Category: Reproductive Rights

How to File the Discrimination Lawsuit in your State or Country | Women’s Coalition

Please share this post with anyone interested in filing the lawsuit or spreading the word with MSM, independent, or social media.

First, to be clear, these lawsuits are not an end in and of themselves. Hopefully they will help women who have active cases, but there is no guarantee.

They serve to legally and culturally establish that discrimination is the cause of women losing custody and are meant to be a springboard for demanding the implementation of a new system where judges do not have the power to discriminate.

WHERE TO FILE

In the U.S., the lawsuit must be filed state by state, as child custody is always under state jurisdiction.

In other countries, custody may be under state or federal jurisdiction, so check with an attorney.

Our Coalition has mothers in every state and country who have expressed interest in joining a lawsuit. So we have a base of women from which to file just about anywhere.

WHAT TO DO

If you would like to file in your state/country, you need to find a (preferably) female attorney who will file the Complaint pro bono.

Then have her contact Cindy Dumas (Women’s Coalition’s Executive Director) at cindydumas@womenscoalition.org. We will work together to ensure the lawsuit stays true to purpose.

EQUAL PROTECTION CLAIM

Our lawsuit is exclusively about women’s right to not be discriminated against in child custody cases. This translates legally into the right to “equal protection of the laws”.

Many western countries provide this equal protection right for women in some form.

Source: How to File the Discrimination Lawsuit in your State or Country

Baby broker: The ‘crazy car salesman’ brokering babies and holding embryos ‘hostage’ | SMH

Norris-Ongso and his company, Global Surrogacy, have been accused of running an unethical surrogacy practice, linking international clients with women in developing countries to carry their children, and cashing in on a burgeoning billion-dollar industry. The company has since rebranded to KinPath Surrogacy. Norris-Ongso resides in Portugal.

The global surrogacy industry has exploded in the past decade. Valued at $27.9 billion in 2025, it is projected to reach $201.8 billion by 2034.

This masthead has spoken to a surrogate, multiple clients and former staff, all of whom raised concerns about Norris-Ongso’s behaviour and Global Surrogacy’s operations.

Source: Baby broker: The ‘crazy car salesman’ brokering babies and holding embryos ‘hostage’

Frontiers | Motherhood, the “blank slate,” and the language of surrogacy | Karleen Gribble

Abstract

Women who gestate and give birth to infants or who provide oocytes in surrogacy arrangements are most often described as “surrogates,” “gestational carriers,” or “donors,” rather than mothers. This terminology is used not only by the women themselves but also by those wishing to become parents via surrogacy and by those who profit from surrogacy. Caregiving parents predominantly discourage their children from using language that ascribes parenthood to those who gestated and gave birth to them or provided the gametes for their conception. In rationalising this linguistic choice, the importance of gestation, birth, and genetics is downplayed. This perspective paper discusses the significance of genetic and gestational motherhood for children born via surrogacy. In doing this, it explores the foetal and neonatal experiences of gestational motherhood. Insights from adoption and donor conception are also presented, highlighting the limitations and harms of treating infants as “blank slates.” In addition, the paper reviews research on the language used by individuals born via surrogacy and donor conception to describe the women who gestated and gave birth to them or those who provided the gametes for their conception. It is concluded that it is beneficial for children for the language of surrogacy to recognise the multiplicity of their mothers.

Source: Frontiers | Motherhood, the “blank slate,” and the language of surrogacy

Filed! Discrimination against Women in NY Custody Cases Lawsuit | Women’s Coalition

May 19, 2026 will go down in history as the day systemic gender discrimination in family courts was officially recognized as the reason women are losing custody of their children in droves.

Sarah Howland, Esq. filed our Discrimination against Women in New York Custody Cases lawsuit in the Southern District of New York federal court: Case #1:26-cv-04188.

STATEMENT BY SARAH HOWLAND, ESQ.

I filed a lawsuit today on behalf of The Women’s Coalition and 41 similarly-situated female plaintiffs who have been discriminated against in NY family and matrimonial courts.

It is a federal lawsuit filed in the southern district of NY but it includes Plaintiffs from all parts of NY state.

The goal of the lawsuit is to legally establish that women have been and are being systemically discriminated against in child custody cases. We are requesting a jury trial and seek declaratory and injunctive relief.

For decades, a false narrative has been spun that women are at an advantage in custody cases, but in reality, the stark opposite is true. Women are overwhelmingly disadvantaged in family court. And the empirical data support this, and verify women’s independent accounts.

Our request is simple: We want a declaration that sex discrimination is occurring and an end to it.

We are also asking that women with minor children have a right to a de novo case, in which they will not experience discrimination.

The defendants are the State of NY, the Governor, the NY state unified court system, and the relevant supervising judges.

We are not suing individual judges because this is not about any particular judge who has engaged in discriminatory conduct against the Plaintiffs. It’s about the system.

Our Complaint claims that women’s constitutional right as a class (sex) to equal protection of the laws has been violated. This sex discrimination manifests as violations of procedural and substantive due process, such as a pattern of biased judicial conduct and treatment of women litigants.

The Constitution of the State of New York guarantees equal protection under the law, and that is all we are asking for.

It has been a pleasure and an honor working with Cindy Dumas of the Women’s Coalition in the writing and preparation of this lawsuit. I am proud to be part of this historic moment, fighting with and for women in this important effort.

Source: Filed! Discrimination against Women in NY Custody Cases Lawsuit

Case Law  – Globalarrk

This section of the GlobalARRK website shares information about court decisions (case law) made under the 1980 Hague Convention. It is intended to help you understand how courts generally approach these cases and the defences used.

It is very important to remember this is not legal advice and will be up to date at the time of publishing. We strongly recommend you seek legal advice as soon as possible if you are involved in 1980 Hague Convention legal proceedings. 

Source: Case Law  – Globalarrk

Tickle Vs Giggle Is No Laughing Matter – by Jennifer Bilek

The ruling in Tickle v. Giggle was entirely predictable, and no less outrageous or infuriating, because it was predictable. Anyone paying attention could see where this was headed. Still, watching it land, watching the law formally sever itself from material reality, is something else. My heart goes out to Sall Grover, and to those who understood this was never just about an app.

Giggle, launched in 2020, was a female-only space. Not controversial. Not extremist. A simple premise: women, adult human females, had a platform/space to gather among themselves. This basic boundary is now treated as unlawful.

If gender is constructed, and identity is self-defined, then sex itself becomes negotiable.

And once sex is negotiable, women cease to exist as a coherent class.

Now, this is not just theoretical anymore. It is law.

The failure, both strategic and intellectual, came when this premise went largely unchallenged. Instead of holding the line on reality, the fight was reframed as one of safety: women versus predatory men in female spaces. A real concern, but a losing argument. It ceded the foundation while arguing over symptoms.

The result is the grotesque spectacle we have now: a manufactured conflict between “women’s rights” and “trans rights,” as if they are both naturally occurring categories bumping up against each other, rather than the inevitable outcome of redefining sex out of existence.

Meanwhile, the deeper drivers of this shift remain conveniently obscured.

Australia, where the case of Tickle Vs Giggle was decided, is not just any jurisdiction. It is a global leader in assisted reproductive technology. A significant percentage of its children are conceived through IVF. The same society that is technologically disassembling reproduction is legally disassembling sex. Some Australian schools are teaching 7–10-year-olds about reproductive technologies, such as IVF and donor conception, typically within secondary school health curriculum. These topics are increasingly included to reflect diverse family structures (Hello, LGBTQI+ Inc.) and modern fertility challenges (same sex attraction and sterilizing the next generation for identity purposes creates a lot of fertility challenges), often under the banner of comprehensive sexuality and relationships education, removed from any market analysis.

You can call that coincidence if you like. I don’t, and the vast amount of capital that has gone into promoting dissociation from sexed reality as progressive, supports me.

What Tickle v. Giggle reveals is not compassion, not progress, not the expansion of rights, but the collapse of a category and the opening of markets from that splintering.

Women are now being told, in effect, that they are not a biological class with shared boundaries, but an identity open to anyone who claims it. That their spaces are not theirs to define. That their objections are discriminatory. That reality itself is negotiable.

This is why this case matters. Not because of Giggle. Not because of Tickle. But because it exposes the mechanism: redefine the category, institutionalize the redefinition, and then attack anyone who refuses to comply. It is a political and market assault on the foundation of reality itself, not just women’s rights.

Source: Tickle Vs Giggle Is No Laughing Matter – by Jennifer Bilek

New Surrogacy Guidelines Ignore Calls for Abolition – The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network

According to a recent international announcement on surrogacy guidelines, leading fertility organizations—including ASPIRE, ESHRE, ASRM, and IFFS—have collaborated to develop “minimum standards” for surrogacy practices worldwide. The effort is presented (should we say masqueraded) as a response to mounting concern over exploitation and inconsistent regulation.

However, this framing sits uneasy alongside the broader international context and seems to be a move of desperation from those at the top of the fertility food chain rather than true care for women, children, and families. These “guidelines” come in the wake of a clear and urgent call from the United Nations to move toward the abolition of surrogacy due to its inherent risks of exploitation.

Specifically, the recent report by UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, interestingly cited at ASPIRE, calls not for improved regulation, but for dismantling the system altogether – through the abolition of surrogacy. Against this backdrop, industry-led “self-regulation” appears not as a solution, but as deflection and strategy for preservation. These guidelines are being advanced in the name of “international cooperation,” yet they emerge from within the same sector that benefits directly from surrogacy arrangements.

If the goal is truly to uphold human rights, the conversation must continue to move beyond regulation toward abolition. Anything less risks entrenching the very harms that the international community has begun to acknowledge—and condemn.

Source: New Surrogacy Guidelines Ignore Calls for Abolition – The Center for Bioethics & Culture Network

Move towards global consensus guidelines on surrogacy with mounting concerns over human rights violations | PR Newswire

BEIJING, May 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — World leaders in assisted reproductive technology are finalising global consensus guidelines on minimal standards in surrogacy to address mounting concerns about severe human rights violations.

The standards will attempt to tackle inconsistent or inadequate regulation of the practice, particularly in settings where there is disempowerment of women and girls including violence, abuse and exploitation of surrogates.

It is a move being propelled by a global collaboration between the Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE), the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), and the International Federation of Fertility Societies (IFFS).

It was spearheaded by ASPIRE and during discussions between the global consensus group the United Nations (UN) issued a report calling for its 193 member States to move towards eradicating surrogacy in all its forms. The report, presented at the UN General Assembly in October 2025, said the member States should adopt a legal and policy framework for surrogacy pending its abolition.

The first draft consensus guidelines on surrogacy developed by representatives of the peak fertility societies will be presented for the first time at the ASPIRE 2026 Congress in Beijing this week, a meeting that will be attended by around 3,000 fertility specialists from across the world.

Source: Move towards global consensus guidelines on surrogacy with mounting concerns over human rights violations

Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into surrogacy: Three women changed my mind on surrogacy | SMH | Jenna Price

This moment is a tipping point for surrogacy in Australia. Do we stay with the model of what we call “altruistic surrogacy”, doing it for love, kindness or charity? Or do we go with “compensated surrogacy”, a coded word for payment for the surrogate mother that goes beyond the bare expenses? It’s used instead of the more honest “commercial surrogacy” because that seems too much like we are buying and selling babies.

The ALRC was asked to inquire into surrogacy laws in Australia under the chairmanship of Justice Mordy Bromberg. Its report to federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland will be delivered in a few weeks. Its advisory committee, now disbanded, looks like fan fiction for the commercial surrogacy lobby, with some prominent fertility lawyers among its cast.

Believe me, I understand the nearly overwhelming desire to have a baby. When I met my husband, I wanted six. Fortunately, sense, my lovely spouse and exhaustion after three kids prevailed. He was also the one who had the good sense to steer me away from becoming a surrogate for my sister. He was right. I might have handed the kid over, but I would never have been able to relinquish my motherhood. My sister never had kids. She died. Our relationship never recovered.

But I remained a firm supporter of surrogacy for decades, for other people, if not for me. Earlier this year, I spoke to three women who changed my mind. Australia finally apologised for the pain of forced adoptions, but these women explained how much surrogacy has in common with that barbaric practice.

Patricia Harper, one of the early founders of the National Council for Single Mothers and their Children, discovered the ALRC inquiry had no room for women affected by adoption. She had held tight to her daughter Ruth in 1968, when friends, families, strangers, all tried to force Patricia’s hand because she had no husband. Lily Clifford, one of the founders of the Association of Relinquishing Mothers, had her son removed in 1972 because she was not married to the baby’s father. And I spoke to Sarah Dingle, author of Brave New Humans, who discovered in her 20s that she was donor-conceived with no way of discovering who her father was. She argues that when children are a result of surrogacy, there are many ways they may be sold, isolated from their families and/or lied to.

Not one of these women was called to take part in consultations with the surrogacy inquiry. Not one. Despite their intense understanding of the pain of relinquishment, the pain of distance.

Commercial surrogacy is banned in this country. And, for those who don’t know, the surrogacy laws in NSW, Queensland and the ACT also make it a criminal offence for their residents to travel overseas and engage in commercial surrogacy. As I understand, there has never been a prosecution for accessing commercial surrogacy.

As with any commercial transaction, lots can go very wrong. If the ALRC report goes in favour of compensated surrogacy, the name change won’t make it any safer. And it won’t protect the babies, the children or the adults.

Let’s honour Sonia Allan, eminent legal academic in surrogacy law, who died in March. Her last letter to Justice Bromberg asked the inquiry to consider the interests of the children. They are the ones who suffer. We can’t ban surrogacy. But please, please, let’s protect children from being just another transaction in our commodified lives.

Source: Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into surrogacy: Three women changed my mind on surrogacy

Home of Barrie Drewitt-Barlow – one of ‘Britain’s first gay dads’ – is raided as police probe alleged rape and human trafficking for sexual exploitation | Daily Mail Online

The home of reality TV star and Britain’s first openly gay football club owner Barrie Drewitt-Barlow has been raided by police as part of an investigation into alleged human trafficking for sexual exploitation and rape.

Multi-millionaire Drewitt-Barlow, who bought non-league Maldon and Tiptree FC last February and is one half of ‘Britain’s first gay dads’, lives in the plush Essex mansion with husband, Scott Hutchison.

Essex Police later confirmed that two men – aged 57 and 32 – were arrested on suspicion of rape, human trafficking for sexual exploitation and administering a noxious substance.

Drewitt-Barlow and his ex-husband made headlines in 1999 when they became one of the first gay couples in the UK to have children through a surrogate mother.

Source: Home of Barrie Drewitt-Barlow – one of ‘Britain’s first gay dads’ – is raided as police probe alleged rape and human trafficking for sexual exploitation | Daily Mail Online