What’s Current: Surrogacy clinics pressure women to have multiple pregnancies despite health risks

Embed from Getty Images

  • Surrogacy clinics pressure women to have multiple pregnancies for their companies, despite the health risks involved. Surrogate pregnancies are high-risk and can result in complications and death due to the implantation of foreign genetic material, among other factors. CBC News reports: 

“The demand for surrogates in Canada far outweighs the number of women willing to carry a baby for someone else, which can cause women to feel pressured to commit to subsequent pregnancies. And there’s a financial imperative for the agency — every couple the company connects to a surrogate represents thousands of dollars of revenue from consulting fees.”

  • Over 8,000 women have signed up to form a new Women’s Party in South Korea, scheduled to launch on March 8, International Women’s Day. Kim Eun-ju, one of the party’s founders, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation: “Women’s [issues] have been marginalized by other parties and we want to put them at the forefront.”
  • A US grassroots campaign, Stop Taking Our Girls, is organizing to bring attention to the rise of missing Black women and girls in Chicago and prevent disappearances.
  • The Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill to ban trans-identifying males from competing in girls’ sports. The law will apply to both public and private schools, including universities.
Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve Gluck is a writer and advocate for women's sex-based rights and creator of Women's Voices, an audio library dedicated to bringing awareness to feminist texts and speeches.