17: Surrogacy as a Justice Issue, with Kathy Sloan and Michelle Shocked

Kathy Sloan is an eminent feminist who has done substantial work on women's rights and Native American rights. In this podcast she talks to BN Klein and Robert Oscar Lopez about why opposing surrogacy should be an important progressive and feminist issue. Below are some articles that describe and detail the brewing battle over surrogacy in New York State.

For the 17th podcast for CogWatch, BN Klein and I interviewed Kathy Sloan, former board member of NOW, in depth, and also took a call from Michelle Shocked, about surrogacy. Recently Mexico's Tabasco province ended all surrogacy by gay and foreign couples for pay, in effect shutting down the booming fertility tourism and child trafficking business centered close to Cancun. Not long after that, the EU Parliament condemned surrogacy. The doors are closing on the surrogacy business in many parts of the world. and the documented link between surrogacy and gay marriage played a role in spurring the blockage of gay marriage in Slovenia and Romania recently, as well as the decision by Austria's Supreme Court and Germany's ruling political party to block the advance of gay marriage in those countries. In Greece, gay civil unions became legalized but gay adoption has been effectively blocked.


Meanwhile, back home in the US, New York State is under tremendous pressure to legalize gestational surrogacy. Though Mario Cuomo signed the 1992 law making surrogacy illegal, equivalent to human trafficking or a slave trade, his son is now governor and the darling of the LGBT movement. See these articles for more details:


http://nypost.com/2015/12/14/surrogate-defying-birth-parents-abortion-demand/


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mirah-riben/new-york-times-misguided-_b_8386578.html?ir=Australia


http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Paid-surrogacy-outlawed-in-New-York-state-6710176.php


 http://www.stopsurrogacynow.com/#sthash.PBu9bKRP.dpbs