Kim Krawiec
@kimkrawiec.bsky.social
Law Prof, University of Virginia. Taboo and repugnant markets, contracts, business law. Host of the Taboo Trades podcast https://tabootrades.buzzsprout.com https://www.law.virginia.edu/faculty/profile/kdk4q/1181653
Sad post: students will now pay more and receive a less interesting experience, but I completely understand Jeremy’s reasons
KProfsBlog@kprofsblog.bsky.social · yesterdayFor the third time this year, we have a post about faculty members fired for challenging their students in ways that made the students uncomfortable. I reflect a bit on the uses of confronting law students with fact patterns that make them uncomfortable. www.contractsprofblog.com/2026/08/firs...
Surrogacy news on the blog today. First, we have a German politician resigning for hypocrisy in connection with an international surrogacy agreement. Then, we have news from @kimkrawiec.bsky.social on surrogacy-inspired moral panic in Texas and Florida www.contractsprofblog.com/2026/08/two-...
Two Bits of News on Surrogacy Contracts
Every year, I teach the Baby M case as my transition case from illegal contracts to contracts that violate public policy. Interesting discussions ensue on
contractsprofblog.com
"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week." -Willa Cather (from The Professor's House, 1925)
Is surrogacy the sale of reproductive labor? A baby? A service? A gift? Increasingly, critics describe some arrangements as the purchase of American citizenship itself. My new essay on surrogacy, repugnance management, and national security: buff.ly/Y63f5es
Is surrogacy the sale of reproductive labor? A baby? A service? A gift? Increasingly, critics describe some arrangements as the purchase of American citizenship itself. My new essay on surrogacy, repugnance management, and national security: buff.ly/Y63f5es
Surrogacy has always destabilized categories: mother and worker, gift and market, family and contract. Florida and Texas add new ones: parent and foreign national, child and citizen, fertility market and national-security threat. buff.ly/Y63f5es
Surrogacy has always destabilized categories: mother and worker, gift and market, family and contract. Florida and Texas add new ones: parent and foreign national, child and citizen, fertility market and national-security threat. buff.ly/Y63f5es
Last winter, stories of Chinese billionaires commissioning large numbers of children through U.S. surrogates appeared in the business pages. Seven months later, the same imagery is appearing in statutes and legislative hearings. buff.ly/Y63f5es
Voluntary donation of whole blood in the US has long provided adequate supply, but since Covid has sometimes come close to shortage, and now we have a second declared shortage. This contrasts with plasma, which includes supply from paid donors. #econsky marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2026/07/amer...
American Red Cross Declares Second-Ever National Blood Supply Crisis
marketdesigner.blogspot.com
Repugnant transactions are vessels into which society pours its latest anxieties. Surrogacy is an unusually capacious vessel. Long feared as baby selling & commodification, it now carries birthright citizenship, Chinese influence, and national security too. buff.ly/Y63f5es
Last winter, stories of Chinese billionaires commissioning large numbers of children through U.S. surrogates appeared in the business pages. Seven months later, the same imagery is appearing in statutes and legislative hearings. buff.ly/Y63f5es
Repugnant transactions are vessels into which society pours its latest anxieties. Surrogacy is an unusually capacious vessel. Long feared as baby selling & commodification, it now carries birthright citizenship, Chinese influence, and national security too. buff.ly/Y63f5es
Surrogacy has long carried anxieties about baby selling, exploitation, trafficking, and eugenics. Now Florida and Texas are recasting it as a problem of birthright citizenship and national security. My new post on how repugnance is managed: buff.ly/Y63f5es
WHEN SURROGACY BECAME A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT
How a market long condemned as baby selling became a story about foreign interference and American citizenship
buff.ly
People who think Emily Wilson is being mean have clearly never presented a paper at an academic conference
Sue Sylvester's Zatherina Scream
ALT: Sue Sylvester's Zatherina Scream
static.klipy.com
McSweeney's@mcsweeneys.net · last wk."Writers have been using me long before AI. I am the punctuation equivalent of a cardigan—beloved by MFA grads, used by editors when it’s actually cold, and worn year-round by screenwriters. I am not new here. I am not novel. I’m the cigarette you keep saying you’ll quit."
Surrogacy has long carried anxieties about baby selling, exploitation, trafficking, and eugenics. Now Florida and Texas are recasting it as a problem of birthright citizenship and national security. My new post on how repugnance is managed: buff.ly/Y63f5es
WHEN SURROGACY BECAME A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT
How a market long condemned as baby selling became a story about foreign interference and American citizenship
buff.ly
Same. Except for the guy who insisted on saying “we literally card everyone it’s the rule.” Meaning “we card everyone even the olds like you.” Dude, why not just leave well enough alone?
Grr Grrr
ALT: Grr Grrr
static.klipy.com
Kimberly Atkins Stohr@kimberlyeatkins.bsky.social · last wk.Even when I know I’m being carded because the restaurant is being fastidious about following the law, it still makes this 53-year-old’s day.
Listen to U.S. chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson's closing statement at Nuremberg, the post-World War II trial of the top Nazi war criminals. Justice Jackson delivered his two-hour address to the court on July 26, 1946--80 years ago this weekend.
""This interaction raises concern about whether the mentor’s guidance was fully centered on the donor-recipient pair or instead influenced, even indirectly, by organizational incentives to increase voucher participation."
Al Roth@alroth.bsky.social · 2w agoA letter from Mayo Clinic transplant providers raises concerns about bad outcomes when some patient-donor pairs are separated (the donor donates before the intended recipient is matched to a donor), but the intended recipient is hard to match. #econsky marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2026/07/are-...
“In the gleaming clinics of the city’s affluent Gangnam district, the treatment derived from donated human tissue has become a must-have beauty treatment”
Human Skin Is the Newest Ingredient in the K-Beauty Boom
Clinics across South Korea are injecting treatments made from donated cadaver skin into patients seeking a more youthful look.
bloomberg.com
Appreciate this shoutout from @alroth.bsky.social on Peter Singer’s podcast: “Some of the objection [to egg donation is the] eugenics feel to it. … Kim Krawiec … said, people have been selecting the parents of their children based on genetic factors for a long time. We call it dating.”
the moral marketplace with ALVIN ROTH
Podcast Episode · Lives Well Lived · June 25 · 1h 6m
podcasts.apple.com
Where voluntary supply can’t meet demand, replacement donation becomes the default — and payment, formally banned, resurfaces where you’d expect it to: families who can’t find a willing relative pay a stranger to pose as one. buff.ly/8KGhjQI
Forget expensive test-prep tutors—in these districts, the ultimate tiger-parent move is rolling up your sleeves and bleeding your kid’s way into a top-tier school. One county in China awarded one to three points for parents who donated 4,000 to 8,000 milliliters over time buff.ly/8KGhjQI
Give Blood, Get Stuff (Just Don’t Call It Payment)
A trip to the Super Bowl, K-pop photo cards, exam points for your kid — the world’s “voluntary” blood systems are anything but empty-handed.
buff.ly
Nothing says “altruistic gift-giving” like a blood service realizing that K-pop vampires might nudge donors through the door. Meet ENHYPEN, whose group mythology is built around a vampire-hunter storyline.
Give Blood, Get Stuff (Just Don’t Call It Payment)
A trip to the Super Bowl, K-pop photo cards, exam points for your kid — the world’s “voluntary” blood systems are anything but empty-handed.
buff.ly
In the US, a crisp $50 bill is on the wrong side of the paid/volunteer line. But a $50 e-gift card that is nontransferable and not redeemable for cash? Congratulations: the donor remains officially unpaid, moved only by civic virtue and a merchant-of-choice redemption code. buff.ly/8KGhjQI
"Workers in Spain who donate organs or tissues while alive are now entitled to sick leave with full salary, starting from the first day of medical preparation. The law removes previous barriers and aims to support those making life-saving donations."
Spain's New Law to Generously Compensate Organ Donors
Workers in Spain who donate organs or tissues while alive are now entitled to sick leave with full salary, starting from the first day of medical...
buttondown.com
