In recent years, surrogacy has become a staple in the medical field with little regard or thought of the impact surrogacy has on the human reproductive and evolutionary process. This week, I am joined by Registered Nurse Jennifer Lahl in a conversation about the lesser known tribulations that surrogate mothers face in contemporary society including health risks, contractual exploitation, and family breakage. Jennifer Lahl has been studying surrogacy for over 15 years and has assisted in the production of nearly as many films surrounding this highly contentious topic. Join us in our exploration of what surrogacy’s greater impacts are on the human race’s reproductive and evolutionary process.
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.
In 2009, Lahl was associate producer of the documentary film
Lines That Divide: The Great Stem Cell Debate, which was an official selection of the 2010 California Independent Film Festival. In 2010, she made her writing and directing debut producing the documentary film
Eggsploitation, which has been awarded Best Documentary by the California Independent Film Festival and has sold in more than 30 countries. An updated and expanded version of
Eggsploitation was released in the fall of 2013. She is also Director, Executive Producer, and co-writer of
Anonymous Father’s Day (2011), a documentary film exploring the stories of women and men who were created by anonymous sperm donation. In 2014 she completed what is now a trilogy of films on the ethics of third-party reproduction with
Breeders: A Subclass of Women?, which focuses on surrogacy. In July 2015, she released a documentary short
Maggie's Story, which follows one woman’s egg donation journey.
Compassion and Choice: Denied (2016) is a short documentary on physician assisted suicide. Lahl’s next feature film,
#BigFertility was released in the fall of 2018. Her most recent film,
Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender? was just released in June of 2021. Always using film as a way to communicate and educate, her forthcoming film,
The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters, is set to release Fall 2022. All of her films are available for FREE streaming on
The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network's YouTube channel. You can follow Jennifer and her work on Twitter
@jenniferlahl or on the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network website,
here.
In this episode, I mentioned previously aired episodes with Amy Sousa:
Join Jennifer and I in person for a showing of both Affirmation Generation and The Detransition Diaries in Austin Texas on April 21, following a conference hosted by Partners for Ethical Care April 20! Please visit the Partners for Ethical Care event page
here for more information. To register for the free film showing on April 21, register to affirmationdocumentary@gmail.com.
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What is You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist?
A podcast at the intersection of psychology and culture that intimately explores the human experience and critiques the counseling profession. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills wisdom gained from her practice as a family therapist and coach while pivoting towards questions of how to apply a practical understanding of psychology to the novel dilemmas of the 21st century, from political polarization to medical malpractice.
What does ethical mental health care look like in a normless age, as our moral compasses spin in search of true north? How can therapists treat patients under pressure to affirm everything from the notion of "gender identity" to assisted suicide?
Primarily a long-form interview podcast, Stephanie invites unorthodox, free-thinking guests from many walks of life, including counselors, social workers, medical professionals, writers, researchers, and people with unique lived experience, such as detransitioners.
Curious about many things, Stephanie’s interdisciplinary psychological lens investigates challenging social issues and inspires transformation in the self, relationships, and society. She is known for bringing calm warmth to painful subjects, and astute perceptiveness to ethically complex issues. Pick up a torch to illuminate the dark night and join us on this journey through the inner wilderness.
You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist ranks in the top 1% globally according to ListenNotes. New episodes are released every Monday. Three and a half years after the show's inception in May of 2022, Stephanie became a Christian, representing the crystallization of moral, spiritual, and existential views she had been openly grappling with along with her audience and guests. Newer episodes (#188 forward) may sometimes reflect a Christian understanding, interwoven with and applied to the same issues the podcast has always addressed. The podcast remains diverse and continues to feature guests from all viewpoints.