A Canadian same-sex couple is suing an Ontario surrogate after carrying their son to term. Once doctors detected a possible heart defect and cleft lip, the couple demanded that she abort the child. The relationship between the surrogate and the couple started off well, but rapidly declined in June 2024, when she refused requests to terminate the pregnancy when a 22 week ultrasound revealed minor health defects. She received a missive from the couple that left her devastated, reading: “Considering that medical tests indicate that the fetus has, or is likely to have, a genetic, chromosomal or other abnormality or defect, and in accordance with article 8.5 (a) of our surrogacy agreement … we want to inform you of our wish that the pregnancy be terminated.” The surrogate stated she would have agreed to an abortion had the child’s likelihood of survival been minimal. However, the surrogate explained she would not abort the fetus for what she considered to be largely cosmetic reasons. After the abortion was refused, the parents agreed to proceed with the pregnancy, with doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital saying the baby was generally healthy and had no major problems beyond the cleft lip. However, tensions continued to escalate when the surrogate insisted on a home birth performed by midwives instead of going to a hospital, as the parents requested. During delivery, the baby had breathing difficulties, but recovered after being given oxygen and taken to the hospital in an ambulance after the birth. After receiving treatment, the baby was taken by the parents, who ceased contact with the mother. She later asked the couple to reimburse her $10,000 in outstanding expenses, lost wages, transportation costs, and skipped contributions to her pension plan. Canadian surrogates are only reimbursed for expenses incurred in bringing the pregnancy to term, unlike in America, where mothers can exceed $100,000 in payment. However, the couple ignored her, leading her to take them to small-claims court, where she discovered that the contract required arbitration to settle such disputes, limiting that route. Then, she was hit with her own lawsuit. According to the suit filed in Ontario Superior Court in May, the couple claimed that the surrogate did not “adequately keep them informed about the baby’s health, put the child at risk, violated confidentiality and caused them emotional distress,” and sought damages on those grounds. The couple is reportedly seeking around $600,000 from the mother, who has responded by saying: “You know I’m a single mom, you know I have a daughter, and you’re basically suing me for my house. It seems very s—ty, it’s just awful … I just feel used … They didn’t get the perfect child they wanted and they threw me away.” The situation has gone viral and sparked controversy online, as some are calling for the couple to lose custody immediately and should not receive a dime from the mother. Others question whether it is in the best interest of the child to be raised in that environment and how it will affect him when he later learns that his own parents did not actually want him.
By Alexandra Miskewitz
On July 11th, the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act” became law. Despite President Trump opting not to sign the bill, it became law after 10 days of the bill sitting on his desk without his signature. When a bill comes before the President’s desk, passed by both chambers of Congress, he has the option of vetoing it, signing it into law, or doing nothing with it for 10 days, in which case the bill becomes a law without his signature. President Trump is not against the bipartisan housing bill per se, but he chose not to sign it as a form of protest against the Senate choosing not to pass his SAVE Act, a sweeping voter ID bill. However, President Trump’s unwillingness to veto the new housing bill indicates his understanding that any veto would be overridden by a 2/3s majority in Congress. The bill was passed in the Senate 85-5 and in the House 358-32, both veto-proof majorities, in June. The great support for this bill should not be surprising, given growing concerns about the lack of affordable housing in this country. What then does the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act do, and does it meaningfully address the high housing prices Americans are struggling with? Key Provisions of The New Housing Law The bill has 12 titles, under which there are various provisions to address housing affordability. Under section 107, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides guidelines for state and local land-use regulations. The idea is to use guidance as a tool to streamline regulations in a way that developers can more easily navigate them and build housing. One of the biggest barriers to developers is navigating the complications of each housing regulation, as these are usually governed at the local level. Creating a more centralized framework can help alleviate some of the costs associated with the development of new housing. However, sometimes the issue is not just about the variance in housing regulations – or even how complicated they can be – but rather about how unnecessary they can be. That is why the bill, under section 301, also gets rid of certain regulations, such as the permanent chassis rule; the rule requires that manufactured homes have a permanent chassis, a steel frame that makes those homes movable. Removing this rule is estimated to save $5,000 to $10,000 in construction costs per home, according to housing policy experts. Under provision 206, NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) reviews will ensure that environmental compliance has a more streamlined process to ensure that processing times are quicker, further allowing more housing supply. Indeed, environmental review will still be there, but the federal review process will be delegated to state and local authorities instead. In my view, this is a form of federal deregulation, but it runs the risk of allowing more regulation at the local level. The bill also provides incentives to local governments to build housing supply and reduce local housing regulations, via the $200 million Innovation Fund, established under section 208. The federal government cannot mandate that local governments deregulate or change certain rules to make way for more housing; however, it can use incentives to get them to align their regulatory policies with national priorities. In summary, the bill uses guidelines to help local and state authorities centralize housing regulations in a way that can be more easily understood by developers who need to follow them. The bill reduces some federal regulations, while offloading some of those regulations to the state and local authorities. Thirdly, the bill uses incentives by making localities compete to boost housing supply to get access to federal funds. Of course, there are other important provisions in the bill, but the above is a recounting of the core aspects that will boost housing supply. For a full summary of each provision of this new law, you can find it here, under a report from Emma Waters at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Concluding Thought 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is a start. However, the federal government is notably limited in its ability to boost housing supply through deregulation. Most of the change will have to come from the state and local level, across all 50 states. To borrow a phrase from Amy Dain, who has worked extensively on housing policy in Massachusetts, the problem of “regulatory innovation” is very real. When each locality invents its own rules on housing construction, whether it’s parking rules, height rules, or rules on dimensions – or other regulations on how to build houses – it gets confusing for developers and builders, who now need to pay consultants just to understand what rules they have to follow. So, creating a more centralized rule set, whatever it is, simplifies things. Developers should not have to hire consultants to understand all the different, complicated housing regulations that come with each county. Of course, some variance is necessary, but not to the point where it stifles housing supply. The relationship between housing prices and housing supply is well established and corroborates a report I did on the issue, which you can find here. The economic argument makes sense; when you keep outdated rules on the construction of housing, the supply of new housing is unable to keep up with population growth. Hence, you get a housing shortage, especially in regions with higher regulatory intensity, and housing prices go up. The new federal law on housing is a start, because it makes certain tweaks that change the landscape. However, most of this change still has to come from the state and local levels. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act paves the pathway for reform, but there is still much to be done. However, bipartisan support in Congress for the passage of this bill should serve as a springboard that drives more significant change among the 50 states. Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation
By Vaibhav Sinha
It is easy to see capitalism as natural to humanity. The system seems so ordinary that hierarchy, ownership and competition look less like enforced societal conditions and more like the natural architecture of life. We work, we rent, we borrow and we compete our way through systems we rarely control. This mechanism is all too familiar to human civilization, and shares an eerie resemblance to capitalism’s predecessor. America’s present crisis is not only capitalist, but also Neo-feudal. Feudalism refers to a social and political structure that is built around land, hierarchy and obligation. Power was not concentrated as it is today, but spread throughout lords and estates. Those beneath, peasants and serfs, were not simply poor; they were practically owned by their superiors. Their humanity was bound to the land in which they worked, with their labour being traded for food and survival. Feudalism was not just an economic system; it was a way of cementing class into unescapable conditions. Neo-feudalism does not signify the return to medieval Europe. It refers to the reemergence of feudal-like conditions within modern contexts under capitalism, where citizens are forced to navigate concentrated power, stagnant class mobility and a life organised through dependency. It is not the death of American democracy, but rather a slow migration to what once was. While it may be a stretch to imagine that feudalism will return as the dominant social mechanism, it is not difficult to see why the comparison can be drawn so closely with modern America. The United States is not becoming feudal because it has left capitalism behind; rather, the conditions of living are producing new forms of dependence that are strikingly similar to feudalism. Public authority is weakening due to political fragmentation and economic crises, while the private sector continues to prosper and even builds further wealth from the class disparity. Citizens remain formally free, but more of daily life is increasingly governed by corporations, landlords and digital platforms that all contribute to the restriction of true freedom. This contradiction is not new. Keidrick Roy’s work on “racial feudalism” highlights that America has carried feudal shadows within its democratic discourse for a long time. Dartmouth’s discussion of Roy’s American Dark Age discusses how while American thinkers rejected the feudal hierarchies spreading across Europe, slavery sustained anti-liberal relations at home. Black abolitionists understood this contradiction and used words like “feudalism” and “serfdom” to name the republic that promised freedom while preserving racial hierarchies. Cullen Murphy’s Atlantic essay, “Feudalism is Our Future”, captures this shift into modern privatisation. He argues that these feudal-like conditions become visible when governance, laws, rights and wealth are channelled unequally and decentralised into private hands. Brookings notes that before Trump’s second term, there were roughly twice as many people employed by private contractors to carry out federal government activities than there were federal employees.DOGE and the Trump administration pushed to prioritise running government business through private avenues, including proposals around federal buildings, the post service and foreign aid. This is of paramount danger because democracy depends on equality and accountability. But when public work is funnelled through private chains of contractors, those two things become harder to trace. This represents one of Neo-feudalism’s most dangerous qualities:where the state rules not through open coercion but through obscure tactics that do not serve public interest. It rules through diffusion, where power is fragmented into pieces, distributed to private bodies and protected by contracts, incentives and complete opacity. A democracy cannot survive on mantras of freedom alone. It requires public power that is visible and genuinely shared by everyone. When power is dissected into concentrated hands and private actors, democracy is compromised. Neo-feudalism refers to a country that still uses discourse coherent with democracy while surrendering more of democratic life to private rule.
By Adia May
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