Show Notes
Welcome to Fertility & Sterility Roundtable, hosted by Dr. Emily Barnard and Dr. Ben Peipert! Each week, we will host a discussion with the authors of "Views and Reviews" and "Fertile Battle" articles published in a recent issue of Fertility & Sterility. Today, we will be discussing the Fertile Battle episode from the April 2026 edition of Fertility and Sterility entitled "Is Concurrent Gestational Surrogacy an Ethical Practice?" Concurrent surrogacy involves two gestational carriers being engaged simultaneously—or whose pregnancies overlap—to allow a single intended parent or couple to have children born without the usual spacing between births Dr. Michelle Bayefsky is a second year Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She has written a book and more than 30 peer-reviewed papers on issues related to reproductive ethics and fertility preservation. She is currently a member of the ASRM Ethics Committee. For the purposes of this discussion, Dr. Bayefsky authored the Pro side of the argument that concurrent gestational surrogacy is an ethical practice. Dr. Caroline Violette is a second year Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility Fellow at Brown University. Prior to fellowship, Dr. Violette obtained her medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine and completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include oncofertility and addressing healthcare disparities related to access to fertility treatment in the United States. For the purposes of this discussion, Dr. Violette authored the "con" side of the argument that these concurrent surrogacy arrangements are unethical. Dr. Arthur Caplan is a Professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine in New York City. Dr. Caplan has served on a number of national and international committees, including chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning, a member of the advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on genetics and gene therapy, and co-director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts. He is the author or editor of thirty-five books and over 890 papers in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Caplan authored the pro side of the argument. Read the Fertile Battle from Volume 125, Issue 4 p598-604 in the April 2026 issue View Fertility and Sterility at https://www.fertstert.org/
More from Fertility and Sterility On Air
In this month's Fertility & Sterility: Unplugged, we take a look at articles from F&S's sister journals! Topics this month include: the diagnosis, pathophysiology and clinical management of OHVIRA syndrome (02:05), the potential role of time lapse embryoscopy in assessing developmental competence of 3PN zygote (15:35), and a case report of a child born with trisomy 21 after risk reducing PGT and NIPT (26:56). F&S Reviews: https://www.fertstertreviews.org/article/S2666-5719(26)00015-0/abstract F&S Science: https://www.fertstertscience.org/article/S2666-335X(26)00051-0/abstract F&S Reports: https://www.fertstertreports.org/article/S2666-3341(26)00110-8/fulltext
Welcome everyone to Fertility and Sterility roundtable. I'm your host, Dr. Emily Barnard, and I'm joined by my producer and co-host, Dr. Ben Peipert. Today, we will be discussing the Fertile Battle featured in the August 2026 edition of Fertility and Sterility entitled "Fresh vs frozen donor oocytes in contemporary assisted reproductive technology." We are fortunate to be joined by three of the esteemed authors of this Fertile Battle publication as well as the Editorial Editor to discuss the issue in depth. Dr. Eric Widra currently serves as Executive Senior Medical officer and Vice President, Development, for Shady Grove Fertility and USFertility, respectively. He was formerly Chief Medical Officer of SG Fertility, and Associate Director of the Combined Federal Fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility. Dr. Widra served on the SART Executive Committee and on the ASRM Practice Committee and was a contributing author to dozens of ASRM Practice Committee documents. He is currently an Editorial Editor for Fertility and Sterility. Dr. Oisin Fitzgerald is a research fellow at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Dr. Fitzgerald's work in reproductive medicine focuses on the use of real-world data (e.g. electronic medical records, registry data) as sources of evidence for open questions in clinical practice and to build prediction models that inform consumers and clinicians on IVF success rates. Dr. Kiley Hunkler is a recent graduate from fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. She earned her masters degree from the University of Oxford and enjoys working on curriculum development and advancing patients' access to care.
Take a sneak peek at this month's Fertility & Sterility! Articles discussed this month are: Articles: Male factor infertility diagnoses, but not male age, significantly affects the yield of usable embryos in donor oocyte cycles Preconception dietary patterns in association with live birth and pregnancy loss: a couples-based approach Systemic assessment of allele dropout in preimplantation genetic testing for monogenic disorders: incidence, detection, and clinical testing strategies Infertility treatment associated with peripartum hysterectomy: a population-based cross-sectional study Deconstructing triglyceride glucose-body mass index in normal-weight women with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome
Take a sneak peek at this month's Fertility and Sterility! Articles discussed this month are: (02:58) Optimal counseling and treatment of patients undergoing therapeutic donor insemination (04:20) Do we still have a Scientific Mission? (05:31) Propensity score matching is too good to be true (06:30) ASRM Position Statement on Rho(d) Immune Globulin Administration in the First Trimester (08:16) Artificial intelligence in the in vitro fertilization laboratory: a committee opinion; Clinical Embryology in the United States: Current Landscape and Considerations for Professional Development and Standardization (10:07) Segmental aneuploidy in human embryos is frequently mosaic with evidence of meiotic origin: insights from trophectoderm and inner cell mass analyses (21:51) Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Aneuploidy in Donor Egg Recipients Does Not Decrease Number of Embryo Transfers Needed to Achieve Live Birth (35:40) Reproductive Outcomes in Programmed Ovulatory versus Modified Natural Cycle FET: A Propensity Score–Matched Analysis of Prospective and Retrospective Cohorts (43:05) The efficacy of frozen-thawed oocytes compared to fresh oocytes: real-world evidence (50:03) Intergenerational fecundity and infertility: a cohort study
Fertility and Sterility on Air is at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology 42nd Annual Meeting in London (Part 3)! In this episode, our hosts Micah Hill and Eve Feinberg cover: (00:56) Cost-to-baby as a percentage of median household income predicts population-level access to assisted reproductive technology: a global health economics analysis of affordability with Steve Rooks (12:50) Intrapatient variability in the number of retrieved oocytes and ovarian response categories between consecutive in vitro fertilization cycles with Ariel Hourvitz (30:11) Restoring Shugoshin-1 prevents chromosomal errors in aging human oocytes with Agata Zielinska (45:32) Restoring fertility after gonadotoxic treatment: first successful autologous transplant of immature cryopreserved testicular tissue in the human with Veerle Vloeberghs and Ellen Goossens