Ep 552 ｜ ＂Big Fertility＂ & the Truth Behind The Surrogacy Industry ｜ Guest： Jennifer Lahl
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Summary
Jennifer Lawl is the founder and president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, a non-profit organization that focuses on the ethics of assisted reproduction and third-party conception. In this episode, Jennifer talks about the pros and cons of surrogacy, egg donation, and sperm donation.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Today, we are talking to Jennifer Lal. She
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is the founder and president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture. We're going to
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be talking about a very controversial subject, which is surrogacy, egg donation, sperm donation.
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We're also going to be talking about this movement or this big industry of transitioning
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children using hormone blockers and all of that. As always, this episode is brought to you by Good
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Ranchers. We had our Good Ranchers last night. We had an amazing ribeye steak with some butternut
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squash and some green beans, and it was so, so good. Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie for an
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amazing deal. All right. Super excited for you to hear this conversation with Jennifer. She's a very
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insightful person on this controversial topic or on these controversial topics. I know even as
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Christians and conservatives, we don't all agree on surrogacy, on IVF and things like that, but it's
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so important for us to be asking these questions that no one really wants to ask because it's
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politically incorrect in a lot of circles. We're going to run into the controversy and we're going
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to talk about a tough topic, and hopefully you will gain both clarity and courage from it. So
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without further ado, here is our new friend, Jennifer Lawl. Ms. Lawl, thank you so much for joining us.
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Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Sure. Well, good morning from California.
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I'm Jennifer Lawl, and I am the president of a nonprofit organization that's based in the San
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Francisco Bay Area called the Center for Bioethics and Culture. And in a previous life, I was a
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pediatric critical care nurse for many, many years, and then I went back to graduate school
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to study bioethics. And tell me why you are focused on the subject of surrogacy. What got you interested
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in this? Yeah, well, actually, it was really during the heyday of George Bush's presidency when we were
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debating all the surplus human embryos that were going to be destroyed for possible research to
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develop cures, cure people's diseases. And of course, as a nurse, I was very interested in the
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ethics around that. And I started asking myself, how was it that we came to have what is now almost
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over a million human embryos frozen in the United States. And that led me sort of down the rabbit
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hole of looking into assisted reproduction. So making babies in the laboratory is all part of
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assisted reproduction. And in my work, I expanded that to encompass third party reproduction. So
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women being offered money to sell their eggs or men being offered money to donate, donate in
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quotations firm, and of course, surrogate pregnancy. So I've written, traveled the world, spoken,
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produced quite a few documentary films on the whole area of assisted reproduction, the ethics of it,
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the good, the bad, the ugly of third party conception as well.
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And tell us what is the problem with surrogacy? Because even though this is a Christian conservative
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podcast, and you would think that a lot of people know, the fact is that many people don't know the
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problems with it. As you've talked about, there's a lot of money behind it. But tell us some of the
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Yeah, well, I think most people first just don't realize that a surrogate pregnancy is a much higher
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risk pregnancy than a woman's own natural, spontaneously conceived pregnancy. So in fact, my colleague and I,
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Callie Fell, both all of us, both of us are nurses, took it upon ourselves during COVID to interview 97
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gestational surrogates in the United States. And we compared their own pregnancies with their surrogate
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pregnancies. And it's already in the medical literature, but our research has sort of expanded
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on that and underscored that these are high risk, high complicated pregnancies. And anybody who's been
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pregnant, or anybody who knows somebody's been pregnant, we know that if the woman is in a high risk
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pregnancy, the baby, or in the case of surrogacy, often they're carrying twins, babies are at risk
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also. So that is right out of the gate, to me, just a deal breaker. We don't have any business asking
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young women to put themselves in risky situations. And especially when we're paying them, we don't pay
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organ donors. And we know that, you know, being an organ donor carries its own risk. You're undergoing a
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major surgical procedure. And we're also putting these children at risk that are developing in the surrogate
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mother's womb. And in California, we've had surrogates die. In Idaho, we've had surrogates die. We've had
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several, I think, five or six women in the United States across the United States die. And women in the
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global South have died. So these are risky pregnancies. So whether you're religious, you're not religious, whether
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you're conservative, whether you're a liberal progressive, you know, I work right alongside with Gloria
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Steinem in New York State to try to oppose then Governor Cuomo's legalization of commercial
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surrogacy in that state. Wow. And tell us how this process works exactly, because a lot of people might
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push back and say, well, sure, there are risks that come with everything there. This might be riskier
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for the baby and for the mother, but there's consent and consent has kind of become the only standard of
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morality and ethics that a lot of people say that they have these days. So if a woman is consenting
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to it, and if this is how she is making money, then then what's the big deal? She's taking on the risks
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voluntarily. Yeah, I think, again, it gets back to the proper role of medicine. I mean, when was a time
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when a doctor asked you, even perhaps with money, incentivize you to take risk with your own body? And
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you've seen the absolute pushback in the United States around vaccine mandates, you know, forcing
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people to do things with their body. So, you know, doctors are not in the business of telling us to do
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things that are harmful to us. And they're not in the business of offering money for us to do things
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that are harmful to us. That's one of the main reasons why we do not allow organ donors to be paid.
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We don't want money to be a coercive element in the whole area of informed consent. So, you know,
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this, you know, this sort of argument of it's a very libertarian based on contracts. You know,
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I want to get in a car, I want to go to the, you know, the car dealership, I want to buy a car,
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I want to drive a car when I know that there's risk to driving a car, and that people die every
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day from from being, you know, behind the wheel of a car or being a passenger being hit by a drunk
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driver. We know that so we take those kind of risks. But that those kind of calculuses, if you will,
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do not play a role or shouldn't play a role in medical decision making, we want people to have
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as much decisions as they possibly can. And we have a lot of things that that medicine won't do.
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You know, I can't just walk in today and say, you know, do X, Y, and Z, because I'm paying you. And I've
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done my research on Google and the internet, and I want you to do X, Y, and Z. Now, we've seen the
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corrosion of medicine where that is having an impact, you know, if you look at the transing of
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children, the whole area of trans, transgender medicine, you know, chopping off reproductive
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organs, chopping off, you know, healthy breasts. And we should be rightly appalled that there are
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medical doctors who are willing to just do that kind of stuff. So our work is pushing back on that
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and saying, that's not medicine. And medicine has never and should never be in the business of
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allowing people to do things that are medically risky. And I want to tell you that they have no
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medical need for us, right? You know, it's one thing if you have cancer, and the doctor saying
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chemotherapy is very risky, you might die from the chemotherapy. But your option is to also die from
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cancer. Yeah. But in the case of a surrogate, she has no medical need to do this. Right, right. And I don't
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think that a lot of people are considering that. And they're certainly not considering that there is a
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heightened risk, an even higher risk from a surrogacy pregnancy than there is from your regular
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pregnancy. But I want to I want to hear before we get into so called gender reassignment surgery,
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and your medical perspective on that, because I've seen you talk a lot about that subject as well.
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I want to know what is the what's what's the process if two men decide that they want children of
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their own. And they want to hire a surrogate to do that, because that would be one of the only ways
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to have a child that has any of their DNA. How does that process work? Yeah, well, let's use Elton John
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because he and his partner husband David Furnish came to California twice my state, and gay men almost
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overwhelmingly buy eggs. We don't even talk about the women who are asked to sell their eggs. Yeah,
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they all almost always buy eggs from another woman and rent the womb of another. Because that's by
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definition, the gestational surrogate, the gestational surrogate is just the womb.
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And is that for ethical reasons? And I use scare quotes like what's it what's the reason that they
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separate the egg donor from the gestator? Overwhelmingly, they want to make sure that
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neither one of these women can make a claim to being having any maternal rights. You just provided
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the genetic material. You're just the womb, you have no right. So legally, and you know, we've had
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in in, you know, US law, cases of disputed surrogacy, where the surrogate mother changes her mind,
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and says, I cannot surrender the baby, even though I'm contractually bound to. So I think it's a it's a
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legal maneuver to make sure that neither one of these women has a has a right to this child. She
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has no legal standing to make the case that she is the birth mother, or the genetic mother. So you're,
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you're, you know, you're explaining, if you will, and risking the health of two women. And again,
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for money, so the corruption of this decision making, and this informed consent is corrupted.
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To and in both of these women's health is put in jeopardy. So they both of these women have to take
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high dose fertility drugs for different procedures. In the case of the egg donor, you know, she's being
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put on high dose fertility drugs to produce lots and lots of eggs, and they will then surgically
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remove from her. In the case of the surrogate, she is taking fertility drugs and hormones, if you will,
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to prepare her uterus to then receive this embryo transfer, you know, the putting this embryo into
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her body. And what we're seeing in the medical literature, the reason that this woman is having
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high risk, things like preeclampsia, gestational hypertension, maternal diabetes is because her
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body is recognizing this is foreign. Again, think of the organ donor, right? You know, we can't just put
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my kidney in you because I want to help you and save your life, we have to make sure you're not going to
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reject it. And so that mother, instantly her body says, this isn't my baby, this is foreign. And she
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develops an immune response to that. So they're, you know, the medication and all the procedures
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and stuff are putting them at risk. And then once the surrogate is pregnant, and that pregnancy is
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confirmed, she still will stay on these hormones for a period of time till they think that the embryo
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has really implanted, the uterine lining has done everything the uterine lining needs to do.
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Um, and then we're not even talking about the psychological, um, uh, risks that these women
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undergo and the, uh, the secondary consequences of the children. You know, do we want little girls
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and little boys seeing mommies have babies that then they give away or they sell? Do we want our
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little children to think, well, this is what mommies do. And, you know, little girls do when they grow
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up. Um, the impact on marriage I've seen, this has been really negatively impacted on some marriages
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that fall apart. You know, men feel like, wow, my wife has to sell her body. She has to carry another
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man's child, um, because I can't financially provide. And so there's all these layers of
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things. Um, in our particular research, we found that surrogate mothers have more postpartum
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depression with their surrogate pregnancies. And we think, well, they go home with empty arms,
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right. You know, they go home with breasts that are full of milk, um, meant to nurse a child and,
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and that doesn't happen. Right. And tell us, um, going back to, you mentioned Elton John as an
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example, when we started talking about this, um, tell us about his process to kind of shed some light
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on how this works. Like, is it a catalog? How did they contact these women?
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Yeah, there are, there really are catalogs, you know, we, you know, good old Mitt Romney got, um,
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sort of, um, in trouble when he talked about binders of women, um, during his presidential
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campaign and literally fertility agencies have binders of women. So, you know, you can, uh, shop
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for, um, the whole genetic profile. You will have the egg donor, smart, pretty tall, speaks a foreign
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language, high SATs, whatever. Um, the, the surrogate mothers are, uh, groomed. I, I, my word that they're
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very much groomed. They're told they're going to be on a journey. And so you'll see, um, this, the
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profile of the surrogate mother is much different in the United States. Uh, a majority of surrogate
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mothers are military wives. And one on one guest on our podcast, um, actually was a military wife who
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has done, I think two or three surrogacies now, and then went to work for the surrogate agency to
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recruit other military wives. So the profile of the surrogate mother in these binders of women is
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going to be much different, um, than the, this, the, um, the egg donor that Elton and perhaps David
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furnished, uh, provided. And I believe if I'm remembering correctly, and this is also common
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in same sex male, um, third party arrangements, oftentimes the surrogate is pregnant for with two
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embryos and each man has a created, um, an embryo using his own sperm. So this gets to the sort of
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designer element of it that, you know, Elton got a baby that was genetically related to him and David
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got a baby that was genetically related, um, uh, to him. And the surrogate was basically carrying,
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uh, you know, siblings from two different fathers. Cause it's kind of bizarre.
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So I don't have a medical background, which is exactly why I brought you on. But as the mom of
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two kids, a toddler and a baby, I am familiar with the process and something that you are told over
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and over again, and you just kind of instinctively know, but the nurses and the doctors reiterate how
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important skin to skin is as soon as that baby is born. Why is that important? Because you are the
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only home that that baby has ever known. And there are psychological benefits as well as physical
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benefits to your baby being close to you. And the seconds right after birth, this is scientifically
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proven. And it's also just common sense. This is something that we have always known even before
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the dawn of probably, you know, modern medical science. And yet you'll hear the same people who
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claim to be very pro science and would probably agree with that. Or they would also, um, they would
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also maybe advise a woman, Hey, make sure that you're doing skin to skin and starting to breastfeed
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as soon as that baby is born. That's so important. But for whatever reason, they suspend that knowledge,
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that scientific principle, when it comes to talking about gay couples, taking the child or children
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from the surrogate mother, all of a sudden we have to pretend that that fact that we have known for
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probably all of human history doesn't exist. And that it's not a big deal that that bonding that women
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are preached about constantly or preached to about constantly, that it just doesn't exist, that
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it's fine, that that baby is going to be okay, taken away, not just from his or her biological mother,
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but then the only womb, the only home he or she has ever known for nine months, that the lack of
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bonding to the mother or to the gestator, if you will, is not going to have any negative impact on that
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child whatsoever, when we know for a fact and have always known for a fact that it has a negative
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impact. I mean, there's that very famous book, Primal Wound, that talks about the internal wound
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that children who are given up for adoption, even though adoption is a beautiful, redemptive,
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wonderful thing, um, they still suffer from the detachment that happened at a young age from their
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mother and from their father. Why are we pretending for the sake of, I guess, political correctness
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that that, that, that, that initial bond between mother and child just doesn't matter when it comes
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to surrogacy? Yeah. I mean, why? Um, because we want what we want. Um, since the beginning of time,
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our natures are, are selfish. Um, we talk about now we have a right to a child when in fact,
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we do not have a right to a child. We have a right to our own child. Uh, when I saw the pictures of
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Pete Buttigieg and his, his husband with their new twins and you know, they've never disclosed
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how they came about getting a twin boy and a girl. Um, I have my hunches, but you know, we saw them in
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the hospital with those little babies on their chest. Those babies don't know them. Um, I've interviewed
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surrogates that at least the intended parents, the intended parents are the parents that that child
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is going to eventually go home to, to be raised by acknowledge that. So I've had surrogates, um,
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that have been given, uh, teddy bears and blankets and things that they're just to sleep with every
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night. So when that baby goes home, that baby goes home with those, those, um, blankets and,
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and stuffed animals that have that mother smell on them. Um, you know, they've been told to record
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themselves reading stories so that when that baby goes home with these strangers, they can play those,
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uh, audio tapes of that. Um, which again is baloney. You know, I, I always joke and I use the example in
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California and probably many States, you know, we have animal cruelty laws. When we, my husband and
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I went and got our newborn puppy, we had to wait by law eight weeks, um, because it would be seen as
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cruelty to that little puppy to remove him from his mother until that, that eight week, um, mark had
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happened. And in the case of, um, you know, my years and years of working in hospitals as a
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pediatric critical care nurse, we moved heaven on earth, um, to allow mothers to be, um, with that
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newborn baby, if it was born severely premature and, and had to be in a, you know, on life support
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and an incubator, um, you know, having them, you know, put their hands in the little, the little
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peephole so they could touch their child and talk to their child and sing to their child. And I remember
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as a nurse, you know, taking these babies that are hooked up to every single machine and out of the
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isolate into the mother's arm, if only for just a few minutes, um, because that was so important
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because that, you know, as Nancy Verrier, the author of Primal Wound, who happens to be my neighbor,
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um, says that that, that trauma is real. It's real to the mother. Um, as evidenced in our research,
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it shows these higher rates of postpartum depression and it's real to the child and to just
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wish it away. Um, I think it's cruel. It's, it's cruelty to these little babies and it's cruelty to
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these women. You know, the sexual revolution in the United States and in the West in general has
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moved very quickly, especially since about 2015, since Obergefell, all of these things that,
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you know, people were called conspiracy theorists and fear mongers for warning about have really come
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to fruition in a lot of ways. The arbitrary redefinition of the family for the sake of the
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sexual revolution, um, has been, uh, has been implemented at the expense of the most vulnerable
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and probably the most marginalized group in the world, not as children. And the only reason that
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is the case is because children can't consent because they don't have a voice because they
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can't push back. They can't speak up and say, you know what? I have a right to a mother and a
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father, which is of course what I believe that every child has a right to a mother and a father.
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And because they can't articulate that because they can't speak that when they're babies, because
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they can't say, Hey, I want to go back and bond with my mom because they might not be able to
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be able to articulate the questions that they have when they're toddlers about where they come from
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and how they miss their mother or father, this person that they have never met before. We think that
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they're okay, or because they have happy lives or they are taken in by a rich couple. We think that,
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well, look, they're fine. They get good education. They're taken care of. They're provided for,
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but that is denying as we've talked about this, this innate characteristic in all of us to want to know
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who we are, where we come from, to whom we belong. Can you talk a little bit more about the
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psychological and potential psychological impact on children that this has to be separated from
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their parents, even either if they're, if they come from a sperm donor, a dad that they never know,
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or an egg donor donor, and then a surrogate. Yeah. And, you know, Hollywood likes to tell us
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because they put out movies called the kids are all right, that this doesn't matter. And we're seeing,
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you know, I often say that this whole area of assisted reproduction in general, as well as in
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particular third-party conception is one of the largest human social experiments of our time,
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just waiting for the train to crash. And, you know, nowhere is that more evident than in the
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voices of those that are called donor conceived. You know, people that are on this planet because
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somebody donated or sold their sperm and or eggs or rented their womb. And they, this group of now
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young adults and even getting older, because, you know, especially sperm donation has been around
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much longer than egg donation. You know, the first test tube baby was Louise Brown. And then five years
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after Louise Brown, we had the first IV up baby donated through donor eggs. Whereas we had years and
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years before that of sperm donation, you know, they're growing up and they're using the power of social
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media. They're all doing their 23 and me testing. I just got a text the other day from a donor conceived
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person who found another, another half sibling through DNA testing. What was sad is that when
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they found this other half sibling, this half sibling at that point did not know that they were
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donor conceived. So talk about sort of a bomb being dropped in your lap to all of a sudden find out that
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the mom and dad that you were raised with your whole life, um, had, had lied to you and were in fact,
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not your, your biological parents. Uh, they're lobbying for laws to be changed. Um, Australia in
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particular, you know, has been able to be successful in, in passing legislation that doesn't allow
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anonymity. Um, you know, some, some countries have laws that don't allow sperm donors to donate
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more than six times. I think more than one time is too many, but, um, you know, so it's going to be
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the, perhaps the children as they grow up, you know, just think about finding out that, you know,
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somebody was paid $125 to masturbate. Um, and that's your conception story. Uh, you know, just,
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you know, the fact that you might have 10, 15, 20 siblings out there, uh, the fact that your parents
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lie to you, the fact that, um, nobody seems to care about your rights when, you know, everybody's
00:24:20.520
talking about my rights, my rights, my rights. And these people literally have, um, uh, a fake
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birth certificate. It's, it's, it's a legal document. It should be a legal document. Therefore,
00:24:31.320
it shouldn't be fake. It shouldn't be full of false information. So I think it will be the casualties
00:24:37.520
that we'll see in the, in the young people. And, you know, we're also seeing a lot more research
00:24:42.300
because assisted reproduction is relatively new technology. A lot more research is showing
00:24:47.100
that children created through these technologies have their own set of unique health problems.
00:24:53.020
And we're just not understanding yet why that is. Is it because of the technology? Um, is it because
00:24:58.080
the, the, the man and the woman who were having difficulty conceiving that normally nature or
00:25:03.200
evolution or God wouldn't, didn't want that couple to pass on something. Um, we're, we're ignoring
00:25:09.260
that and we're forcing this couple to conceive through this new modern technology. Uh, but again,
00:25:14.520
it gets back to the point that this is one of the largest social human experiments of our time.
00:25:20.360
Yes, it is. And it just kind of goes back to that arbitrary redefinition of the family for the sake
00:25:27.620
of, um, a new era of accepted, um, definitions of marriage and family. And I like to say that
00:25:39.160
kids are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments. And we see,
00:25:46.380
I mean, obviously we see throughout human history, the natural definition of the family. And there's
00:25:52.200
so much hubris in saying that now, after all of this millennia of the family being one way that we
00:25:58.660
can redistruct it or reconstruct it, and we can redefine it without any consequences. It's kind of
00:26:05.820
like that. I think it was Chesterton that talked about the, um, the metaphor of a like wall in a
00:26:15.540
field and a liberal would go up to it and say, okay, there's no reason for this wall or for this
00:26:20.080
cage or for this fence to be here. Let's go ahead and take it down. Whereas the conservative would ask,
00:26:25.660
why is it there? And it seems like in this case, and in several cases, progressive simply tear down
00:26:31.160
what has always been institutions, the family, because they see no use in it. Instead of asking,
00:26:36.880
if science tells us that it's supposed to be one way, uh, won't there be sociological, psychological,
00:26:44.980
emotional, and physical repercussions to that? Um, it seems like not very many people are asking
00:26:51.260
those questions, I guess, because it's politically unpopular. No one wants to be called homophobic.
00:26:56.420
No one wants to be called a bigot. That's probably the biggest fear that a lot of people have. Um,
00:27:01.460
is that why so many doctors are unwilling to ask those questions are unwilling to, I think,
00:27:08.700
uphold their Hippocratic oath to these women and to these babies, kind of incentivizing them to take
00:27:14.500
risks that they shouldn't really be taking? Yeah, I think it gets back to some things I said at the
00:27:21.840
beginning is that this is a corruption of medicine. You know, when I left clinical nursing and I always
00:27:27.480
worked in, um, pretty large academic hospitals. So we would have a lot of medical students, we'd have
00:27:32.000
interns, we'd have residents as well as the seasoned, you know, career, um, uh, physicians that were,
00:27:37.400
were teaching all these students. And I used to ask them, you know, what did they see their role
00:27:43.140
as, um, a physician? Um, and, you know, I saw that shifting to when I finally left clinical nursing,
00:27:51.440
you know, they were being, you know, they were getting no ethics training in universities anymore
00:27:57.040
during their medical school training, or if they were offered ethics, it was, you know, uh, it was
00:28:01.920
an elective. So they didn't even have to have it. Um, but then again, ethics is like, well, what kind
00:28:07.420
of ethics are you teaching too? So that could be a whole problematic thing because ethics is kind of
00:28:11.300
eroded as well. But, you know, you know, one, one young resident told me, he said, I'm a service
00:28:17.880
provider, you know, and my, you know, my, my patients are my customers and my clients.
00:28:23.520
So I just offer them what they want. And I think, wow, that'd be like me taking my car in and saying,
00:28:29.780
well, here, this is what I want you to do. My car's not writing, writing correctly. And it's
00:28:34.100
making all these noises, but you know, I think you need to, you know, put in leather seats and tint my
00:28:39.740
windows and there'd be, okay, well, you're my client. That's what you want. I'll just give you what I
00:28:44.940
want. And also this area of medicine is very, very lucrative. Um, and we've seen that with the
00:28:50.560
whole trans debate, you know, this is a new field of medicine, assisted reproductive technology has
00:28:55.280
not been around that long. It's a new field of medicine. Um, and it, and it came about, um, uh,
00:29:01.300
you know, just sort of arrived under the scene as this miracle thing that was going to help people
00:29:06.500
have children that so desperately wanted children. And it's very expensive. Um, it has a high failure
00:29:12.220
rate. So it's not uncommon to hear women that go through many, many, many rounds of IVF,
00:29:16.360
never, ever get a baby. You know, the famous comedian, Gilda Radner went through six rounds
00:29:21.500
of IVF, never was able to conceive and then went on and died of ovarian cancer, wink, wink,
00:29:27.200
risk, fertility drugs, cancer, reproductive cancers. Um, New York, New York times had an article many
00:29:33.000
years ago that said, show that, you know, the fertility doctors at big university hospitals
00:29:38.040
like NYU and Columbia and Stanford, those, those are cash cows. They bring in the big bucks. They're
00:29:44.600
like the football team for the university. Um, so, you know, money changes everything, right?
00:29:50.260
Yeah. Um, and why are you going to stop doing something and why, why are you going to do research?
00:29:54.580
We don't have a lot of research in this field, one, because it's new. And two, why would they want
00:29:58.980
to do research to find out if there's problems? Because that stops the flow of money.
00:30:03.860
Yeah. And you know, there's no research and because they don't want the research and then
00:30:08.820
they pull this manipulative rhetorical trick that they say, there's no evidence showing they'll say
00:30:15.600
there's no evidence showing that kids who are taken away from their biological or mother or biological
00:30:22.260
mother or father through surrogacy and sperm donation have psychological damage. There's,
00:30:27.820
there's no evidence that shows that this is bad for individuals, bad for society.
00:30:32.820
And that's because, I mean, there is evidence, but that's because so many people are afraid to
00:30:38.820
study it. They're afraid to even find any kind of evidence. And if they did find evidence,
00:30:42.700
they probably wouldn't want to publish it because again, it's politically incorrect and no one wants
00:30:48.500
to go against the LGBTQ lobby. And look, there are people who are, you know, very pro LGBTQ, whatever,
00:30:55.520
who can still objectively say, look, you know, this is, this is not good. This is not good for women.
00:31:01.820
This is not good for men and fathers. This is not good for children who then grow up to be adults.
00:31:08.000
This is not a good situation that we have now manufactured in the name of acceptance, but
00:31:14.140
at the expense of the health of society. And so I, I guess I'm a little pessimistic. I mean,
00:31:22.700
I'm optimistic because people like you are fighting for this so hard and are trying to reveal really
00:31:28.560
what's behind it. But because this is big business, like you did a documentary, you did a movie in 2018
00:31:34.700
called Big Fertility, because there's so much behind this. And this is just such a behemoth
00:31:40.540
industry. It's hard to imagine how, how it's going to change. Like you said, money changes everything.
00:31:47.880
It can corrupt things. It can prevent the truth from being revealed. And so like, what are you
00:31:53.940
seeing on that front? Are people kind of waking up to the madness of this, or do you just kind of
00:31:58.760
seeing it more? Are you seeing it more shrouded in darkness than ever before?
00:32:04.400
Well, I'm the forever optimist. That's why I've been able to do this work for so long.
00:32:09.500
Um, and, and I do, I do hate the corruption of medicine and the injustice that keeps me going,
00:32:15.200
you know, egg donors are told there's no evidence that, you know, this is risky to your health. And
00:32:20.560
they're, they should be told we've never studied this. So we have no idea if this is risky.
00:32:24.800
Yeah. Um, but I get emails all the time, Allie, I got an email just, I think last month,
00:32:29.880
um, from a young woman. She said, I'm a single, you know, low income under the poverty level
00:32:35.960
mother in, um, I think it was like Vermont or New Hampshire or Maine, somewhere over there.
00:32:41.300
And she said, I just had signed up with an agency to do a surrogate pregnancy because I needed the
00:32:45.860
money. And I stumbled upon your, your films and your YouTube channel. And I'm so thankful for your
00:32:51.920
work. I get emails all the time from young women who said, I saw exploitation, exploitation is my film.
00:32:58.180
That's a feature film on egg donor, you know, that I won't sell my eggs now. Thank you for your work.
00:33:02.840
So I, I know that there's those stories. I, again, I don't have, you know, statistics to quote you that
00:33:08.200
this many people change their mind and no longer are in favor of this. Um, you know, I'm always trying
00:33:14.700
to reach the people, the purchasers, you know, if you're an, for a couple, please, please don't ask
00:33:22.740
another woman to have a baby for you. Please don't ask another young girl to sell her eggs to you. Um,
00:33:28.680
just stop it. You know, there, there's all kinds of other ways for you to fulfill your desires to
00:33:34.520
mother and father, um, children that don't have to risk another woman's life family. I mean, it
00:33:41.480
grieves me to know that we have surrogate mothers in the U S their husbands lost their wives. These
00:33:46.660
children lost their mothers in order to help you, please let's stop that. Um, you know, you have,
00:33:52.360
I would imagine a pretty large audience of people that go to church. When was the last time you ever
00:33:57.600
heard any of this talked about in church when we have in Genesis, the first story of infertility
00:34:02.180
and the barren womb, you know, please let's talk about this. We have all this new modern technology,
00:34:08.240
um, to address a problem that's been with us since the beginning of time.
00:34:12.720
And our, our, our people that are church going, um, God fearing people aren't talking about this.
00:34:19.160
And this is rampant in churches. I'm following so many surrogates on Instagram and in their profile
00:34:24.600
says, you know, I love Jesus. I love, I'm a Christian. I, you know, God, God called me to do
00:34:31.740
Why is it, why is it that a lot of Christian women don't seem to understand the exploitation
00:34:43.140
that is innate in this process and the ethical, and I would argue biblical issues with the surrogacy
00:34:51.800
industry? Why do you think that is? Um, bad theology. Yeah, I guess that's the easiest answer.
00:34:59.540
Um, and you know, even women who aren't perhaps, I mean, we see this in, uh, Catholic, you know,
00:35:06.560
cause I, I speak to so many groups, um, Mormons, Mormons are, and Catholics are big surrogate
00:35:13.640
people. Um, you know, you know, we love babies. Um, we love helping people, women by nature,
00:35:22.600
whether they be religious or not, we're just kind of, you know, we're, we're, we're maternal. Um,
00:35:28.500
we, we feel sad when people want children, we go, Oh, they'd be such great parents. Let me help
00:35:33.440
them. Um, so, and you know, and, and unfortunately a lot of people in churches are caught up in the
00:35:40.240
money stuff too. I mean, not that all surrogates are paid. Um, but you know, it's like, Hey,
00:35:45.600
it's win-win. I help her. I help them. They help me. And we're all just one big happy family. Um,
00:35:51.660
but yeah, I think it boils down to, um, uh, bad theology. Yeah. And you know, what is,
00:35:57.280
what, what is our body for and who is our body for? Um, so whether, you know, we don't have a
00:36:04.000
proper understanding from an anthropological standpoint or from a Christian worldview standpoint,
00:36:09.600
um, you know what, and, and again, you know, why, why aren't people able to understand that on their
00:36:16.560
own, even if they're not being taught it in their church, people say, well, surrogacy isn't in the
00:36:21.680
Bible. And I go, well, yeah, it kind of is, you know, read the story of Sarah and Abraham didn't
00:36:29.440
go too well. Yeah, that's very true. So many of the issues that we're discussing today, issues of
00:36:35.140
identity, issues of human nature, issues of origin, really go back to Genesis one through three. So many
00:36:42.720
of the social cultural conversations that we're having today are really rooted in what people
00:36:49.480
think about where we came from and what we are for and what the human body is and who says what the
00:36:55.940
human body is. Um, you mentioned what we are to do with our bodies and just the understanding of that.
00:37:03.800
I do find that a lot of professing Christians don't seem to understand, um, that the
00:37:12.640
body, um, is as scripture says, a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians 619 talks
00:37:19.400
about glorifying God with our body because we were bought with a price, really kind of the secular
00:37:24.280
view of the body, um, sees it as secondary to who we say that we are or what we want to do kind of
00:37:31.200
our self identification, but really our body and our identity and what we do with our bodies and how
00:37:37.220
we feel on the inside. All of these are inextricably intertwined, which is exactly why,
00:37:41.620
at least in, in my amateur opinion, why you do see so much, um, even greater levels of postpartum
00:37:48.340
depression in the women who give up their babies. And of course the psychological issues that you see
00:37:53.860
with kids, not knowing, um, not knowing where they come from as well. Now, how do you see this
00:38:02.020
connected with what is happening in medicine among children who are quote unquote, transitioning
00:38:10.120
into the opposite gender? Are these things intertwined in any way?
00:38:18.360
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is just, um, again, not understanding of, of our bodies, how we were
00:38:24.920
created, how we were made, how we were designed, what is the purpose of our body. Um, so this notion
00:38:31.020
that I was born in the wrong body, you're not born in the wrong body. You're born in the body you were
00:38:35.840
born in. Um, you cannot change sex. You know, you can surgically remove things. You can put harmful
00:38:44.140
drugs inside your body to block puberty or to make a woman grow facial hair or to make a man,
00:38:50.140
you know, become less hairy. Um, but you're still genetically biologically male or female.
00:38:57.240
Um, you know, I, I love, you know, in our film, our most recent film transmission, what's the rush
00:39:03.080
to reassign gender? We, you know, we interviewed Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who talks
00:39:09.360
very, you know, poignantly and very forcefully on, you know, human biology is real and we can't wish
00:39:16.920
it away and we can't alter it. Um, you know, if there's a crime scene and there's blood evidence
00:39:22.000
left at the crime scene, they're getting the, you know, the police are going to know whether
00:39:25.920
they're looking for a male suspect or a female suspect, not somebody who identifies as a male
00:39:31.340
or not somebody who dresses like a male. Um, so it's level of absurdity that we can do all these
00:39:38.280
things. Um, and, and again, you know, medicine has just happily jumped onto this bandwagon because
00:39:44.680
it's another field of, well, I'm just a service provider. And if you want me to do this surgery
00:39:50.900
on you or prescribe these medications, fine by me. And you know, I'm happy because I can
00:39:56.180
laugh all the way to the bank. Um, but we will see a train wreck as we are seeing in the area
00:40:02.840
of assisted reproduction with, you know, shattered lives and broken bodies and people being harmed.
00:40:09.380
Just look around the world and the laws that are in place in countries that do not allow any of
00:40:15.760
this. And if you look at the basis of those laws, it's because people are harmed and people are
00:40:21.940
exploited. It's not because we're mean and we don't care about people. I don't want anything I'm saying
00:40:27.280
today to be misconstrued that I'm not sympathetic to people who want children and can't. I'm very
00:40:32.280
sympathetic, but I draw a very bright line that we cannot just, you know, wish our things away
00:40:38.140
and put our problems onto somebody else, um, and let them bear the burden of harm and exploitation.
00:40:43.720
And in the case of children being medically and surgically transitioned, it's unconscionable.
00:40:48.960
Um, in my mind, doctors need to lose their license. You know, people need to go to jail,
00:40:53.900
um, for doing the things that I read about. And I hear about that people are doing all in the name
00:40:59.020
of medicine. This is not medicine. This is butchery. This is butchery. I'm sorry.
00:41:03.880
It absolutely is. And I mean, when you think about that, the lady who transitioned and it's hard,
00:41:11.680
I don't even like using the language because it seems like I'm giving into the premise. I don't
00:41:16.400
believe no matter what kind of surgery or any amount of hormones that you have, that it's actually
00:41:20.740
possible to transition. You are still biologically male or female. But on the cover of the New Yorker,
00:41:27.200
there was this woman who transitioned into a man and it was so disturbing and just truly
00:41:35.360
heartbreaking to look at. I mean, you're looking at someone who has a beard, had her breasts cut off,
00:41:41.860
has kind of chest hair, and, um, you can tell has a little bit of broad shoulders, a female waist,
00:41:48.740
female hips, um, looks still like a woman is probably never going to fully look like a man. And of course,
00:41:56.200
that is especially true for a man who tries to look like a woman. And it's just really heartbreaking,
00:42:02.000
like the disassociative feelings and the dysphoric feelings that someone must feel to put themselves
00:42:09.480
through that. Um, but also the praise that they get from society for doing that, um, so that people
00:42:18.820
who do struggle with different kinds of mental disorders can kind of look at the attention and the
00:42:23.920
praise and the accolades that someone is getting for butchering their bodies as, as you put it. Um,
00:42:30.080
and they think, well, that's how I'm going to gain some kind of acceptance, um, as well. And I know that
00:42:36.200
might be a controversial to take a take, but I do think that is what is behind a lot of young people
00:42:42.000
in particular, who are all naturally looking, especially for belonging and affirmation,
00:42:47.720
why there is just this new, huge wave of self identity as something other than the gender that
00:42:57.520
they were born in. Of course, um, Abigail Schreier has written about the social contagion aspect to
00:43:03.240
all of this. But I think that thing, I think that it wouldn't have gone as far as it has,
00:43:09.800
and it would be able to stop in its tracks. If there were more doctors who simply stood up and said,
00:43:15.760
look, this is not medically right, they can maybe even leave their own personal moral views out of
00:43:20.360
it and just say, look, this isn't medically, ethically right for us to be pushing children,
00:43:27.220
especially into this. Here are the risks of it. But there just don't seem to be enough loud voices.
00:43:35.220
And I'm guessing the reasoning behind it is what money politics, the same thing, um, as the reasons
00:43:42.680
for pushing big fertility. Is that what it is? Yeah, I, I think, you know, I just have to say
00:43:49.660
something about that cover magazine that you brought up too, because I, I just want to say
00:43:53.800
woe to us, you know, that the culture has become so depraved that this is celebrated on the cover of
00:44:01.380
a magazine instead of people, you know, being moved to tears and being grieved by this kind of, um,
00:44:08.080
uh, again, abuse. But yeah, I think it's, it's fear. Um, where are, where are the, you know,
00:44:15.200
the old Testament prophets that are willing to be out there screaming in the streets? Um, it's,
00:44:20.760
it's fear. You know, I, I read the beautiful, um, article yesterday that Dr. Jordan Peterson posted
00:44:26.420
on why he's, you know, leaving his academic post in Toronto, where he was, you know, scolding
00:44:31.860
everybody from, you know, corporate America or big corporations, not just corporate America,
00:44:37.220
uh, Hollywood, the media. Um, is it because people just want to be popular? They want to be invited
00:44:42.740
to the big parties. Um, you know, I don't get invited on a lot of shows because even people that
00:44:48.200
are friendly to what I believe in don't want to talk about it because they, they get kind of, I don't
00:44:53.340
know what kind of, you know, coals will be heaped on you, Allie, for having me as a guest on your show.
00:44:57.460
So, um, but we're used to it. We're used to that. We run into the controversy. We don't care.
00:45:03.000
Yeah. Well, that's, that's good. But yeah, there's a few of us out there. We don't, I don't care. I
00:45:07.060
wake up every day and going, I don't care. Um, I, I can't get fired from my job. I mean,
00:45:11.780
I run my own organization. I'm sure my donors could stop funding our work, but I would still do it.
00:45:17.360
Right. I would just do, you know, I'd have to figure out creative ways, but I do again,
00:45:22.440
back to the fact that I am optimistic. Um, I think we'll win, you know, we know the end of the
00:45:27.420
story. Um, I think the more we're bold, you know, we will gather more and more people that will,
00:45:33.300
that will go with us. You've seen that with, you know, I just love watching what the parents were
00:45:37.960
able to do in the state of Virginia. And we see parents who are just in this whole transient of
00:45:43.400
kids. Uh, you know, we're getting ready to have an event in a few weeks in, in my office in the Bay
00:45:48.760
area on dealing with the transient of children. And we've already almost sold out in the events a month
00:45:55.380
away. Um, because so many people are hungry, uh, for the truth. Um, they're hungry for,
00:46:01.940
to find the like-minded people so that we don't live in our little, you know,
00:46:05.760
what do you believe? Do you agree like me? Yeah. So we'll smoke them out. Yeah. Um, we'll win.
00:46:16.220
I don't know. Are you familiar with Katie Faust and the organization them before us?
00:46:21.280
Oh yeah. I've known Katie for years. So yeah. Well, I just appreciate what both of you do and
00:46:28.120
talking about this stuff. I mean, we talk about the gender subject so much on this podcast. I'm
00:46:32.700
sure you also know Brandon Showalter. He is, yeah, he's a journalist and he's talked about,
00:46:38.380
it really is butchering, um, when you're talking about what's being done to adults, but also minors,
00:46:46.240
teenagers, sometimes in some States, um, without the consent of their parents. I mean, it's a huge
00:46:52.120
travesty, but I think honestly, the even more taboo subject is not the gender stuff, but is actually
00:47:00.180
the surrogacy, uh, surrogacy stuff. I honestly think that is more controversial to talk about
00:47:05.240
because as we mentioned, there are a lot of people, you know, on our side, people who are Christians
00:47:11.120
and, um, I'm not, I don't know if you are a conservative, but people who call themselves
00:47:16.280
Christian conservatives who don't realize that there are any problems with this, who, because
00:47:21.240
like you said, they like babies, they like families, they want everyone to experience the joy of
00:47:25.860
parenting, which I do too. Um, they don't want to talk about this and they certainly do not want to
00:47:31.780
talk about the ethical problems with IVF. And I know I'm kind of looping back to something that we
00:47:37.680
already talked about, but I, I do want to get your take on that. Is there an ethical way to do
00:47:43.040
in vitro fertilization? Oh, that, that, I wish you would have asked me that sooner. Cause that's a
00:47:49.680
whole nother talk. Um, it's, it's still risky. Um, you know, I raise all kinds of, um, predatory
00:47:57.200
arguments against assisted reproduction. It's very expensive. You know, is that, is that being a good
00:48:03.140
wise steward of your resources when you know that a take-home IVF baby is a six-figure baby?
00:48:09.380
Um, it's, you know, these are issues of poverty versus wealth, you know, low income women who,
00:48:15.420
um, have no insurance and can't conceive, don't have access to this very expensive technology that
00:48:20.840
overwhelmingly is covered very little by private insurance. And most of the time it's out of pocket.
00:48:25.580
You see a lot of GoFundMe accounts. Um, the, the same risks apply as far as the fertility drugs,
00:48:31.200
you know, I said, Gilda Radner early on, you know, went through six rounds of IVF to have her own
00:48:35.600
child with her then husband, Gilda Radner, and was not successful in conceiving and then went on and
00:48:40.520
died of, um, ovarian cancer. So it's well documented in the, in the medical literature that fertility drugs
00:48:46.520
do have links to various kinds of reproductive cancers and other cancers too, colon cancer and
00:48:52.480
such. Um, you know, there is this problem with a world full of children that needs homes. Um,
00:48:59.880
so perhaps, you know, you, if you can't conceive and you don't want to spend hundreds of thousands
00:49:06.000
of dollars on maybe a large failed technology that might cause you to have ill health, um,
00:49:12.480
maybe you want to welcome a child into your own home that needs a home. Um, and again,
00:49:17.880
the research coming out now on children that are conceived through these technologies is not,
00:49:22.160
you know, a rubber stamp seal of approval that these children are a-okay fine. You know,
00:49:26.600
we see problems with heart disease, obesity, um, various kinds of cancers, um, coming out in some
00:49:32.520
of these studies, whether these will bear out to be in fact true or not, because this is a social
00:49:37.920
experiment. You know, we're experimenting on these children and studying them as they get older and
00:49:42.040
grow up. So we're learning as we go. So all of those kinds of things come together to say,
00:49:47.520
hmm, do you really want to do this? Yeah. There are a lot of things to consider. And I think
00:49:53.100
the point that we kind of have to end on just because like you said, it's such a,
00:49:56.960
it's another huge topic is that not enough people are publicly asking those questions just because
00:50:02.640
something is possible. Doesn't mean that it is beneficial. Technology in itself doesn't have
00:50:09.620
a morality. It doesn't really have a limiting principle. If something can be done, it will be
00:50:13.940
done. So it's up to human beings. And it certainly is up to Christians to lead the charge of asking the
00:50:20.100
ethics and the morality and the impact of these different kinds of technologies. And I know a
00:50:26.700
lot of women who have conceived through IVF, they have wonderful, beautiful children who of course
00:50:30.900
are made in the image of God and are wonderful people. And these people are wonderful mothers.
00:50:38.100
They're simply are questions to ask about the ethics of it. And I have heard great discussions and
00:50:45.120
debates that I know local churches actually are having about, you know, is there an ethical way
00:50:50.840
to do IVF? There are some ways that are worse than others. And then there's embryo adoption. So many
00:50:56.660
questions when it comes to reproductive technology that I think more people should be having. And I'm,
00:51:01.960
I'm very thankful. I'm very thankful that you are, um, and that you took the time to come talk to us
00:51:08.880
about this today. A lot of people have these questions and, um, your courage will give other
00:51:13.940
people courage. So thank you for that. Where, where can they, where can they find you? How can
00:51:18.060
they follow you and watch the movies that you've produced? Yeah. Let me just, if I could just add
00:51:23.460
one more thing and then I'll, I'll give my commercial. Um, yeah. What I like to tell people
00:51:28.820
that are struggling with infertility is, you know, get yourself a really good diagnosis as your first
00:51:35.200
step. Um, I'm not Catholic, you know, I'm my Catholic brothers and sisters would love to talk
00:51:40.500
about NAPRO technology, um, and, and the ways that perhaps NAPRO technology can help couples conceive.
00:51:47.400
But the last thing you want is a doctor who pushes you straight to the IVF doctor. Um, get a good
00:51:53.040
diagnosis, find out what's going on. And there's all kinds of things that can be done, um, before you
00:51:59.060
even get on that IVF superhighway, um, that, that might be beneficial in helping a couple to
00:52:05.040
more naturally conceive. But that starts with just a good proper diagnosis of both the man
00:52:10.240
and the woman. Cause you know, we know that fertility affects men as well as women and
00:52:14.140
sometimes both of us. Um, now to my commercial, um, we do have a YouTube channel. Um, it's the
00:52:20.160
Center for Bioethics and Culture Network and all of the films that I've produced in many, many
00:52:25.620
different languages are all available for free as of this last summer on our YouTube channel,
00:52:30.120
as well as lots of contact, you know, contact, um, uh, you know, interviews that I've done with,
00:52:35.820
um, surrogates and donor conceived people and such follow our podcast, Venus Rising, Venus Rising.
00:52:42.960
It's on all the platforms, Spotify, iTunes, Podomatic, Amazon, everywhere. Um, and I am very
00:52:48.140
active on Twitter. So people can follow me on Twitter, just at Jennifer Law.
00:52:53.220
Awesome. Thank you so much, Jennifer. I really appreciate it.
00:52:55.860
Yeah, me too. I'm glad it finally worked out for us to chat together.