Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1206 ｜ The Harsh Reality of Being an IVF Baby ｜ Jennifer Lahl

00:00:00.000 Is embryo adoption ethical? You might think the answer to that question is an easy yes,

00:00:06.580 but it might be a little more layered and complex than you think. Jennifer Law is the founder of 0.99

00:00:13.920 the Center for Bioethics and Culture. She has been on the show several times talking about the

00:00:19.440 dangers of IVF surrogacy and big fertility. Today, we're talking about a range of subjects,

00:00:25.960 but we will also focus on embryo adoption, and she will give her perspective on this very

00:00:32.840 contentious issue. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to

00:00:36.980 goodranchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's goodranchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:50.860 Jennifer, thanks so much for taking the time to join us again, this time in person for the first

00:00:54.880 time. I'm so excited. It's not on Zoom. I know, me too. You've been on the show several times,

00:00:59.860 but for those who maybe aren't familiar, just remind us of your background, who you are and

00:01:03.720 what you do. Yeah, I'm Jennifer Law, and I founded an organization called the Center for Bioethics

00:01:08.560 and Culture. And I was, in a previous life, a pediatric critical care nurse for many, many

00:01:13.820 years, and I was sort of concerned about where medical ethics was headed. So I pursued a graduate

00:01:19.220 degree in bioethics and founded the center to be an educational resource. I've spent a lot of my

00:01:25.360 energy in the area of assisted reproductive technology because I have a deep passion for

00:01:30.000 mommies and their babies.

00:01:32.040 Yes. And what was it when you were a pediatric care nurse that started to make you concerned

00:01:39.240 about medical ethics and what was going on in hospitals?

00:01:42.100 Yeah. Well, a couple of things. One was it shifted more from a medical profession to a service

00:01:48.340 provider model. So now we see that today. You just walk in and you tell your doctor, I was born in the

00:01:53.160 wrong body. I'm a boy. Make me a girl. You know, okay, sure. You know, so move from an actual do no

00:01:59.620 harm. Doctor knows best. Doctor's the expert to I'm just here to provide you, my client, for whatever

00:02:07.020 you wanted. I also saw the shift in names. The last hospital I worked in, we were told to call our

00:02:11.920 patients' clients and they were our customers. And I don't know about you, but if you go see your

00:02:16.960 doctor now, the first thing you get using the email is your customer satisfaction service. You

00:02:22.540 know, were you pleased with your visit with your doctor? Did they, you felt like they took time with

00:02:27.720 you? So it's, it moved in that way. And because I was in pediatric critical care, we're always pushing

00:02:34.420 the, just because we can, should we do this? Especially on little premature babies. You know,

00:02:40.280 I worked with the doctor who did the first surgery where they took the baby out of the mommy's uterus 0.98

00:02:44.940 and did the defect repair, put the baby back up so the baby could then grow in the womb and then be

00:02:51.140 born healthy. Because the particular defect this baby had, if he'd been a normal delivery,

00:02:58.960 the child probably would not have survived. So those are good things. But then there's also other things

00:03:03.660 that were just, you know, should we, should we be doing this? And are we thinking about that?

00:03:09.320 And because it's parents that have to consent for their children, I had this burden knowing that

00:03:15.800 these are parents that have to make urgent life and death decisions that they have to live with for

00:03:21.340 the rest of their life. So how can we make sure that everybody has all the information, the good

00:03:26.940 information, the ethical, the science-based information and, and make those kinds of decisions.

00:03:32.760 So no matter what the outcome is, at least they can go home and have some sense of we did all we

00:03:38.680 could, or we did what was needed to be done. So it was those kinds of things into sort of the broader

00:03:44.100 profession.

00:03:45.620 And what made you interested in the world of reproductive technology like IVF and surrogacy?

00:03:50.520 That was totally happenstance. It was, I founded the Center for Bioethics and Culture during the

00:03:55.440 George Bush presidency, when he was, you know, had to navigate the whole embryonic stem cell research,

00:04:03.900 the human cloning, you know, and I live in California, the campaign was cures for California,

00:04:08.460 we have to do this research, because we're going to save people's lives. And that took me into a deep

00:04:13.880 dive, because at that time, the debate was over the half a million frozen human embryos. Now in the US,

00:04:19.300 we have over a million. But I thought, how did we come to have a half a million frozen embryos? And then that

00:04:25.440 led me down the rabbit hole of fertility medicine, what I call big fertility. And then I started

00:04:31.620 writing and speaking about that. And women contacted me, women who sold their eggs, and said,

00:04:37.820 let me tell you what happened to me, I lost my fertility, I lost an ovary, I had a stroke,

00:04:43.600 you know, things like that. And that's how I kind of got into filmmaking. I never set out to do

00:04:48.420 the whole work in reproductive technology, or to make films. But you know, God has plans.

00:04:55.060 Yes. So I'm curious what it was for you internally, that made you realize, this is not right. What's

00:05:02.300 going on in big fertility? Is it ethical? Because most people, I say, I don't know about especially

00:05:08.140 in the medical profession, but I come in contact with a lot of nurses who will very passionately defend

00:05:14.600 IVF and surrogacy. And they say, I see how much these parents want these babies, these babies are

00:05:20.100 fought for, they are cared for. But you had a different reaction to that. You thought, okay,

00:05:26.320 what is happening to these women, these egg sellers, these surrogates, the babies who are born of IVF, 0.56

00:05:32.240 the frozen embryos, it's not right. So I'm curious, what kind of fueled your response to thinking like,

00:05:41.060 this is an injustice? Yeah, well, that's what drives a lot of my work. I hate injustice. I am

00:05:48.480 a truth seeker in the name of justice. If you look at the women who are either being surrogates, 1.00

00:05:55.680 or they're selling their eggs, or sometimes they do both, they're not patients. You know,

00:06:01.140 so the doctor has no business asking them to do things medically to their body that they don't have

00:06:06.340 any medical reason to do. And oh, by the way, let's pay you money to do this. It's one thing if

00:06:12.080 you're sick, you have cancer, and you know, you take medicines, or you and you assume medical risks,

00:06:17.820 you're not paid to do that, you know, you have to pay mightily for those hospital bills. So I saw the

00:06:22.500 using of healthy people who are not patients, and aren't protected through, you know, all the ways

00:06:28.900 that patients are protected if their doctor harms them. So that was one element of just a massive gross

00:06:34.240 injustice. Sure, the person who says, but these young egg donors want to do it, they want to help,

00:06:39.640 they want to give their sister her eggs or their girlfriends, and what's wrong with it?

00:06:42.980 And oh, shouldn't she be paid? No, because that's not proper medicine. Now, if you look at the

00:06:48.720 individual woman who's infertile, I just knew it's fraught with risk. You know, IVF is fraught with

00:06:58.840 risk. It's risky to the woman's health. It's risky to the health of the unborn child. 1.00

00:07:03.640 Most people don't know that. I even think nurses that are saying, oh, it's great. What's wrong with

00:07:08.360 it? They haven't really done the research. You know, you can just follow the CDC data. And for

00:07:13.840 the last 10 plus years, overwhelmingly, all IVF cycles fail. That's why we have over a million

00:07:19.920 frozen embryos. We have to make a lot in hopes eventually one will become a take home baby or more.

00:07:26.440 And, you know, we've been at this since, you know, the late 70s, when we had the first IVF baby,

00:07:31.920 Louise Brown was born in England. And so we're slowly getting studies. You know, in the early

00:07:37.640 days, when you're doing it, it's just like smoking. In the early days, we didn't have the

00:07:40.640 studies, we didn't have the data. And now we're getting the data. Now we're getting the data that

00:07:44.620 it's risky to women's health. We're getting the data that it's risky. It makes pregnancy risky, 1.00

00:07:49.660 you know, preterm labor, all kinds of pregnancy related complications. And any mom out there listening 1.00

00:07:55.300 who knows that they're in a high risk pregnancy, the baby's at risk. And we know that these babies

00:08:00.420 born of assisted reproduction are at higher risk of things like my I've told you my grandson was born

00:08:07.200 with a heart defect. And when his care was transferred to a big university hospital in

00:08:12.520 California, two independent pediatric cardiologists there said, is he an IVF baby? He's not. But in the

00:08:20.260 medical literature, IVF babies have much higher rates of congenital heart defects at birth. You

00:08:25.780 know, shouldn't that be something that at least could make us pause and think? We know that pregnancy 0.68

00:08:32.020 is risky. We know that, you know, any child that's born healthy, praise God, because there's a lot of

00:08:37.640 things that can go wrong to make children born with all kinds of defects. But knowingly doing it,

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00:10:16.620 Do we know what it is about IVF that makes... Let's start. Well, there are a lot of different

00:10:27.660 layers to that. One, do we know what it is about IVF that makes pregnancy riskier for the mom and the

00:10:34.120 baby? We don't know specifically yet because, again, it's back to the data and we haven't been

00:10:40.340 doing this for a long period of time. And so it takes a while to get big sample sizes and try,

00:10:46.960 you know, watch kids over time to see, oh, we now have 700 kids that were born through IVF that have

00:10:52.780 X. So what's supposed... Some of it's supposed that IVF allows a couple who normally naturally

00:11:01.340 wouldn't be able to conceive to conceive. So whether that's an evolutionary processing, whether that's a,

00:11:08.260 you know, mother nature thing, whether that's a God opening and closing the womb things, it's where

00:11:13.100 we've taken into our own hands, I don't want to say forcing, but, you know, making a couple for whatever

00:11:19.920 reason can't produce, produce. So is it that? So this is a couple that for whatever reasons wouldn't

00:11:25.800 naturally ever be, you know, because we've always had the barren womb. You know, we always will have 0.66

00:11:30.060 infertile people, as tragic as that is. So that, some of it, some of it's a technique. You know, one of the 1.00

00:11:36.800 procedures is called ICSI. That's where you see, they take the little sperm and they shoot it into 0.76

00:11:42.560 the egg. And so we're wondering, well, that damages the wall of the egg cell, you know, when you force

00:11:49.980 that in. And when you look at natural conception, you know, the sperm will swim around the egg

00:11:56.500 and one makes it in, you know, and is that a programming that we're ignoring? Because we're

00:12:03.500 just picking one arbitrarily. So there's so much of that stuff that's going on. And, you know,

00:12:09.760 it will also vary on what's the underlying fertility problem. And that's, you know, it's why we both love

00:12:15.780 the restorative reproductive approach, because it's actually trying to diagnose the problem and fix the

00:12:21.020 problem, not find a workaround. I read a study the other day that said that the prevalence of autism

00:12:27.580 is much higher in children who are born from IVF specifically because there was a fertility problem

00:12:37.080 on the father's part. So that is because say a dad has basically immobile sperm. They're just not fast

00:12:45.840 enough, strong enough to do what they have to do in the natural fertility reproduction process. And so

00:12:51.820 in IVF, as you said, you take that sperm, you put it on the egg so it doesn't have to travel.

00:12:57.440 Well, when IVF is done for that reason, because I don't know how else to say this, maybe this is

00:13:03.100 politically incorrect, but like you got lame sperm, it's just not working. There is a reason that that

00:13:09.000 sperm isn't working. There is an underlying issue there that will affect the baby that is born because

00:13:15.920 those sperm weren't actually, they're not, they weren't supposed to recreate. And when you force

00:13:21.840 them to recreate, then the baby is going to inherit a lot of problems. And so I just thought that was

00:13:28.060 interesting. I hadn't really thought about that before, because typically when you think about IVF,

00:13:31.940 you think about some problem that the mom has that will have no effect on the child, but, you know,

00:13:38.760 just by sheer bad luck, she just wasn't able to bear a child and IVF helps her do that. But there are a lot

00:13:45.580 of things, underlying issues that we are masking by forcing the egg and the sperm together.

00:13:52.100 Exactly. I mean, it's just, you know, people like to say we're playing God. And I always say,

00:13:56.400 well, no, because God doesn't play that way. We're playing naughty people.

00:14:01.360 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:14:02.580 Yeah, yeah. We think about the other areas where we would not tolerate that. We want vegetables that

00:14:09.440 aren't, you know, sprayed and pesticide. And we want, you know, chemicals outside of our food. We don't

00:14:14.140 want cloned meat and GMO kinds of things in our environment. We don't want to drink water out

00:14:20.260 of plastic bottles anymore, store our leftovers in plastic Tupperware. You know, all those things

00:14:25.340 that make the case that there's a natural order to how things are supposed to work and how our bodies

00:14:34.220 are supposed to work. And even though the human body is incredibly resilient, our fertility is very

00:14:39.920 fragile. You know, we have a fertile window of a very small part, you know, people are living into

00:14:45.740 their 80s and 90s today. But you know, there's a very small window of that fertility. And there's,

00:14:51.000 you know, I don't mean to be sounding like I'm harsh to women, but there's many women that wait 0.99

00:14:55.700 late, you know, and the reality is our bodies work a certain way. And we're not, you know, supposed to

00:15:01.840 have babies in our 40s and 50s. Now that naturally can occur. But it's not the norm.

00:15:06.900 Yeah, it's not the norm. So, you know, I just I want, you know, young girls are on summer vacation.

00:15:12.920 Now they're going to be going to college in a few months. Don't sell your eggs when you see all the

00:15:17.320 ads in your campus newspapers and flyers on on the bulletin boards at university. You know, don't or

00:15:24.500 take oral contraception. You know, we know so many women that orally contraceptive for so long to put 1.00

00:15:30.420 off pregnancy. And then when they finally went to get pregnant, they couldn't get pregnant. You know, 0.57

00:15:33.980 we play with fire. Yeah, let's talk about those two things. Well, gosh, there's so many things I

00:15:39.400 want to talk about. Okay, to close out that part of the conversation. I'm reading a lot right now

00:15:43.700 about our fertility. And as you said, like our bodies are so intricate and resilient, but at the

00:15:49.340 same time, very fragile, especially the fertility process for women, we're only supposed to release 0.90

00:15:55.280 one egg per month. And our bodies internally without our mind even knowing it are very selective

00:16:01.000 about the sperm that we allow in. The body has this whole, before conception, like this whole

00:16:07.900 natural selection process that the sperm has to fight really hard to get through. And even that

00:16:15.640 fertilized egg has to be strong enough to be able to get through the endometrium and to be able to

00:16:22.140 implant. And of course, I'm not telling you anything that you don't know, but for the audience who doesn't

00:16:26.220 know this, like God has designed our bodies in such intricate ways that are supposed to lend itself,

00:16:35.180 you know, to the creation of life in a natural way. And when we short circuit that, there are going

00:16:41.480 to be consequences. When technology takes us from what's natural to what's possible, Christians have 1.00

00:16:46.840 the responsibility to ask, is that ethical? Is that right? Is that good? Is it going to produce

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00:18:22.120 But to kind of shift away from that to something else that you said, women going into college, 0.92

00:18:27.780 they are trying, they are being recruited to sell their eggs. Yeah. Yeah. Um, when I made the first

00:18:34.680 film was called exploitation and two of my daughters happened to be students at the University of

00:18:39.660 California, Berkeley, and they brought home their school, their school paper, the daily Californian,

00:18:44.900 and it had a big ad offering a hundred thousand dollars for an elite donor. I mean, who doesn't

00:18:49.760 want to like, at least sort of maybe call in, get some more information. So, um, you know, young girls

00:18:56.140 are being bombarded, especially if they're at Ivy league schools. This is eugenic. We don't just want

00:19:01.440 any, any girl's eggs. We want the right girl's eggs. We want the right baby, whatever that means. 1.00

00:19:06.020 Um, you know, men, you know, campus to solicit sperm from guys and go, Oh, I can make 50 bucks

00:19:12.540 this weekend for pizza money or whatever. Um, and then for, um, surrogacy, it's largely military

00:19:19.360 wives, you know, so it's different demographic graphics. And then back to my point about medicine, 0.99

00:19:24.840 what's the purpose of medicine being involved in this at all? This is not medicine. This is not

00:19:29.720 medicine is aimed toward health. This is not the health of the young girl who's selling her eggs.

00:19:34.340 This is not the health of a surrogate mother who's risking, you know, perhaps her life. Um, 0.54

00:19:39.480 so yeah, beware, don't sell your eggs girls. And I tell, when I speak on university campuses, 1.00

00:19:45.500 I'll tell people, you're not just selling your eggs, you're selling your children. You know,

00:19:50.040 that is your child. That child's going to grow up one day and go, who do I look like? Whose nose do I

00:19:54.980 have? You know, how come I'm the only one in the family that has curly hair and everybody has,

00:19:58.740 house has straight hair, you know? So it's, you know, it's, it's, again, it's that we're,

00:20:03.260 we're tearing apart what, what God has put together. We're tearing apart, which that,

00:20:07.940 which should not be torn apart. And that is the, you know, the unitive procreative husband and wife

00:20:13.220 come together. And that's how children are. I knit you together in your mother's womb. It's not like

00:20:19.120 I built you in a laboratory Petri dish and we tested the ones we wanted. We froze the ones we

00:20:25.220 weren't ready to use first. You know, it's just manufacturing. It's, it's C.S. Lewis abolition

00:20:31.000 of man, I think is a very profound essay because, you know, Lewis basically says, you know, our final

00:20:36.500 conquest will be the abolition of man. You know, do we want to just tear down, um, the, the, the humanity?

00:20:45.620 Yeah. It reminds me a lot of Brave New World. They used to think that 1984 was the dystopian novel

00:20:51.320 that everyone needs to read and they do, but Brave New World is almost more on the nose,

00:20:56.960 especially when it comes to the creation and reproductive, uh, reproduction of humans,

00:21:01.840 the growing these babies in pods, taking them away from their family and everything that is natural

00:21:07.560 to condition them to think a certain way. And that was very anti-human. I mean, that is exactly

00:21:15.260 what's going on in the world of reproductive technology, but the propaganda is so strong. The guilt

00:21:21.180 is so strong for those who do have ethical questions about it, because we're told that

00:21:26.420 we don't understand the pain of infertility. Well, I think that's a very thin argument because

00:21:33.800 I've never had cancer, but I wouldn't say, ah, it's just cancer. You know, you don't have to

00:21:38.760 experience something to know if it's right or wrong. You know, it's, it's, it's intuitive to us.

00:21:45.020 We will see things, you know, we, you know, I don't know if you want to go there, but you know,

00:21:49.020 there's all this chatter about Glenn, Glenn, uh, Greenwald, you know, and it's like, we don't want,

00:21:54.420 we don't want to judge. We don't want to condemn. We don't want to say this is right. This is wrong.

00:21:59.360 We don't want to be moralists wagging our fingers, but you know, that's, what's gotten us into this

00:22:04.560 pickle that we're in, you know, how else do we get all these over a million embryos? And a lot of

00:22:10.020 those are probably little Christian embryos, um, you know, that are now being frozen, adopted out 0.99

00:22:15.580 to Christian, you know, agencies. Uh, but you know, the heart is desperately wicked. Um, so yeah, 1.00

00:22:26.140 but I, you know, I, I like the, um, the movie Gattaca. I don't know if you've ever seen that.

00:22:31.220 I haven't. Yeah. I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it.

00:22:33.080 Yeah. Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman. It's a really great, it's a whole designer baby. You know,

00:22:37.620 this couple comes in and they are meeting with the geneticist who says, why would you want to

00:22:42.460 leave anything for chance? Um, you know, basically that argument, if you want to raise your kids to

00:22:48.100 get into Harvard, why wouldn't you start at the egg and sperm level with the best, you know, shot,

00:22:53.480 do all the testing, weed out the bad genes, weed out the bad embryos. And I think about a professor

00:22:59.120 at Stanford who I actually debated once, Hank Greeley, he's a lawyer and he wrote a book called

00:23:03.920 the end of sex. And he basically was sort of putting out this premise that why would you

00:23:09.480 want to have babies through sex? You can have sex for fun, can have sex for intimacy, but why 0.95

00:23:15.420 wouldn't you want to make all your babies in the laboratory? We have all this control and that's 0.98

00:23:20.080 scary to me, but that's here. Oh yeah. I mean, it's here.

00:23:23.160 There's the company we talked about it. Maybe it was with Callie that I talked about this with

00:23:27.860 your colleague. And it's about this company that was covered by the New York times. The founder

00:23:33.040 of it is talking about it very proudly on X and she says sex is for fun. IVF is for reproduction,

00:23:39.100 which is just a shock to the conscience for me. I mean, I was scandalized by her saying that,

00:23:44.320 which is maybe the point she's trying to shock people and real people in, but she tells a story

00:23:49.400 about how her grandmother passed down this degenerative eye disease. And wow, what if she

00:23:55.300 had not been able to do that? Like what if her great grandmother and her grandmother had been able 0.80

00:23:59.380 to make choices? And I'm like, then you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. You're saying that

00:24:04.120 you want your grandmother to have been selected out in a lab because she had some degenerative 0.98

00:24:09.700 disease. We're talking about eugenics, are we not? 1.00

00:24:13.960 Yeah. It's really frightening. And you see that really on this full display in what I call third

00:24:19.540 party conception, which is when you're looking through catalogs to pick out your egg donor.

00:24:24.900 You know, you're looking through catalogs to pick out your sperm donor. You're, you know,

00:24:29.300 by order, by design, you're picking the child that you want and the child you don't want.

00:24:34.920 And overwhelmingly, everybody's doing genetic testing on the embryos. And back to why do so

00:24:40.560 many of these embryos fail? Well, you know, when you have a four or eight, you know, cell,

00:24:45.080 you know, embryo and you go in and take out a cell to do the testing on it. And that's a significant

00:24:51.260 part of that little embryo that you're just like, oh, it doesn't matter. We'll just take one cell 0.86

00:24:55.460 out. So we can tell you it's got Down syndrome. It's going to be a boy. It's going to be X, Y,

00:24:59.600 and Z, you know, and, you know, just the whole blatant, you know, sex selection IVF.

00:25:05.820 Yep, absolutely. Okay. Speaking of that idea that you said that, okay, sex is just for fun.

00:25:11.180 It's not for reproduction. 60 Minutes Adjustive, a couple of weeks ago, featured someone named Dr.

00:25:18.120 Tomer Singer. He's the head of Northwell Health's fertility practice. And here's what he said to

00:25:23.800 Leslie Stahl. Here is top four. I said that sex is going to be for fun and for pleasure,

00:25:30.760 but most likely in a generation from now, when couples want to have kids, most likely they're

00:25:35.800 going to be using artificial reproductive technique. You'll have frozen eggs. 1.00

00:25:39.380 Wait, are you saying that we won't have sex to have children? 0.98

00:25:43.380 I'm sure my two-year-old will ask me, mom, dad, you had unprotected intercourse? What about 0.89

00:25:47.900 chromosomal abnormalities, miscarriages, twins? What were you doing?

00:25:53.140 That would be a really weird question to ask your parents, but okay, what is your thought

00:25:57.700 about that?

00:25:59.880 My thought is it's already happening. You know, it's here. It's like if you watch the movie

00:26:05.360 Cateco, which was made over 20 years ago and was sci-fi then, and now it's here. So that's

00:26:10.540 coming. It's going to be normalized. You know, again, you'll be walking down the street with

00:26:14.680 your child that maybe has a disability that's visible to the people passing by and they're

00:26:19.380 going to stop you and say, you mean you did that on purpose? You know, we have something

00:26:23.720 that could have prevented that, you know, and you kind of go, and you're going to seem like,

00:26:28.200 okay, you just want to burden society by producing these kinds of people. I mean, it's, what have

00:26:34.620 we become? Yeah. What have we become? What do you think is the likelihood that most people

00:26:42.640 will be reproducing their children via IVF? I have a hard time buying that. I think the

00:26:47.660 most people that will be doing it will be the elites, you know. They can pay for it. Yeah.

00:26:54.960 They can select for eye color, not just gender. They can select for all these different attributes,

00:26:58.740 these boutique fertility specialist clinics. And, you know, again, I'm trying not to, you know,

00:27:04.360 lump all the elite people in one big bucket and pile on them. But, you know, this is, you know,

00:27:10.560 there's a demographic of people that already disorders everything, you know. So, you know, 1.00

00:27:16.040 Uber Eats, you know, Uber Babies. Yeah. Yeah. It is crazy. The commercialization

00:27:21.140 of our reproductive parts of our genetic material.

00:27:25.700 And the ability to justify it. Because I don't want to produce children that are going to be a 1.00

00:27:29.900 burden on society, whatever that means. Because there's plenty of healthy people you could argue

00:27:33.880 are a burden on society. Right. Right. Yeah. It's just a wrong view of people measuring their

00:27:39.800 worth by something other than just their existence as human beings.

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00:28:58.480 You know, I've argued with a lot of pro-lifers about this. Like you were the first person I had on my

00:29:06.000 show to talk about big fertility. And I think I had talked about IVF and sperm and egg selling once

00:29:13.200 before I had you on, but I had you on and that opened that episode alone. It was so popular. It

00:29:19.700 opened so many people's eyes and really sparked such a conversation. I mean, a few years ago, I would

00:29:25.480 say most people on the right wouldn't even touch this subject, but then we, we have you, we have Katie

00:29:32.100 Faust. We have so many people speaking up about this. And then we started getting tests like Dave

00:29:37.660 Rubin announcing his surrogacy situation where people started to think, huh, how did this happen?

00:29:44.580 What's going on here? And now a lot of people are talking about it. Even SNL had a whole, you know,

00:29:51.440 parody asking a gay couple, where'd you get the baby? Did you kidnap the baby? How in the world 0.93

00:29:56.300 could you have procured this baby? But still there are so many Christians, so many pro-lifers

00:30:02.820 that refuse to think about the ethics behind this because their friend went through infertility or

00:30:08.920 they have their kids because of IVF. It's a really difficult conversation. Like how would you say is

00:30:14.860 the most persuasive method that we can employ when we're trying to get people to understand what's going

00:30:20.580 on here? Yeah. I, I will often say I don't have talking points because everybody has to talk to

00:30:27.300 their friends or their neighbors, um, in, in an area where you think it will touch them. You know,

00:30:34.340 sometimes I will have conversations with, um, couples that are thinking about pursuing IVF about the health

00:30:40.240 risks. Did you know? Cause most people don't know and their doctor's not telling them, did you know

00:30:44.780 the risk to the child that might be born of this? Um, you know, some of them who are thinking

00:30:50.340 about using third party conception, you know, that's a different point of entry into a conversation

00:30:54.840 about, you know, you're asking a young woman to perhaps lose her fertility in, and hopefully helping

00:31:01.380 you. Do you really want to put that burden? You know, can you live with yourself? I know a couple

00:31:06.280 that has a child through surrogacy and the surrogate mother died, you know, like moments after the baby

00:31:11.800 was delivered and for their whole life, they have to live with the guilt that every time they look at

00:31:16.580 their child, this child, that woman lost her life for them to have that, you know, that's a heavy

00:31:21.480 burden. You know, so I think with stories like that, you know, people can kind of, some of it's

00:31:25.960 just finances. Do you know, you're going to spend tens of thousands of dollars, maybe ruin your health

00:31:30.640 and maybe never even get a baby. You know, is that really how you're supposed to be using your

00:31:35.220 financial resources? Cause we're stewards of everything, our body, our time, our money. Um, so for me,

00:31:41.460 it's really, who are you speaking with? Um, cause I, like you just said, most people just don't know.

00:31:49.080 They just think, oh, they got a baby. Isn't that great? Thank you God for this wonderful new

00:31:54.920 breakthrough in medicine to help us have babies. And most people don't think about the leftover

00:32:00.560 embryos. There was, you know, a gay couple that did this whole video talking about how, you know,

00:32:06.540 they've got two surrogates, they've got two egg sellers, and they're both trying to have their 0.95

00:32:10.920 own biological children. And they go through this whole process. Um, and they have, I think,

00:32:18.240 12 embryos. I mean, are they going to have a dozen children? No, of course they're not. They're

00:32:22.480 probably going to have two and no one asks, well, what about the other 10? What about their siblings?

00:32:27.360 What's going to happen to them? Most people just honestly, they don't think about it. And if they

00:32:31.840 do, they shut their mind off because they don't want to think about it. And it's human experimentation.

00:32:37.720 I mean, all over Instagram, just like a few weeks ago was a picture of a little baby that was born

00:32:43.520 that had been frozen 20 something years. I mean, have we even stopped to think? We just did it. You

00:32:49.240 know, most of the time when things make their way to being used in the doctor's office, they've gone

00:32:53.900 through years and years of clinical trials. And all the clinical trials are focused on safety. Is it

00:32:58.840 safe? Does it work? Is it safe? Does it work? And we, there's no clinical trial. We don't know,

00:33:03.160 is it safe to freeze a human embryo for 20 plus years? Yeah. We don't know. We're just doing it.

00:33:08.560 Yeah. And the child can't consent to that. Right. You know, the child and the parents aren't

00:33:13.760 told, you know, we don't really know we're going to freeze them, but we don't really know.

00:33:18.680 Yes. Okay. I want to talk about embryo adoption because I get this question a lot and, you know,

00:33:23.420 I have a hard time with it because I remember something that you said a few years ago that,

00:33:29.180 you know, you would rather people, if they're going to adopt, to adopt the children that are

00:33:33.060 already born. Right. And am I saying that correctly? Okay. I want to kind of break that

00:33:37.840 down because I also don't think it is immoral for someone to adopt what they call like this

00:33:42.660 snowflake baby. I think a snowflake adoption where you take the frozen embryo, you implant it into

00:33:48.520 yourself and then you have this child, you raise this child. But is that the way to solve the

00:33:55.980 problem of having over a million frozen embryos or does that create a demand for more frozen

00:34:01.440 embryos? What do you think?

00:34:03.740 I've written a lot about this and I have very formed, solidly formed opinions, which don't

00:34:11.640 put me in good standing with some pro-life people. I think first we have no business freezing

00:34:17.120 embryos. Under Germany federal law, thou shall not freeze an embryo. We need federal laws that

00:34:23.760 said, that's it. We've got over a million. No more. This is wrong. We're going to stop

00:34:28.560 freezing embryos. Yeah. We're not, we're not going to shut down IVF. We're not going to do

00:34:32.960 like a Supreme Court Arkansas case and everybody loses their mind. But you know, we're going to

00:34:37.820 stop freezing human embryos. In Germany, the law is you can make three and you have to implant them

00:34:42.500 all. So I'm not a big fan of three because that's a risky pregnancy, but we need to stop freezing

00:34:48.900 them. Then we need to have some kind of a plan where we go back to the people. It's like, you

00:34:53.440 know, I used to have birthday parties for my kids and you know, there was always the parents that

00:34:56.740 would come like an hour late, like come get your kids. I would go back to those people and say,

00:35:01.200 these are your children. You need to make a decision about what to do with them. The burden is on you

00:35:06.900 to decide what to do with your children. You can either have more children because they're your

00:35:12.380 children. You can allow them to be embryo adopted or you can allow them to die. I think it's cruel 0.98

00:35:19.160 to keep them frozen indefinitely. So those are kind of your options. Now the argument is a lot of

00:35:25.620 those people have moved on. We don't even know where they are because there's a whole issue with

00:35:29.340 just tracking big fertility and what's going on. So, you know, when you can't find people, then I think

00:35:35.360 then we as a society have to come to terms with what to do with them if they're not going to be

00:35:39.440 embryo adopted. The problems I have with embryo adoption are twofold. One is the medical problems.

00:35:44.840 You know, you're still not getting rid of the risk of an IVF baby. So that baby that's been,

00:35:50.000 that baby that's been frozen has the complications and the risk exposure of babies that are born

00:35:55.640 through assistive reproductive technology. That's how we got the embryo. And then when you embryo adopt

00:36:00.580 into your womb, you're like a surrogate mother. And we know surrogate pregnancies are risky 1.00

00:36:04.400 because you're pregnant with a foreign object. It's not your baby. It's like when you get a 1.00

00:36:08.500 splinter and your finger gets infected, you've got something that's in there. So it's different

00:36:12.660 DNA. So it could be, yeah, so it could be a high risk pregnancy and it could be a high risk pregnancy

00:36:18.560 that's risky to the mother and also to the child. So you can't get away with those risks. And then I

00:36:24.120 think my final is, you know, in adoption and, you know, Katie Faust is so solid in this space on

00:36:31.080 adoption and I've learned much from her, but, you know, we know that we're supposed to tell children

00:36:37.300 early and often their story, you know, no secrets. I'm old enough. When I was growing up, my parents

00:36:42.280 would say, shh, they're adopted. They don't know. You know, there's no secrets now. It's not good.

00:36:48.120 But here's a child that's going to be told, your parents really wanted children.

00:36:53.580 And so they made a bunch of embryos and you didn't get picked right away. So you got put in the freezer

00:36:58.900 and then they had their children and then they decided their family was done. So they didn't want you

00:37:04.980 anymore. And then you have to tell this little child that you were really wanted, but not really

00:37:10.580 that wanted because you were not wanted enough to get the first implantation, you know, and then,

00:37:16.120 and then they decided you, you're not part of their family anymore because their family's done.

00:37:20.960 Their family's complete. And, oh, by the way, you have siblings out there that got, were lucky.

00:37:27.060 They were chosen first. So you have brothers and sisters out there. I just think that's going to be a

00:37:30.680 hard, hard thing for kids. Is that different than the story that you would tell a child who was

00:37:35.560 adopted as a newborn though? It is that because a lot of times it's not, well, I'm, I wish Katie was

00:37:43.740 here because she would have the stats, but you know, a child that's adopted, there's usually some

00:37:48.600 reason that the parents can't raise a child. You know, my sister has an adopted child. 0.78

00:37:55.780 The mother was a street mom. She was just in and out of rehab. She was a drug user. 0.99

00:38:00.780 So it wasn't that she wanted or didn't want, who knows? She wasn't even in her right mind.

00:38:05.980 So it's not the same as really wanting something that you just tuck away and freeze and then you

00:38:10.980 decide you changed your mind. Yeah. You know, adoption is there's this child that's just been

00:38:15.040 born, you know, for whatever reason, we can't put this child in that home. I mean, it could be,

00:38:20.840 it could be drugs, it could be alcohol, it could be whatever. I still think that we can help with

00:38:26.260 those problems. So more and more moms can keep their babies and we can come alongside them. 1.00

00:38:30.920 Right. But yeah, I mean, babies who are frozen embryos and IVF, they're typically coming from

00:38:38.540 parents who have the means to go through IVF. So that's like typically parents who have a lot of

00:38:44.720 resources. So it's not like, oh, we couldn't afford this child or, you know, I was an addict or I was

00:38:50.580 in a destitute situation. It's like, no, we could afford our child. We just wanted to

00:38:54.660 stop at IVF. We're good to go. Sorry, you're going to be frozen forever. That I do think is

00:39:00.220 probably a more difficult origin story for a child to understand than the child of like,

00:39:07.860 yes, your mom did want you, but she couldn't take care of you. So she did this valiant, heroic

00:39:13.580 thing of allowing us to care for you.

00:39:16.380 Yeah. I think that's, that's critical and you articulate it much better than I did. And also

00:39:22.360 the fact that in, you know, adoption laws have changed dramatically over the last many years

00:39:27.900 where adoption records are open. Um, so children have access to original birth certificates. Now

00:39:33.980 that's not the case in embryo adoption. Now you may know who the parents of the frozen embryos are,

00:39:39.200 and there's stories out there of parents who shared their embryos and now they're all one big happy

00:39:42.980 family, but I don't think that really works. Um, but you know, the, the child that's been frozen

00:39:48.800 for 20 something years, we might not ever be able to tell that child who their mother and father are.

00:39:54.140 Yeah. Would you say it was a win though? If say a million Christian moms, a million Christian women

00:40:00.680 said, okay, we are going to clear out the freezers and we are all going to adopt these frozen

00:40:06.860 embryos. Like, would you say that that is positive or would you still have, would you still have some

00:40:13.700 concerns about that?

00:40:15.200 Yes, I would. I first, I'd say, well, let's take care of all the adopt the orphans out there. 0.94

00:40:19.440 Let's take care of all the kids in foster care right now. I know there was, I think it was a

00:40:23.220 church in Texas where the whole church just said, well, we want all the kids that are in foster care. 0.64

00:40:28.280 They are now permanently, you know, living in our homes.

00:40:30.400 We interviewed the filmmaker from that story is amazing. Yeah. So I think, you know, as a matter

00:40:35.580 of priority, I, again, I think our priorities to the children already here that are languishing in

00:40:40.700 orphanages or foster home or, you know, that don't have, you know, permanent, permanent homes to be

00:40:46.320 raised in. Um, not because we think that they have more inherent, inherent worth than the babies in

00:40:52.660 the freezer. Correct. Correct. It's just, yeah. And it, all of, all of the stuff we're talking about is

00:40:59.000 what's called a supererogatory act. We aren't required to do any of this. We're not required to

00:41:05.180 adopt. We're not required to adopt embryos. We can do it, but if we don't, we're not going to stand

00:41:10.300 before God one day and he was going to say, why didn't you adopt the orphans? You know, it's not

00:41:13.940 something that we have to do to be, um, in, in good moral standing. So, but I think I, I'm not going to

00:41:21.740 champion women taking risks with their health. I mean, most women who maybe would say, yeah, I'll be a part of

00:41:27.640 the party to adopt all the frozen embryos. They're probably young moms with their own children.

00:41:32.760 And why would you want to put that young mom in a high risk pregnancy situation that might cause all 0.99

00:41:38.460 kinds of complications to her when her are, you know, medically our, our best interest is her 0.99

00:41:45.520 health and wellbeing to be there to provide for her own children.

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00:43:02.120 When you're giving your message to young women going to college, don't sell your eggs. People

00:43:07.860 might call it egg donation, but you taught me it's not really donation. It is selling. They just say

00:43:13.260 donation so they can get around the law. But you also said don't take hormonal contraceptive.

00:43:18.380 So how does that relate to the things we're talking about?

00:43:21.340 Well, we're talking about preserving fertility. You know, we're talking about maintaining our

00:43:26.720 healthy, fertile bodies. And I think when you're putting oral contraception in your body,

00:43:31.440 we, and then that evidence is out there. I mean, if people don't know about it, it's,

00:43:35.760 you know, I always say, why did God give us Google? So you can go and ask, you know, what are the,

00:43:40.280 you know, so why would you want to take something that's very fragile,

00:43:43.800 you know, that is a short window of your time and, and play fast and loose with it?

00:43:50.540 Mm-hmm. Right.

00:43:51.880 You know, it's the same thing with, I mean, obesity. Obesity is driving for infertility

00:43:56.820 rates in the United States. Yeah.

00:43:58.640 You know, and that's not healthy for you. Smoking. You know, the first things they say,

00:44:02.660 get your BMI down. If you smoke, don't smoke. If you drink alcohol, stop drinking. You know,

00:44:07.700 those kinds of things that, you know, because it's fragile and it's precious. And don't we

00:44:13.800 take care of things that are really precious to us?

00:44:16.240 Yeah. I know. I am now like retrospectively appreciating so much of what my body was able

00:44:22.180 to do in getting pregnant and in having a baby, as I am learning about how intricate the ovulation

00:44:29.260 cycle is and how, you know, you mentioned human experiments that we're doing on embryos.

00:44:33.840 We're also doing those on women, not just through surrogacy and egg selling and IVF, but also in the 0.94

00:44:41.080 suppression of the ovulatory cycle for years at a time when your ovulation and your period is really

00:44:47.720 like a fifth vital sign. Like it is something that indicates how your body is doing in other

00:44:52.860 areas. When we artificially suppress that, we, I mean, we know some of what that's doing. We don't

00:44:59.080 know everything about the damage that that's causing women. And I actually think it could be helping drive 1.00

00:45:05.360 the fertility crisis in our country. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, I, I, a call also to

00:45:12.800 young girls that are listening, learn your body. I mean, I didn't know when I was growing up,

00:45:16.980 I had no idea what was going on in, in a 30 day period. You know, I knew eventually I'd have a

00:45:22.300 period, but I didn't know what was going on before, during, after. I didn't know anything about

00:45:26.700 temperatures and, you know, all that. And it's, it's so funny in the, in the age of information,

00:45:31.880 how, um, absolutely clueless a lot of women are about how their, how their body works. 1.00

00:45:38.740 Yes. And maybe we would all appreciate, and young girls would appreciate more being a woman, 0.89

00:45:43.560 being female, if they knew how amazing their bodies were, which brings me into my next set 1.00

00:45:50.200 of questions, which is about the, you know, transgender trend that is really lucrative 1.00

00:45:56.400 for big fertility and for our medical industrial complex. You said on my show that those who go

00:46:04.300 through so-called gender transition, they get on the puberty blockers, the cross-sex hormones, 0.58

00:46:09.200 all of this stuff, which can be effectively sterilizing. They are becoming lifelong slaves

00:46:14.520 to the medical industrial complex. So you've done even more work on this since we last talked. So

00:46:21.080 can you break that down for us? What's going on there? Well, yeah. And I wasn't even planning to

00:46:27.160 get involved in the gender debate work at all. Um, but you know, Callie Fell, who you mentioned 0.99

00:46:32.280 earlier, and I were both nurses. She's a labor and delivery perinatal nurse. I was pediatric.

00:46:36.700 And when we found out that they were blocking puberty, and then they were offering fertility 0.69

00:46:41.160 preservation, which is the intersection of big fertility into the trans space, we thought 0.95

00:46:46.440 that is it. So yeah, when you are, before you block puberty, you offer ovarian tissue or

00:46:52.760 testicular tissue preservation, because there's no gamete chip, there's no egg or sperm that are

00:46:58.340 mature that can be frozen, because the child hasn't gone through puberty. So you take the tissue

00:47:02.780 of the testicles and the ovaries in hopes of freezing that and implanting it later on when 0.96

00:47:08.220 the child wants, wants to have a child and hoping it takes. And then if they've already 0.63

00:47:13.340 been through puberty, you offer them fertility preservation to freeze and bank their egg or

00:47:17.240 their sperm. I think that is just pure evil. You are knowingly damaging healthy fertility with

00:47:24.460 a treatment, treatment in quotes, that is not needed. This is not a needed treatment. It's not

00:47:29.120 like, you know, we damage children's fertility if they have cancer, and they have to take chemo.

00:47:34.420 And so that's when we got in that space. And two colleagues of mine just published a paper a few

00:47:40.200 months ago, and I happened to be providentially in DC in a meeting with Educational Secretary Linda

00:47:46.820 McMahon and the Senior Policy Advisor for RFK. And his name is Andrew Guernsey. And Andrew mentioned

00:47:53.620 that Trump had passed the HHS to do a report. And so my little radar went off because our published

00:48:00.720 paper was just about ready to come out. And we were able to send it to Andrew and get that paper

00:48:05.500 cited. But we actually looked at fertility preservation from, it started with endangered

00:48:10.520 species. You know, we want to protect, you know, some beloved whale from going extinct. Then it went to

00:48:17.300 cancer patients, adults, and it went to pediatric cancer patients, and then it moved into this

00:48:21.420 gender category. It's a train wreck. I mean, and you're, it's almost, in my mind, it's criminal 1.00

00:48:28.460 that you do something that you would knowingly damage, and then you offer fertility preservation.

00:48:34.280 And if you're in your doctor's office, and your doctor's offering you something, you go, oh, he's

00:48:38.840 offering it because it works. You know, you just assume, and you should be able to assume that.

00:48:43.260 And so that's the, and so these children who've had their fertility damaged, well, then if they

00:48:49.320 want to have children, they will need all kinds of assisted reproductive technologies, depending 1.00

00:48:55.360 on, you know, what parts of their body were, you know, if you're a woman and you had your 0.99

00:48:59.980 uterus removed as part of your gender surgery, you'll need a surrogate. 1.00

00:49:03.520 Right. Well, and it's not, even if you do choose to preserve those parts of your DNA,

00:49:11.880 I mean, your body and your reproductive organs, even if you don't get a hysterectomy, they 0.94

00:49:16.340 atrophy so much because of the testosterone. It is, I mean, it's not guaranteed that you will

00:49:21.200 be able to physically carry a pregnancy.

00:49:23.760 Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

00:49:25.920 Yeah. It's criminal.

00:49:27.380 And a lot of these people will say, well, I don't want kids. I mean, you're 17 years old.

00:49:31.480 You think that you know what you'll want in 10 years and you're so sure of yourself. All

00:49:35.480 of us thought that at 17, by the way, whether or not we were confused about our gender, but

00:49:39.960 you know, I've had Daisy Strong in on my show who tried to transition to being a boy and she

00:49:45.840 cut her breasts off and it's just such a horrible situation. She was able, thankfully to, you 1.00

00:49:50.980 know, after she detransitioned to have kids, but she wasn't able to breastfeed. And she posted 0.93

00:49:57.140 about that and how difficult that was for her, that she is still living with the

00:50:01.300 struggle and the guilt of not being able to breastfeed her children. It's one thing to

00:50:06.120 choose not to. It's another thing to not have that choice, to have that choice ripped from

00:50:11.080 you. And there doesn't seem to be any guilt or any sadness or any hesitance by a lot of

00:50:18.360 people in the medical field about those real cases of regret and trauma that exist among

00:50:23.680 detransitioners.

00:50:24.660 Well, they actually just discount these people that have detransitioned. You know, when I look, 1.00

00:50:29.740 you know, being a pediatric nurse and I look at the American Academy of Pediatricians and

00:50:33.480 I go, how far have you lost your way? I mean, it's just, it's mind boggling that they are

00:50:40.480 knowingly harming. I mean, these are people that are trained in biology and medicine. It's,

00:50:45.920 you know, it's just, it's, you know, it breaks, it breaks my heart, Allie.

00:50:50.000 But we did see how the medical industry is so willing to suppress real science in favor of

00:50:56.680 political ideology. I mean, a lot of them did the same thing during COVID.

00:50:59.740 Yes.

00:51:00.280 When, and I've just realized how much now that, you know, I have been a mom for a little while,

00:51:06.020 just how much medical intuition you gain as a mom. It doesn't mean that I have all of the

00:51:12.900 expertise in the world. But I just remember when the American Academy of Pediatrics said that

00:51:18.740 if a child is around adults who are wearing masks all the time, it will have no detriment whatsoever

00:51:25.420 to their development. And they had to take down a PDF that they had previously put up years earlier

00:51:32.020 that said, it's so important for your child to be able to see the movement of your mouth when you're

00:51:38.780 articulating words to see you smile. It's so important for their emotional development,

00:51:44.320 their cognitive development, their speech development. And then because they wanted to

00:51:49.020 be anti-Trump or something, they denied that. And so it seems like a lot of people in these

00:51:55.220 scientific institutions, they are willing to suppress the truth because it's politically expedient.

00:52:00.760 And the rest of us who don't have medical degrees, we're left to just, I don't know,

00:52:04.900 search in the dark. Yeah. And I always encourage moms, well, because moms are often most the ones

00:52:10.460 taking their children to see the doctor, you know, be that mama bear. Say no. Say, no, I'm not leaving 1.00

00:52:17.500 the room, doctor. No, I'm not signing that. No, I'm not letting you do that test or give that shot or

00:52:23.220 whatever. Because mothers really do have that mother's intuition. You know, you know when your child's

00:52:29.420 sick and you know when your child's really sick. And that's, and that's something you just know in

00:52:35.000 your gut. This, this little guy needs to see the doctor today or know this little guy will be fine.

00:52:40.500 He just needs a couple of days and some Tylenol and some, you know, fluids, Pedialyte. But, you know,

00:52:45.460 trust your gut. And if you don't like your doctor, find a new one.

00:52:49.860 And I did that during COVID because my doctor was such a bully in so many ways that I noticed that he was

00:52:56.200 really a bully when I came to appointments without my husband. When my husband was there,

00:53:01.460 he was really nice. When I was there, he made me feel really small and really stupid. 0.99

00:53:05.960 And so we moved pediatricians and, of course, haven't looked back since then. But you don't 0.97

00:53:12.080 even realize as a mom, like how much on a daily basis you are memorizing every single tiny thing

00:53:18.580 about your child and how you anticipate, you just anticipate, you know how they're going to react to

00:53:23.980 something, you know what they're going to say, you know, the questions that they're about to ask.

00:53:28.020 And we can forget about that intuition when we're confronted with someone,

00:53:32.380 you know, by someone in a white coat. It's easy to do.

00:53:35.680 And be intimidated by that. And so it does take, you know, digging deep and bringing out your mama

00:53:40.160 bear. And I know that a lot of, you know, people in America don't have the luxury, the options to

00:53:45.880 shop doctors around. They're in a, you know, a system where there's only certain doctors that will

00:53:49.960 take their, their types of insurance, but still as much as you can, you have got to first always

00:53:56.180 advocate for your child. And, and part of advocating for your child is advocating for your family.

00:54:01.120 I'm sorry, our family doesn't do that. You know, so it's not just, I want this for my child. I do

00:54:06.960 want this for my child. But the reason I want it because our family, these are what are priorities

00:54:11.400 for us. These are our values. This is what we believe to be true.

00:54:15.200 Yeah.

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00:55:52.120 What can the average mom, the average person who is listening to this do when it comes to the

00:55:58.220 injustice of frozen embryos, the eugenics that's going on, the exploitation in egg and sperm selling 0.95

00:56:05.200 and surrogacy? It just feels overwhelming sometimes.

00:56:09.760 Well, education is our best tool, I think. And the more people hear your show, and I know I was on it

00:56:17.500 a few times and I was so encouraged by how many people woke up and said, I never knew. So now people

00:56:26.180 listening today will go, I never knew. Maybe I can learn a little bit more. One of the reasons why we

00:56:30.860 make films is people like to watch movies. All of our films are free on our YouTube channel.

00:56:35.620 You know, all of our films are under an hour. We're not going to ask for a big chunk of your time.

00:56:39.960 What's the name of the YouTube channel?

00:56:41.560 Well, I think the YouTube channel is the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network.

00:56:46.100 Yeah. So they can find all those films. You know, I tell women, if you have like women's groups, 0.96

00:56:53.720 show a movie and talk about it. You know, watch exploitation before you send your daughters 0.80

00:56:57.880 off to university. You know, watch one of our, we have two surrogacy movies. Watch one of the

00:57:02.420 surrogacy movies. If you know somebody in your church, thinking about hiring a surrogate. You know,

00:57:08.080 is there some way to just invite people to have a conversation? Not that we're going to lecture,

00:57:12.740 we don't want to lecture, we don't want to wag our finger at people, but just get more information.

00:57:16.920 We don't have to be afraid of more information. You know, more information helps us make better choices.

00:57:22.820 I think pastors and churches have a place to give guidance on their websites and their mission

00:57:29.700 statements, or at least in their belief statements, even from the pulpit or in their women's groups,

00:57:35.400 or maybe it's kind of like, you know, a mini series that's done on Wednesday nights or whatever,

00:57:41.680 just about what should Christians believe about life? Not just when it comes to abortion, 0.93

00:57:46.800 because you'll get conservative pastors who will talk about that,

00:57:50.000 but few conservative pastors will talk about IVF and reproductive technology. But if we believe

00:57:56.980 what we say we do, that those human beings are made in the image of God from the moment of

00:58:02.460 conception, then it's not just abortion that matters. It's how we create and treat and preserve

00:58:08.720 those babies. That matters too. And I do think we will be accountable to God for those things,

00:58:15.260 especially pastors, because they're held to an even higher account. And so I would say pastors,

00:58:19.780 get really clear on this. A great place to start is these videos. And then there's lots and lots of

00:58:24.200 research about this too. Listen to all the conversations I've had with Jennifer, with Katie

00:58:28.420 Faust, with Callie Fell. And there are some others too, that we've talked to women who went through IVF,

00:58:33.800 regret it, who did natural fertility methods, were able to get pregnant. We have looked at this from 0.65

00:58:39.480 every angle. There's a lot of information out there. At this point, if you're ignorant, you're choosing

00:58:45.020 that. That's just the truth. There's a lot of information out there to get educated. 0.99

00:58:49.440 And, you know, my, you know, call to action for pastors is, I'll often say, for heaven's sakes,

00:58:56.000 infertility is in the first chapter of the Bible. And so we have permission to talk about it. Because

00:59:00.380 a lot of times people didn't want to talk about cloning during the cloning debate. Because it's like,

00:59:03.300 well, cloning isn't in the Bible. I'm like, okay, well, we can talk about things that aren't in the Bible.

00:59:07.240 But I will say, but infertility, the barren womb is in the Bible in several, several cases and

00:59:12.420 several stories. So we have permission to talk about it. And what we don't talk about is how we

00:59:16.760 treat and address infertility. Absolutely. Well, Jennifer, thank you for being a champion on this.

00:59:23.160 And thank you for continuing to educate and inspire me and so many others. I really appreciate you.

00:59:28.980 Oh, it's been my joy and my delight to be here. Thank you. Thank you.

00:59:37.240 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 18, 2025

Ep 1206 ｜ The Harsh Reality of Being an IVF Baby ｜ Jennifer Lahl

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