In early August, an Alaska woman named McKenna West was serving as a gestational surrogate for a Los Angeles couple when a prenatal diagnosis revealed the fetus had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious but treatable congenital heart defect. According to West’s own account, the intended parents asked her to terminate the pregnancy. She refused […]
When Psychiatry Fails Women: Lessons from the Lindsay Clancy Trial Lindsay Clancy is a former labor and delivery nurse who is on trial for the January 24, 2023 strangulation deaths of her three children. Clancy did not have a documented significant psychiatric history, but over a four-month period at the end of 2022, she developed […]
This essay is a part of our “In the News…” series, where bioethicists give their take on popular news stories. A gestational surrogate “fleeing” from Alaska to Texas is getting a lot of press. The issues around this story may not be that new, but rather reflect the precarious situation between legal surrogate contracts and the […]
In vitro fertilization (IVF) is emotionally and financially taxing, especially for women of advanced maternal age. As maternal age increases, the risk of chromosomal abnormalities (aneuploidy) in embryos rises, heightening fears of conditions like Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome. Capitalizing on this anxiety, the IVF industry heavily promotes Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Aneuploidy (PGT-A) as […]
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