and large-scale sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation of women and girls, UN experts* said today.According to the experts, these acts could amount to sexual slavery, reproductive violence, enforced disappearance, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, and femicide.
“These crimes were committed against a backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption, extreme misogyny, and the commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls from different parts of the world,” the experts said.
“The ‘Epstein Files’, which are suggestive of the existence of a global criminal enterprise have shocked the conscience of humanity and raised terrifying implications of the level of impunity for such crimes.”
“So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” they said.
All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
When eugenics comes to America, it will come not as buxom blondes in ads for blue jeans, but wrapped in therapy-speak: “safety,” “optimization,” and “reassurance.”
Some, doubtless, welcome this future, envisioning a world with fewer kids born with congenital illnesses, fewer disabled adults, fewer surprises. Others dread it, concerned about a gradual slide toward ableism and less forbearance toward those whose characteristics, health conditions, and appearances don’t fit the typical mold.
As Public Discourse readers will recall, one high-profile startup, Orchid, made waves last summer by offering parents the ability to “make an informed decision” by sequencing the genomes of their embryos created through IVF. They bill their services as a way to help parents avoid giving birth to a child with autism, Down Syndrome, or other abnormalities.
Another, Herasight, offer clients the chance to select their embryo for traits like intelligence, giving potential parents an online tool to calculate the “expected IQ outcome” of their child. Fertility clinics already routinely offer the ability to select embryos based on other physical attributes discernible from genetic testing, like eye color. Further advances appear on the horizon: The Wall Street Journal reports that tech billionaires have put money into a startup that would produce gene-edited babies, with the goal of one day “accelerating evolution.”
[T]he ability to proactively select gender very quickly opens the doors to uncomfortable conversations around misogyny or misandry. Guaranteeing individuals the choice of whether their future child will be a boy or girl injects the logic of individual preference into the act of begetting a new person; it wouldn’t take much in the way of cultural or social preferences for or against boys (or girls) to distort the future makeup of society.
In a world in which pre-implantation screening becomes widely practiced, will there be support and research funding for parents of children born with those disabilities? Or will those parents face an undercurrent of suspicion and social approbation for having not been prudent enough to screen out their embryos carrying those genetic abnormalities?
