Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 554 ｜ IVF, Embryo Adoption, & Surrogacy： Answering the Hard Questions ｜ Guest： Jennifer Lahl

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.

00:00:14.560 If you have not listened to yesterday's episode on my family's experience with COVID and how I

00:00:21.720 lost faith in the so-called experts, go listen to that. Today we are talking about IVF with the same

00:00:31.140 guest, Jennifer Law, that we talked with last week about surrogacy. And this episode, as always,

00:00:38.880 is brought to you by our good friends at Good Ranchers. Get you some better than organic chicken

00:00:44.520 and some Kraft beef sent to your front door. It'll make your life a whole lot easier and better.

00:00:49.040 Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie. So like I said, we are talking to Jennifer Law. If you have not

00:00:57.180 listened to last week's episode, last Thursday, where we talked specifically about surrogacy,

00:01:03.820 the ethical and moral questions that we should be thinking through when it comes to surrogacy,

00:01:08.700 in particular as Christians. She has been in this realm, studying this realm, advocating

00:01:14.900 in this realm for over 20 years. And you can listen to all of her credentials and her stories in that

00:01:21.920 last episode. And you can listen to more about her work in this area in the last episode and more

00:01:30.600 about surrogacy. Now we are going to be talking a little bit about surrogacy, but we're also going

00:01:36.240 to be talking about IVF. And look, I understand this is a very sensitive topic. This is a very

00:01:44.640 personal topic. And I understand that there's going to be disagreement on this subject. Please know going

00:01:52.600 into this that my desire, my heart is not condemnation. It is not judgment. It is not exclusion.

00:02:01.240 It is not condescension. It is love. And it is a desire for clarity. It is a desire to have courage

00:02:11.760 in an area that people, Christian, non-Christian, conservative, liberal, really don't want to talk 0.92

00:02:18.720 about because it is so personal, because we are dealing with such sensitive topics. But because we're

00:02:25.260 talking about babies, because we're talking about natural processes that have become more

00:02:30.860 technological and artificial in nature, there's so much for us to think through when it comes to the

00:02:37.360 biblical basis for this, when it comes to the morals and ethics of all of this. And so we're going to be

00:02:44.060 thinking through and talking through a lot of those questions today. If you disagree, or if you have a

00:02:49.200 different perspective, that is okay. Feel free to reach out to Jennifer, and you can reach out to me on

00:02:55.300 Instagram. I might not see your message. But if I do, I'll try to respond to you. It's okay. We are

00:03:01.240 wading into what we know is a controversial area. And we're having what I think is a really, really

00:03:07.700 important and a very informative discussion. I know it's going to get you to at least think about this,

00:03:14.100 if not change your mind. So without further ado, here is our new friend, Jennifer Law.

00:03:20.380 Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us again. You are back by popular demand. I had such a big

00:03:30.620 reaction in response to our last episode, overwhelmingly positive, some pushback, of course.

00:03:37.920 And I wanted to have you back on to talk a little bit more about the surrogacy industry, but also to

00:03:43.060 talk about IVF. We kind of left everyone on a cliffhanger last time. And I got so many questions

00:03:49.720 about that. Tell me a little bit first about the reaction that you got to our conversation last

00:03:56.100 week when we were talking before you said that you've received lots of messages.

00:04:00.160 Yeah, and I too was pleasantly surprised by the overwhelmingly positive messages that I received.

00:04:08.660 People saying, I'm so glad we're talking about this. I want to be better informed so I can talk

00:04:14.240 about this to my friends, you know, people in my churches and my community, you know,

00:04:20.080 moms that go to school with my kids. I had a lot of people share their own personal stories of

00:04:25.560 infertility and how they used IVF. And now they have dilemmas that they're facing, you know,

00:04:32.260 particularly around the space of leftover frozen embryos that were created through IVF. So,

00:04:39.120 you know, I am tangling a little bit with an angry surrogate on Facebook who identifies as a 0.99

00:04:46.720 Christian and says she's made her peace with God that she's done this selfless act. So, but 0.97

00:04:52.420 overwhelmingly, I think the feedback has been people are, we scratched an itch and people want to know

00:04:58.340 more. So that's good. Yeah. And you know, you touched on this in our last conversation,

00:05:02.560 you said that a lot of Christians and a lot of pro-lifers are pro-surrogate because they simply 0.53

00:05:10.620 think, well, this is just another way for people to bring life into the world and who are we to judge

00:05:17.180 someone for the decisions that they make? And in fact, I got into it a little bit with someone who

00:05:24.780 is a Christian and, you know, we're philosophically aligned in a lot of ways, but I posted right after

00:05:30.840 our conversation, Priyanka Chopra, I think is how you pronounce her last name and Joe Jonas,

00:05:36.740 they announced that they had a baby via surrogate. And I posted about it on Instagram, just saying,

00:05:44.080 wow, you know, there are a lot of questions that Christians should be asking about this. And

00:05:47.500 the response that I got was from this person, you have no idea why they chose a surrogate. What if

00:05:54.000 she struggles with infertility? What if she can't carry a baby? You know, it's really presumptuous

00:05:59.980 and judgmental to say that there could be anything wrong with a couple like this,

00:06:04.280 choosing a surrogate. What would be your response to something like that?

00:06:09.420 Yeah. And, you know, I've seen all the noise, if you will, about the Nick Jonas announcement and,

00:06:14.920 you know, even radical feminists that I align with and work with are, you know, against this, 1.00

00:06:20.560 you know, this is the instrumental use of a woman's body for somebody else's gain. But, 1.00

00:06:25.260 you know, for people that say that, you know, I ask questions. Did you know that surrogate pregnancy

00:06:32.420 is a very high risk pregnancy? Did you know that surrogate mothers have died? Did you know that

00:06:38.700 the babies these surrogate mothers carry have died? Do you know that we have so many embryos that are 0.98

00:06:46.740 lost along the way in this whole IVF, big fertility industry, which is why, you know, I mentioned last

00:06:53.560 week, we have, you know, roughly a million frozen human embryos just in the United States alone,

00:06:58.660 over 2 million in the United Kingdom. So I just think that people that push back oftentimes are

00:07:05.380 coming from, rightly, a space of grief, a space of sadness, a space of years and years of perhaps

00:07:13.100 struggling to have a child or seeing a sister or dear friend or dear couple friends struggle with

00:07:20.860 infertility. So I think for me, my first response is just to raise a lot of questions, because I find

00:07:26.660 in my work, that overwhelmingly, people think there's nothing wrong with this. This is just this

00:07:31.880 good, wonderful thing people are doing to help people. And we can talk more about the industry,

00:07:37.960 which maybe raise some of the dirty little secret behind a lot of what's going on in reality.

00:07:44.600 Yes. And in this example of Nick Jonas, I think I said Joe Jonas, but it is Nick Jonas and his wife.

00:07:53.580 It actually brings up a lot of the issues that you're talking about, at least according to Daily

00:07:59.160 Mail, they were reporting that this baby was born 27 weeks, 27 weeks. I mean, that's still the second

00:08:06.120 trimester that is barely after what they call the age of viability. And so if that is true, if this

00:08:12.000 reporting is true, and of course, they're saying their sources are solid on this, that child is

00:08:17.020 going to be in the hospital for a very long time. And I do have questions. What happens to the mother 0.84

00:08:21.300 who I am guessing probably just had a very traumatic delivery experience? Delivering a child can be

00:08:27.740 traumatic anyway, but at 27 weeks, that's not supposed to happen. So my question is, you know,

00:08:34.340 what goes on with her? Who's taking care of her? And of course, what went on during this pregnancy 0.98

00:08:40.540 that caused this child to be born so early? And then you also have the report from the Daily Mail

00:08:49.020 that Priyanka actually was not struggling with infertility, not that that necessarily makes an

00:08:55.220 ethical difference to all of this. But they said that they were simply busy, that they didn't have

00:08:59.860 time over the last year to get pregnant, which of course, my question is, how are you going to have

00:09:04.740 time to raise a child? But that's a whole different can of worms. And so people just don't understand

00:09:10.500 there's so many different aspects to it. But if someone said, okay, well, this woman signed up 0.51

00:09:17.940 for that, though, she signed up for the risk, she knew that this could happen, and she still took it

00:09:22.900 on. What's the problem with that? If she consented to it, isn't that all that's needed?

00:09:30.200 Yeah, you packed a lot in there. I feel like there's about 20 questions in there. But I'm,

00:09:35.460 you know, I think the fact that these babies were born premature just underscores the high-risk nature

00:09:42.220 of the pregnancy. And, you know, for those who didn't hear our conversation last week, you know,

00:09:48.180 I just remind people that I was a pediatric critical care nurse for many, many, many years before going

00:09:54.180 back to graduate school. So I, you know, I saw firsthand in the Peds ICU, these babies that were born

00:10:01.940 very premature. You know, just last week after your show showed air, one of the first, you know,

00:10:09.140 private messages I got was from a neonatal intensive care nurse who says she sees these babies in the

00:10:16.280 NICU because they are born premature and high-risk. And you're right, if the babies were born premature

00:10:22.380 and high-risk, that meant that that pregnancy was a high-risk pregnancy. You know, women go into 0.91

00:10:28.120 premature labor because there's complications. You know, we know that our bodies are meant to hold

00:10:33.260 on to our babies for 40 weeks. And it just does sort of underscore sort of the grittiness when you

00:10:39.100 have people that just outright say, we're too busy. Pregnancy is too much of an inconvenience right now.

00:10:46.100 We're just going to outsource this like it's a job. Time Magazine many years ago had a, you know,

00:10:51.940 top 10 list of jobs that you outsource. And pregnancy was number one on their list. You know,

00:10:58.080 and it raises, you know, ethical and philosophical questions. Is pregnancy a job? Is it just work that

00:11:03.920 women do? And therefore, you know, when we saw in India, all of the women of poverty that were 0.91

00:11:09.460 overwhelmingly signing up to do surrogacy because it was helping lift them out of poverty as if they

00:11:16.760 were just being paid to do a job. So, you know, I don't know which direction you want to go with all

00:11:23.040 of that. But, you know, we have to, as, as women say, do we want to put another woman in harm's way?

00:11:32.040 Right. And risk her life and risk the life of the babies we so desperately want. We obviously want

00:11:37.280 those babies desperately that we're willing to ask another woman to carry them for us. And do we want 0.99

00:11:43.680 to put those babies at risk too? And do we want to corrupt it even more by paying like it's a job

00:11:50.460 she's doing? And commodifying her womb and commodifying the child because consent is so much 1.00

00:11:58.420 more. It's really more than just a simple yes or no. I mean, we know that when we're talking about

00:12:04.480 something like sexual assault, we look at things like power dynamics. We look at things like age. We

00:12:10.340 look at, okay, did the yes that this person gave, did it feel coerced? Did this person feel like they

00:12:18.020 had to go forward, you know, with this relationship or interaction with someone? Consent is not a simple

00:12:24.020 yes or no. So a woman who maybe is manipulated or recruited or is being told that surrogacy is your 1.00

00:12:29.720 only option if you want to get out of poverty, can that even count as true consent? And I think the

00:12:36.140 direction that I want to go because you mentioned these women in India, these impoverished women who are 0.85

00:12:41.920 using surrogacy to try to, quote, lift themselves out of poverty. Do you know, like, how did this all

00:12:49.980 start? How did surrogacy become this lucrative industry, especially in impoverished places? Do you know the

00:12:57.380 answer to that? Yeah, well, in medicine, which I will say has sort of lost its way, but medicine was

00:13:07.960 trying to, in the early days, look at infertility and see how we can help through proper ethical

00:13:15.740 medicine, help couples who are struggling with infertility, male infertility, female infertility,

00:13:22.160 combination of both. There's even, you know, we don't know why this couple can't conceive. Every

00:13:27.120 test we've run shows everything's working just fine, but for some reason they can't. So, you know,

00:13:31.880 in that trying to develop treatments and therapies, we were able to create babies in the laboratory.

00:13:41.320 And then from that, it just sort of took off without any kind of road guards or any sort of

00:13:46.360 ethical stop signs to the point where, you know, we have post-menopausal women having children

00:13:53.440 through egg donation. You know, their eggs are too old, but for, you know, they can often still carry

00:13:57.980 a pregnancy if they can implant, you know, an embryo in their womb. We have, you know,

00:14:04.500 my state California litter births, octumum. You know, we have grandmother surrogacy. You'll read in

00:14:10.560 the news about grandmothers are now carrying their daughter's babies or their son's babies. We have 0.99

00:14:16.420 post-mortem conception. You know, there's been a couple of high-profile cases where, you know, one,

00:14:23.080 you know, for example, a male military person died and they went in after he was dead and took his sperm

00:14:28.640 out of his body so his family could conceive children using his sperm so his legacy could, you know, go on.

00:14:35.140 And, you know, we have artificial wombs just around the corner and they're busy making artificial 0.99

00:14:39.780 eggs and sperm to the point where pretty soon we won't even be needed to have babies. It can be

00:14:44.860 totally, you know, manufactured in the laboratory. That is a very brave new world. And to people who

00:14:53.100 say, well, okay, what's wrong with that? Like, okay, the exploitation part of it, okay, but what would

00:15:00.500 be wrong with, for example, a grandmother carrying her, you know, son or daughter's child? Or what if it's

00:15:09.420 a sister carrying the child and they're not getting paid? They really do see this as a

00:15:16.440 selfless act? Is there anything morally or ethically questionable about that?

00:15:22.120 Well, you know, in the case of surrogates who have died here in the United States, what, you know,

00:15:26.580 the surrogates that I know who have died, we're doing it commercially for strangers, not family

00:15:32.480 members. But the risk of death doesn't go away because you're doing it for free or you're doing it for

00:15:37.940 your sister. And can you imagine the guilt that you would carry, you know, every time you looked

00:15:45.100 at this precious child that was born, knowing that it cost your sister her life? You know, I always

00:15:51.540 compare big tobacco with big fertility and how we work like crazy to get people not to smoke, even

00:15:57.300 though statistically most people who smoke don't ever get lung cancer. You know, it's a very small

00:16:02.480 percentage of smokers that actually get lung cancer or, you know, other chronic lung disease.

00:16:08.040 But in the case of helping people have babies, we just sort of don't, we just ignore the risks.

00:16:15.160 And we're willing to say, well, this person's willing to take these risks. And they're willing

00:16:19.880 to help me. And I'm not paying them. And they've agreed. I just think medicine has no business of

00:16:25.700 putting healthy people at risk. If I have cancer, and my doctor says to me, you need chemotherapy,

00:16:32.460 you need radiation. And we know chemotherapy and radiation have all kinds of risks, you know,

00:16:37.680 to the point where chemo and radiation can kill you, you could die from the treatment. But you weigh

00:16:42.420 those risks. And you say, well, I know this cancer, if I don't treat it, I'll die. So I will take the risk

00:16:49.080 of chemo and radiation in order to try to save my life. In the case of a surrogate, she has no medical 0.99

00:16:55.420 need. She has no medical need to inject herself with fertility drugs. She has no medical need to 1.00

00:17:02.180 implant herself with a foreign embryo that puts her into a high risk pregnancy. She has no medical need 0.84

00:17:07.120 to try to tell herself, don't bond with this baby, don't bond with this baby. Just, you know, I'll see on

00:17:13.680 Instagram, the surrogate says, hey, you know, their bun, my oven, you know, just sort of disassociate

00:17:21.280 their body from the baby that's growing in them. She has no need to do this. And we have no right

00:17:27.940 to ask her. Yeah, I think that is, that's the thing for me. Although it does seem different if a

00:17:35.720 sister voluntarily was a surrogate, maybe her sister has cancer or something like that. I, that does

00:17:43.720 seem different than, you know, getting a stranger, picking her out of the catalog and, you know, getting

00:17:49.780 eggs from one woman and then taking the sperm of two gay men and planting the embryos into, you know, 0.97

00:17:57.560 into another stranger. That does seem different than someone who is a family member taking this on 0.98

00:18:03.780 voluntarily. But I still think that the emotional toll, especially, yes, physical, but also the

00:18:11.340 emotional toll of carrying a human being in your womb and growing that life with your own body and

00:18:18.720 then surrendering that life at the end of the pregnancy. And that baby is not yours. I do think

00:18:26.280 that, man, that is such a sacrifice to make and it's so complicated. But I don't know, it does seem

00:18:32.800 morally better and ethically different to me than the whole catalog commodification of women through

00:18:42.640 the commercial surrogacy industry. Well, let me raise a couple of points to sort of push back on that.

00:18:53.860 And again, I hope your audience listens through the spirit of charity and sympathy and understanding,

00:19:00.100 you know, and how I've come to have the positions I've had. There's this whole area of what we call

00:19:05.740 interfamilial conception. That's families helping families. You know, is it okay for a sister to 0.99

00:19:13.240 donate and give her egg to her sister? Is it okay for a father to donate his sperm to his daughter's

00:19:22.320 husband if her daughter's husband is sterile? Because I want to help my daughter have a baby. You know, 0.80

00:19:28.720 it's okay for sisters to help sisters. But when we, when we go, okay, so this woman would basically 1.00

00:19:33.800 be pregnant carrying her father's child. Is that something that happens? Is that not incest in a 0.99

00:19:38.640 certain way? Well, why could it, why could it not be? Why couldn't it not be incest between sisters? 0.80

00:19:45.660 I mean, you know, your face said it all. It's kind of like, okay, if sisters help sisters,

00:19:50.040 because we, you know, here, let me, let me do your hair and makeup for your wedding. Cause I love you.

00:19:53.640 And sisters are always helping sisters. Let me teach you how to cook this new recipe I just

00:19:57.700 learned on, you know. Well, I guess I'm thinking if it's, if it's just, just using her womb, like if,

00:20:04.300 if it's the egg and the sperm of the couple, but then they're just implanting that embryo into the

00:20:12.100 sister's womb, that wouldn't be, you know, in any form incestuous. It would just be, that would be a 0.82

00:20:19.640 sister helping out a sister. So I guess that would be my contention.

00:20:24.020 Yeah. But sisters do give their eggs to their sisters. So you're saying it's okay to go,

00:20:28.920 to use my womb, but it's not okay to use my egg.

00:20:32.900 I don't know. I don't know. I'm just kind of posing.

00:20:35.580 Then I have to say, well, why is one part of your body okay to share or use to help or sell,

00:20:41.940 but one part of your body isn't? And why isn't it okay? And why is it okay for grandmothers to carry

00:20:46.620 their daughters? Or what if their daughters are infertile and their daughters had to go to the 1.00

00:20:51.080 egg donor bank, but their grandmother, their mother's going to carry that grandchild, you know, 0.83

00:20:55.440 it's just, so there's the whole area that's, that's complex stuff we have to think about

00:20:59.640 because it's happening. It's happening with all this families helping families. You know, like I

00:21:03.920 said, the case of the, the dead, you know, military guy where they took his sperm, you know, and they're 0.63

00:21:08.800 going to have to use a woman to have babies. Now, the other question you raised, um, about again, 0.76

00:21:14.380 families, do we want our little girls seeing their mommies do this? Mommies keep some babies. 1.00

00:21:22.520 Mommies give some babies away. Mommies help other people, but you know, mommies do this because they 1.00

00:21:28.480 need money. Mommies do this for free because they're nice. I mean, is this really a lesson

00:21:33.220 that we want our children to grow up and think this is how families are made. This is how babies

00:21:37.680 are made. This is the design of how children come into the world. I think we haven't even thought

00:21:44.240 about the impact, especially on daughters, little girls. Um, you know, maybe we need to think about

00:21:50.100 it too for little boys. Um, is this something they want their wife to do when they grow up, 1.00

00:21:54.460 um, to help somebody or money's tight to do these kinds of things. So those are just two big things

00:22:01.040 that I, I ponder and think about. And I think it's real, it is really important to think about

00:22:10.580 because as we already mentioned, as people who love babies and love families and are, um, pro-life,

00:22:16.820 it's easy to just think, well, you know, whatever works, whatever makes, whatever makes the baby is

00:22:22.540 totally fine. But you're right. There are a lot of things to think about and, um, to ponder and to try

00:22:28.120 to analyze as Christians. Let's talk a little bit more about the industry. We touched on this

00:22:35.040 when you talked about the Indian women who use surrogacy to make money, but one of the messages

00:22:40.300 that you got, and I've heard of this before, but only briefly, and I just don't know very much about

00:22:46.260 it, that there are Chinese agencies who use American surrogates to gestate the baby. And then once the

00:22:56.520 baby is born in an American hospital, Chinese representatives from these agencies take the 0.94

00:23:02.640 baby, they take care of the baby for a little bit, and then they take the baby back to their

00:23:06.820 parents. And there's, there was a NICU nurse that messaged you about this. What in the world is going

00:23:13.500 on there? Well, there are actually U.S. agencies. There's quite a few of them in California,

00:23:20.200 my state where I live. Um, and I was a few years ago, I, I got an email from a woman who works for

00:23:29.040 one of the largest fertility agencies in Southern California. I think it's in San Diego. And she's 0.88

00:23:34.880 what I would call a classic whistleblower. And she wanted to tell me her story of working for this,

00:23:40.240 this agency. And she said to me, I was in charge of the VIP clients. And I said, well, what are the

00:23:46.260 VIP clients? Who are those people? And she said, I only dealt with people in China, the Chinese

00:23:51.520 couples, and they are considered our VIP clients because they have massive wealth. Um, and they

00:23:58.120 come with, you know, literally buckets of money to do surrogacy because in China, all surrogacy is

00:24:04.540 illegal. And if you look at the basis for the law, it's illegal because they do not want women to be 1.00

00:24:10.100 exploited. So it's kind of a little bit of irony that China who can be human rights violation. I mean, 0.91

00:24:17.660 I keep getting my NGO status at the UN denied because the Chinese will flag my, my organization

00:24:23.740 and my work because of my stance on surrogacy and their, their human rights abuses. So she only dealt 0.87

00:24:29.940 with the Chinese couple. So wait, China is it, China is against your stance on surrogacy, even though

00:24:35.100 China has made surrogacy illegal? Is it because they, well, I don't understand that.

00:24:43.840 Well, most of Europe is surrogacy is illegal too. Okay. Um, so, you know, surrogacy is now,

00:24:50.400 commercial surrogacy is now illegal in India and Thailand and Singapore. They've closed their borders

00:24:55.560 and shut this all down because women and children have been harmed and exploited. So business is booming

00:25:00.720 here in the United States. The Spanish come here, the French come here, the Chinese come here, but 0.94

00:25:05.880 the Chinese come here and they, you know, you're right. They, they will hire surrogates, um, in order

00:25:12.320 to carry Chinese babies that are then born on us soil. So at birth, they, you know, get a social

00:25:18.880 security number, a card, and they get a passport and they are a us citizen because our law say, if you

00:25:24.800 are born in the United States, you're a us citizen. It doesn't matter how you were born or to whom your

00:25:30.200 parents are. Um, and she was finally left because she said, because of the wealth was not uncommon

00:25:37.400 for the Chinese couples to get three surrogates pregnant. And then once the pregnancy and the 1.00

00:25:42.040 ultrasounds were confirmed and they knew, oh, she's pregnant for twins or girls or boys or one baby or,

00:25:47.800 you know, whatever they would have the other surrogates terminate the pregnancy because they 1.00

00:25:51.980 wanted to increase their odds. You know, most of fertility cycles fail, you know, a lot of times

00:25:57.320 surrogates have to go through multiple implantations to get the surrogate, you know, pregnancy to 1.00

00:26:01.760 take. Um, and she said one, you know, intended mother, Chinese woman wanted the baby terminated 1.00

00:26:08.260 because it's an ultrasound. It looked like the baby was missing a finger. So she just got, you know,

00:26:13.080 appalled. And when she first went for her job interview, she told me, sorry to interject, but we

00:26:17.540 haven't even talked about that. I don't know how that works, but so if parents in this situation or

00:26:25.260 other situation, if a woman is carrying, a surrogate is carrying their baby and the parents 0.99

00:26:32.900 say, we want you to terminate this pregnancy, we want you to have an abortion. Is like, is that 0.99

00:26:39.500 allowed? Does the surrogate then have to get an abortion? How does that work? I have so many 0.98

00:26:45.520 surrogate contracts on my desk. The first thing I do when a surrogate contacts me is I said, let me see

00:26:50.040 your contract. That is like, that is standard language in all surrogate contracts. Language

00:26:55.540 is called selective reduction or termination. Wow. And the surrogate agrees contractually before

00:27:01.280 she's even pregnant that she, if asked, will terminate or reduce down the pregnancy. So triplets 0.70

00:27:07.080 reduced down to twins or singleton. And she's bound by contract to do that. And most of the time,

00:27:13.600 the language says for no reason. So the intended parents do not have to give, give a reason. They can

00:27:18.360 just say, we changed our mind. We don't want two boys. You know, we want to try it again to get a

00:27:23.660 girl. At any point in pregnancy? I mean, according to the state's laws. Exactly. Exactly. Depending on

00:27:30.580 where the state, like one surrogate who's in my, one of my surrogate films was in Arizona. So she was

00:27:36.460 asked to terminate the pregnancy, but Arizona law, I think it's 24 weeks. I don't really remember it.

00:27:41.860 Sorry. So she waited till that clock ticked out and just avoided them because she didn't want to

00:27:47.420 terminate the pregnancy. Wow. Oh my goodness. Just once again, once again, there are so many 0.55

00:27:55.600 different aspects of it and it's not as easy as while a woman consents to this, because even a 0.99

00:28:00.160 woman who consents to carrying a child, she might just be hoping that the parents don't want to at 0.98

00:28:06.820 some point terminate the pregnancy or hoping that she doesn't miscarry or hoping that she doesn't

00:28:12.700 have preterm labor. There are so many things that she's not necessarily knowingly consenting to when

00:28:18.140 she consents to carrying that child. And that's why it's gosh, so ethically complicated. Sorry to

00:28:23.360 interrupt you. I just wanted to make sure. And I just remind people, the doctors that are doing this

00:28:28.920 to surrogates and agreeing to these contracts and operating under these horrific abusive arrangements

00:28:37.400 are the same doctors that are treating people who say, you know, but I used to surrogate and I did

00:28:43.620 IVF. They're the same doctors. It's not like, well, I can go to the good doctor, the same clinics,

00:28:48.160 the same doctors are doing this. So, you know, and this particular woman just finally, she had to

00:28:53.800 leave and she can't go public because she of course signed a non-disclosure statement upon her 0.81

00:28:59.200 employment. And during her interview, she told me because she showed up wearing a cross

00:29:03.380 and they said, oh, you're a Christian. You're probably going to have a problem working here.

00:29:08.600 And she said, oh, no, no, I'm very pro-life and pro-babies. And I think what you're doing

00:29:12.640 helping people is just wonderful. So I don't think I'll have any problem. But then she got into the

00:29:17.980 underbelly and she saw what was going on. And so she eventually just quit and terminated her

00:29:25.380 employment with them. But, you know, we had a surrogate mother in California. She was all over the

00:29:31.400 news when she contacted me and told me her story because she also was pregnant for a surrogate 1.00

00:29:37.440 pregnancy for a couple in China. And she's a Caucasian woman who's married to an African-American

00:29:43.400 man. And when the twins were born, she gave birth to twins. One baby was Chinese and one baby was

00:29:49.380 mixed race. So they found out that she had gotten pregnant with her own child and also gotten

00:29:55.560 pregnant with the Chinese embryo that was transplanted, transferred into her. And it took 0.90

00:30:01.040 her three months to get her own child back. And what the NICU nurse told me who sees all these babies

00:30:07.080 through Chinese arrangements is that they are cared for by the agencies in the U.S. by people. So you

00:30:14.780 met. So this baby is taken away from the only mother it's ever known. It's delivered in the hospital.

00:30:20.120 Then it goes to live with strangers for three months until all of its papers are set. And then

00:30:27.620 that person flies that baby to China to hand that baby over to basically strangers. And I, as a,

00:30:35.000 you know, a nurse, again, I just think this is unconscionable. We still have babies locked down

00:30:38.900 in Ukraine, COVID babies, you know, through surrogacy. And that couple countries that are still locked

00:30:45.300 down have not been able to go pick up their babies. So these babies have literally for like the

00:30:49.960 first year of their life have been cared for by just caregivers like nannies. And now, you know,

00:30:56.280 we see all the tension in Ukraine with what's going on with Russia. And you wonder what's going

00:31:02.760 to happen to these babies. Wow. And, you know, I read a study recently that I thought was

00:31:08.220 stunning. And I'm sure it's not necessarily a new discovery. It's just kind of reiterated. It

00:31:15.400 talked about the importance of the first year of life for a child and the affection and even just

00:31:20.740 the skin to skin and being in the care of someone that you, of the people that you actually belong

00:31:28.600 to. A child who in the first year of life has that consistent affection and presence with parents

00:31:37.600 actually, and then say after that, after that first year, they endure some serious trauma,

00:31:42.800 they get taken away or something happens or their parents die, they have to go live with someone

00:31:47.740 else. That child actually does better behaviorally and has a better sense of self-identity and self-worth

00:31:57.400 than the child who say for the first year of their life, they were abandoned and they were taking care

00:32:02.880 of people who they didn't know and who weren't showing them that same kind of affection and

00:32:08.880 a sense of belonging. But then after that first year of life, they go live with great, you know,

00:32:15.160 adoptive parents. The trauma that that child, that that latter child endured in the first year of their

00:32:21.420 life actually makes it much harder for that child to be able to develop normally versus the child that may

00:32:30.640 have had more trauma longer, but had a secure first year of life. I hope that I explained that correctly.

00:32:37.000 That was kind of jumbled. But all that to say, the first year of a child's life, the first months of

00:32:43.560 a child's life, just because they can't remember it, just because they can't articulate what it felt

00:32:49.420 like to be abandoned or to not have the mother in the first few moments of life doesn't mean that that

00:32:54.340 is not having an impact on that child. And that is literally happening thousands of thousands of

00:33:00.920 times a year for money, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, this is all part of the whole attachment,

00:33:08.500 you know, the category of attachment and that baby's attaching, you know, maternal child bonding.

00:33:12.980 I mean, why is the breast so close to mother's eyes and baby's eyes, you know, and making that kind of 0.97

00:33:18.380 on, you know, that eye contact. And when you think about the international, you know, the kid,

00:33:22.720 these Chinese babies born in the U.S., probably being raised by people who only speak English,

00:33:28.000 who are culturally Americans, and then find themselves in, you know, a whole different land

00:33:33.520 where language is different and culture is different. And, you know, the interactions,

00:33:38.440 you know, we interact facially different than other cultures where it's seen as often rude to

00:33:44.240 look at people in the eyes. Whereas in the United States, if we don't look at people in the eyes,

00:33:48.800 people go, well, what are they hiding? They're kind of shifty. And those are

00:33:52.460 so big parts of early brain development in babies and cognition and language development and just a

00:34:02.200 sense of security. And those attachment things are real. And so, you know, I think about these kind

00:34:08.720 of things and I think, what are we doing? And again, I call this space that I work in the largest human

00:34:15.360 experiment of our time, the largest social human experiment. We are experimenting on mothers, 1.00

00:34:23.100 women, and children and finding out as we go all these problems. And what will we see in the fallout

00:34:30.820 10, 20 years from now as these children grow up and we learn about the problems that they have?

00:34:37.420 Yeah. And of course, it will be very difficult to get anyone to

00:34:40.780 link the problems that we are inevitably facing in the future with, you know, these children and how

00:34:46.720 they're developing to their conception and gestation and the first few months of their life.

00:34:52.520 Because especially when you're talking about creating families for gay couples, it's very

00:34:57.460 politically incorrect to talk about the problems with surrogacy and the need for a mother and a

00:35:06.520 father. It's very politically incorrect to talk about those things. And so that's why it's important

00:35:11.540 that you do what you do because there are so many so-called scientists and sociologists and

00:35:16.960 psychologists who will never talk about the negative impact that this is potentially having

00:35:21.580 on children. I mean, talk about a lack of consent. Everyone's saying, okay, yeah, well, the mom gives

00:35:27.040 consent. The woman is giving consent. Well, the child isn't giving consent. This child isn't giving consent 0.95

00:35:32.340 to be frozen in a freezer for five or 10 years and to be given away to somebody else. We had the most

00:35:44.500 recent embryo adoption, which I love to quote this story because the embryo was frozen for more years

00:35:53.540 than the mother who rescued and gave birth to that child's age was. Yes, that is. And you talk about

00:36:00.260 human experimentation. Do we even know what the long-term effect is on freezing a human embryo for

00:36:06.540 20 or 25 years or even one year? I mean, I joke and say, I take, you know, hamburger meat out of my

00:36:14.080 freezer and if I see freezer burn, I throw it out, you know, and we put, you know, our tiny little human

00:36:22.340 embryos in the freezer and leave them for years and they ought to be fine. And we know a lot of embryos

00:36:27.160 die making their way out of the Petri dish and into the freezer. We know a lot of embryos die in

00:36:32.400 the thawing process just because we weren't meant to be frozen. Right. And that phrase, I think, is

00:36:40.300 what is the trouble with a lot of this? I mean, of course, I don't think all technology is bad, but

00:36:45.420 we weren't meant to be. We weren't meant to. And that is where a lot of the complication and the

00:36:52.720 complexities and the questions lies. What was meant to happen and what is happening? And is there

00:36:58.680 anything that falls through the cracks in that process from when we go from what was meant to

00:37:03.720 to what we can do now technologically? That doesn't mean all technology is bad, certainly. I don't

00:37:10.280 believe that. But when it comes to human life and when it comes to, like you said, women and children

00:37:15.400 and children who cannot consent, we do have to ask, OK, this is how it was created. This is what

00:37:20.760 technology is allowing. What's being missed in the process. And that's really those are the

00:37:26.880 questions that we're asking. So let's talk more about that. Let's talk about let's talk about IVF.

00:37:31.900 This is very controversial. I've got lots of wonderful mothers with wonderful blessings of

00:37:39.480 precious children in this audience who had their children through IVF. And they don't want to hear

00:37:47.020 that there are any ethical questions about it or that how their child was conceived is in any way

00:37:53.340 immoral. And I do understand that. But like, let's talk about let's talk about what what exists in that

00:38:00.620 gap between natural conception and IVF that we need to consider. Yeah, well, let's start on a positive

00:38:10.860 side of the you know, and I often tell people in the case of heterosexual couples who are struggling

00:38:17.500 with fertility, which is a different category from like the Nick Jonas people who we just can't be

00:38:22.880 bothered. We're just going to do this. So the first thing I say, please, please, please get yourself a

00:38:29.040 really good proper diagnosis if you can find out what's going on, because there is some really good

00:38:34.720 things that medicine ethically can offer couples that are having trouble with conception. You know,

00:38:41.360 women have black fallopian tubes, one of the women who messaged me talked about her, you know, 1.00

00:38:46.320 her struggling with endometriosis. We know that men often need a little help and assistance in sperm 0.95

00:38:52.580 production and sperm quality, because they might have not enough swimmers or swimmers don't swim fast

00:38:58.640 enough to make their destination. So find a good doctor that's not going to put you on what

00:39:04.080 I think it was Miriam Zoll's book, Cracked Open, where she talked her years of infertility and being

00:39:10.360 put on the IVF superhighway with no off ramps, you know, because once you get into that fertility

00:39:16.180 doctor's office, sometimes there are no off ramps. And one of the women who messaged me talked about 0.99

00:39:21.620 the fact that she was going for really low dose fertility drugs, because she didn't want to have 0.68

00:39:27.660 a lot of eggs produced. She didn't want to have to deal, you know, deal with the ethical problem of a lot

00:39:32.180 of embryos, and ended up with still way too many, you know, eggs, which meant way too many embryos.

00:39:39.580 So think if you can first do, do, you know, a good diagnostic workup, you know, kick the tires,

00:39:46.340 look under the hood, what's going on? What can we do? That's not the big guns IVF. Other things like,

00:39:52.640 you know, are, are you a little bit overweight? Even if you just lose a few pounds, husband or wife,

00:39:59.060 you know, being overweight negatively impacts our fertility. So, you know, some couples, you know,

00:40:05.540 that, you know, if you're overweight, you can lose five or 10 pounds, and you have a boost in your

00:40:09.940 fertility. You know, don't smoke, don't eat horrible. Don't drink a lot of alcohol or any,

00:40:16.720 you know, because those all negatively impact fertility. Don't wait too long. I was on Dr.

00:40:21.180 Oz once, which was the show was all about when is it too old to have a baby? And it was women in their 1.00

00:40:26.020 forties and fifties and pushing that 60 envelope through technology. Don't, you know, the biological

00:40:31.500 clock is real. So, you know, all those things are a first thing to do. Then we're going to be left

00:40:39.240 with the fact that yes, there will still be people that for whatever reason can't concede, you know,

00:40:43.480 infertility is not a new problem. It's been with us since the beginning of time. So then what can

00:40:48.880 you do? Maybe you need some hormonal adjustments to regulate ovulation or to help with sperm production.

00:40:56.020 Um, those are some things that can be done. Then once you get into the IVF, you know, to me,

00:41:01.780 a bright line is taking egg and sperm out of the body. Um, once you take egg and sperm out of the

00:41:08.240 body, you are, you know, you're going to be dealing with high doses of fertility drugs. You're going to 0.75

00:41:14.700 be dealing with, you know, lots of production of embryos, because this is very costly. You're going

00:41:19.620 to be dealing with all the quality assurances, grading of eggs, grading of sperm, grading of embryos,

00:41:25.320 which are the good ones, which are the bad ones, which will we try first, which are the lower

00:41:29.680 quality ones we'll put in the freezer and try later. Cause we know that this is going to fail,

00:41:34.120 fail, fail. Um, and this is expensive and not without risk. You know, I said last week on your

00:41:39.800 show, you know, Gilda Radner went through six rounds of IVF and tried to concede, uh, was never

00:41:46.680 successful and then developed ovarian cancer, which caused her death. You know, we know the fertility 0.94

00:41:51.320 drugs are not without risk. Um, so I'll stop there because I dumped a lot out there on you.

00:42:02.960 So what you're saying is that in your view, they're really, you don't believe that there

00:42:10.220 is a great way to do IVF because just the process of taking the egg and the sperm out of the body

00:42:20.800 opens up this whole ethical can of, can of worms, right?

00:42:28.860 Yeah. Then it, you know, whether you take your cue from C.S. Lewis's abolition of man and the man

00:42:36.020 molders, um, the chest beaters, you know, man's final conquest will be the abolition of man, or

00:42:42.040 there's a great book called begotten or made, um, which once, once we take egg and sperm out of the

00:42:49.780 body, then our children become like a project that, you know, that, that, that we are making

00:42:54.880 and manufacturing. And you, you know, you see all the, um, you know, the add-ons, do you want to do

00:43:00.940 sperm sorting? Do you want to do egg sorting? Do you want to do gender selection? Do you want to do 0.82

00:43:06.960 prenatal, um, embryonic, uh, testing to find out if it's a boy or a girl or if it has down syndrome?

00:43:14.860 Um, you know, and then you're left with the quandary of all these surplus human embryos. Um,

00:43:23.580 you know, you, you were sharing with me that one woman told you that was fine, that she gave them up

00:43:28.640 for adoption. And then I had another woman who contacted me who's in angst and she said, I can't

00:43:33.720 give away my future children. But every year when I pay the frozen storage fee, I just feel weird

00:43:39.720 about it. Um, and can you imagine telling these children, you know, I, I wrote an article once

00:43:46.800 and ran it as a thought experiment, you know, you know, and we know in adoption that we're, we, we know

00:43:52.980 that the best interest of the child is to know early on their adoption story. You know, you don't wait

00:43:58.060 till they're 16 and say, we're going to have the talk and tell you we adopted you. You know,

00:44:02.320 so as children grow up knowing how they came into the world. And I think in the case of embryo

00:44:07.740 adoption, for those who've done it, those children are do the same, uh, treatment, you know, to know

00:44:12.860 early on. So here's the story. Your mom and dad so desperately wanted children and they made a bunch

00:44:20.380 of embryos in the laboratory and you didn't get picked first to be implanted into your mother's womb.

00:44:27.340 You got put in the freezer. Um, and then your mom and dad had a baby or had two babies or whatever.

00:44:34.140 And then they were done having their family and they decided that they didn't need you or they

00:44:38.620 didn't want you, or they were going to give you away to somebody else. I mean, you would have to

00:44:43.020 tell the child that's how they came to be in the world. Um, and that child would go, oh, oh, okay.

00:44:50.440 I wasn't, I wasn't wanted, uh, or I wasn't wanted at first, or I wasn't wanted by them. Um,

00:44:56.840 it means I have brothers and sisters out there. I have a mother and daughter. I mean, it just,

00:45:01.160 I just think that's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. And our children deserve

00:45:05.720 much better than that. Especially for, and just to kind of catch people up, I got a message from a very,

00:45:12.760 a sweet woman who I really appreciate her listening and then taking the time to reach out to me,

00:45:19.000 who said that she has, um, I think is two frozen embryos that she wanted to wait for a few years. 1.00

00:45:26.200 So to, before she gave them up for adoption, because she didn't want them to be close in age to

00:45:31.640 the, the children that she has, that she birthed, um, and that she conceived through IVF. And she

00:45:39.480 said, there's no moral problems with this. There's nothing morally questionable about this. She said,

00:45:44.520 she's not going to discard these embryos because she's pro-life and she's a Christian and, and all of

00:45:49.880 that, which, you know, I, uh, again, appreciate her for reaching out, but to say there are no

00:45:55.800 questions about that. Maybe you disagree with the questions that we're posing, but there are

00:46:01.480 certainly questions about if you believe that that embryo is life, which scientifically it is,

00:46:06.680 we all started as embryos. Um, that is the earliest form of a human being. I mean, just the fact that

00:46:13.880 that human being is being frozen indefinitely, that's a moral question. There's a question about

00:46:19.480 the morality of that. And then to give them up to parents that I think in a lot of cases you don't

00:46:24.440 personally know, you don't know how those parents are going to treat the child that they adopt.

00:46:29.640 Do you know for sure that the, that those parents will be Christians? If you're a Christian, I imagine

00:46:34.280 that that's really important. And then again, you're giving away siblings. I mean, that is your

00:46:39.880 child. There are of course so many questions about that. Um, but for the people who say that, okay, but we

00:46:46.920 only created the embryos that we were willing to implant ourselves. And I, they only created through 0.67

00:46:55.480 IVF, the embryos that they were going to, um, you know, gestate in birth. What about that? Isn't that okay?

00:47:06.200 Well, I think that gets back to this, the woman who reached out to me early this morning and she gave

00:47:10.760 me permission to talk about this on your show. Um, you know, they, they intentionally did low

00:47:16.280 dose hormones because they didn't want to get a lot of eggs produced, you know, for creation of 0.76

00:47:22.680 embryos. And what happened was because we don't know how women will respond to these drugs. Some 0.82

00:47:28.200 women respond very, very well. And she obviously was one of those because they got way more eggs than 1.00

00:47:32.760 they expected. And then I'm sure what happened was they went ahead and fertilized them all because we know

00:47:37.960 that overwhelmingly the embryos don't survive. And if you've already spent all that money and gone

00:47:45.480 through all that treatment and all those steps to get the eggs, you're going to get on that super

00:47:51.960 highway and go, well, yeah, let's go ahead and fertilize them because we know a lot of them won't

00:47:55.800 get fertilized. A lot of them won't end up into being, be viable embryos that are, you know, will be

00:48:01.560 suitable for implantation or even suitable for putting in the freezer. Um, and so here was a woman who 0.97

00:48:07.480 started out saying, we don't want to do that. And in fact, they ended up with more than they intended

00:48:12.600 to, which is why she's in this quandary now with these surplus embryos that are in the freezer. 0.99

00:48:17.960 You know, I would step back and say, um,

00:48:23.240 you know, federal law in Germany prohibits the freezing of human embryos. It's illegal in Germany

00:48:29.480 under federal law to freeze a human embryo. Why? China has not forgotten their bad history of, 1.00

00:48:37.400 you know, heinous experimentation on human beings. You know, you can say Joseph Mengele

00:48:43.800 and the way that people were treated. We need similar policy like that in the United States.

00:48:49.640 We don't need to just create an industry to adopt frozen embryos while we're continuing to make them

00:48:55.160 and freeze them. We need to stop. We need to stop freezing embryos, um, and stop putting them in

00:49:01.480 the freezer because I don't think it's, um, it's a dignified place for a human embryo to be.

00:49:07.160 Yeah. And now I just want to be right. And I just want to reiterate, and I know you know this,

00:49:14.120 but because there are people, this is a highly sensitive, understandably highly sensitive topic.

00:49:19.000 Like everyone, every mother and father who created their child through IVF, um, we are not questioning

00:49:28.280 whether or not you are a good parent, whether or not you love your child, whether or not your child

00:49:32.920 is a blessing to you made in the image of God and so precious. And so this is not about that. This is

00:49:40.360 about asking questions that because of the reasons that I just listed, people don't want to ask because

00:49:46.920 it can be so understandably sensitive, but as Christians who care about image bearers and who

00:49:54.840 care again about that gap between natural and technological and ethical moral questions that

00:50:00.520 exist there, we have to ask those questions and talk about these uncomfortable things. And look, if you

00:50:06.120 went through IVF, this is not a question about what your children are worth or whether or not your

00:50:13.400 child is a blessing or, and we're also not diminishing. And this is the message that I get

00:50:19.560 when I do get, um, you know, messages that are pushing back against this saying, you have no idea

00:50:24.840 what it's like to struggle through infertility. You have no idea what it's like to suffer, um, you know,

00:50:33.080 month after month, that heartache of wanting to have a child and not being able to have a child and to

00:50:37.800 be able to have the gift of life given to you through IVF and, you know, and then to hear someone,

00:50:44.280 they feel like tear it down. That is hurtful and heartbreaking. And I understand that. I do. I

00:50:53.080 don't, I didn't suffer through infertility, but what's your response to someone who is just feeling

00:50:58.440 all of those understandable emotions as they listen to this?

00:51:01.640 Yeah, I would agree with probably everything you just said. I don't want anything to that I'm

00:51:10.280 saying today to be seen as I'm heaping judgment on people who have done this or, or I'm denying the

00:51:16.520 dignity and worth and the beauty of their children. I do not, I do not agree, um, that they are horrible

00:51:23.640 people. Um, I'm very sympathetic to people who can't conceive and have struggled for years of

00:51:30.120 infertility. Um, you know, I think, you know, it's, um, similar to, I have many friends that

00:51:35.480 don't feel called to singleness desperately to have a partner and a spouse. Um, but for, for some reason

00:51:45.160 that Mr. Right or Mrs. Right hasn't come along. We're all, we're all in a position where there's

00:51:51.480 something that we've been given that we really wish would be removed from us. You know, take this cup

00:51:57.480 away from me, please. I don't want to have a cancer diagnosis. I don't want to be infertile. I don't

00:52:02.200 want to be single. I mean, you know, you could just rattle a list of things that we have been given

00:52:07.640 that we would prefer not to be given. What, what I'm questioning though, is my, my grief is

00:52:17.080 overwhelmingly with the medical profession. You know, good medical doctors should be not putting in

00:52:23.400 people, putting people at risk, putting people in positions where they're faced with, well,

00:52:28.360 I didn't want to end up with surplus, you know, embryos in the freezer, but now I have them. Um,

00:52:33.880 you know, we're, we're doctors that are saying, no, not going to do that. That's risky to your health.

00:52:38.840 That's risky to the health of your unborn child. Um, whether you do surrogacy, egg donation, or you

00:52:43.640 do IVF on your own. Um, yeah. And, you know, I just, again, it gets back to the fact that we all

00:52:51.800 have to come to terms with that. There's things that we've been asked to carry that we would really

00:52:57.560 otherwise not have to carry. And how can we be welcoming to couples? You know, I have friends

00:53:03.720 that, um, are church going friends that have never been able to conceive and have felt convicted not to

00:53:10.120 do IVF and they will avoid mother's day and father's day, like the plague at church because

00:53:16.520 they're there. They feel like they're left then, you know, they're, um, you know, there's, it's just

00:53:22.200 a, it's just a hard day. You know, they don't want to go to another baby shower. Yeah. Um, that they're

00:53:27.240 happy that you're pregnant and you're expecting, but it's just too hard for them to go to another baby

00:53:32.840 shower. Uh, and so how can we be more sympathetic, you know, for people who do believe in the Bible,

00:53:38.200 I like to recount, you know, in the story of creation and Genesis, you know, I don't know.

00:53:46.280 And so here comes Eve, but there were no children in the garden, a husband and wife who can't conceive 0.91

00:53:54.200 are a family. You know, there's nothing you've done wrong. You're there. You're not lacking anything.

00:54:02.360 You know, you are a complete family. It's not like your family wants you have children. No,

00:54:07.960 if you're a husband and wife, you are a family, you are a new family. You have left your mother

00:54:11.480 and father and he has left his mother and father and you have formed a new family with or without

00:54:15.960 children. So what I'm hearing you say is that we can show the utmost sympathy to people who are

00:54:27.320 suffering through infertility at the same time, trying to protect life, trying to protect the

00:54:35.240 embryos that are all different kinds of ethically and morally questionable scenarios, whether it's

00:54:43.560 just being frozen, whether it's being adopted out, whether it's being, um, you know, discarded in,

00:54:49.880 in some way, it is possible to be sympathetic and to be loving and compassionate towards people who

00:54:57.480 are suffering with that while also saying, you know, kind of drawing a line in the sand and saying,

00:55:02.600 okay, but we also have to be compassionate about the new life that is being created and

00:55:07.320 how they're being stored and handled after they're conceived. Right.

00:55:11.960 Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we, we can be incredibly sympathetic to people that are struggling with

00:55:17.640 fertility, infertility. We can be incredibly charitable and sympathetic to people who've

00:55:22.040 already gone down the idea of superhighway and, and had them to, um, you know, assisted reproduction

00:55:28.280 or who have frozen human embryos, um, that are just as we like to call souls on ice. Um, so yeah,

00:55:35.320 there's, there's plenty of room for, for charity and grace and understanding, but you know, today is a new

00:55:41.320 day today. I've learned something I didn't know yesterday. You know, I'm always learning something,

00:55:45.880 you know, I'm always willing to be open and listen to, um, you know, a new idea and go,

00:55:51.800 wow, I can change my mind on something. You know, I didn't start out with my work in the Center for

00:55:57.400 Bioethics and Culture being as critical of assisted reproduction, uh, until I started really digging

00:56:03.880 into it and learning and seeing and, and then hearing from the countless of people that have contacted me

00:56:09.880 because of the work that I do. Uh, so I, I didn't start out with this, um, this knowledge. It came to me.

00:56:16.280 And I have, you know, I've grown into this, this view that I have now. Uh, so I hope many of your

00:56:22.280 listeners won't hear what you or I are saying with any kind of spirit of condemnation. Um, but you know,

00:56:30.280 that this is today, you know, it's a new day and there's, there's, uh, you know, new mercies every day.

00:56:37.160 And how would you counsel those parents who, okay, they're learning about this and they're realizing

00:56:44.280 that you are correct and they have embryos that are on ice. I mean, say they have several,

00:56:49.960 maybe they have a dozen embryos that are on ice. And obviously, I mean, they're not going to implant

00:56:54.440 all of those in their own womb, or maybe they can't for some reason, even if they just have two.

00:56:59.080 What do, what do they do? What is the next best, um, course of action for them?

00:57:04.680 Yeah, I've written quite a bit on, you know, the, the, the, you know, the quandary that we have

00:57:13.160 with all these surplus human embryos, you know, ideally, um, you know, the, the first step would

00:57:18.600 be for the parents who created those embryos because they created them wanting children,

00:57:23.160 uh, to sort of acknowledge that, yes, those are our children and we should attempt to bring them,

00:57:29.160 you know, to birth, um, you know, because we are responsible for them for their,

00:57:35.320 for their mother and father. Uh, secondly, uh, they, they can release these,

00:57:41.240 these embryos to an embryo adoption program. Um, but I do think they have to realize that,

00:57:47.320 that, that, that, that child is owed their, their true story. And, and what will that mean to that

00:57:53.320 child as they, they learn and understand how they were created and that you didn't,

00:57:57.720 you didn't want them or you couldn't have them. So you gave them away. Um, I don't think we have,

00:58:03.960 what's called, you know, it's a big word I learned in graduate school is called super erogatory act.

00:58:09.080 You know, we are not, um, outside of, um, being a good person if I don't donate my, my kidney.

00:58:17.320 You know, I'm not required to donate my kidney. I can do it. I don't think we're required. I don't

00:58:23.000 think we have a moral obligation to, you know, I'm post-menopausal. I could technically carry an

00:58:29.320 embryo to term, but I don't have an obligation to do that. And then I take the view of a good

00:58:35.640 colleague of mine, Dr. Gilbert Mylander. I believe that the merciful thing to do if they're abandoned

00:58:41.960 and nobody has claimed them that we allow them to die. We take them out of the freezer and we,

00:58:49.000 I know it's controversial. You know, the Catholic church talks about, and I'm not Catholic, but I've

00:58:53.240 read, you know, I read Mormon documents. I read Buddhists. I read all the different big,

00:58:57.160 major religions on this space. Um, you know, uh, you know, they talk about the absurd fate 1.00

00:59:05.000 of the, the, you know, the leftover discarded abandoned surplus human embryo.

00:59:11.080 So what, what qualifies as abandoned? Because obviously you're not talking about the embryos

00:59:16.140 that are up for adoption. What, what, what would qualify as an abandoned frozen embryo? Just the

00:59:21.980 parents say they're abandoned because, you know, we, we, we cannot, we don't know where this couple

00:59:26.820 has moved. You know, these embryos have been frozen for so long. You know, there's a fertility

00:59:30.940 doctor. I believe it was Arizona. You know, the people aren't even paying the storage fee anymore,

00:59:35.660 but he feels himself as a physician who's created them and had been storing them in his,

00:59:41.460 his clinic, you know, to keep them alive because he can't just make that decision. So there's a lot

00:59:47.820 of embryos that we just can't find the husband and wife that created them and get their permission

00:59:53.200 or get them to make a decision. So they can't be given to an embryo adoption agency because the 0.74

01:00:00.160 the couple can't be found to get permission to do that. So those are the ones, and that's a high

01:00:06.880 percentage of them or, or just, you know, abandoned, or there's people like the woman who

01:00:12.380 messaged me who said, I can't give them away. Right. But I just pay the storage fee every year.

01:00:19.820 Can't give them away just because you, do you think it's just because she feels like

01:00:26.160 she said, I wrote it, I wrote it down so I could say her words. I, it's weird to give away our

01:00:33.260 potential child. Yeah. Even though it is actually a try, it's not even a potential child. It is

01:00:40.000 a child. And, you know, I I'm thinking, and I don't know about the stance of that person,

01:00:44.580 but some of the people that I've talked to who are, you know, very pro IVF and surrogacy call

01:00:50.260 themselves, you know, pro-life and anti-abortion, which they are as I am. And the belief that we

01:00:55.920 have is that life begins at conception that just because that child is small, just because that

01:01:01.340 child is dependent on the mother, just because that child is in the earliest stages of development,

01:01:05.660 that that is not any less of a human, that at the moment of conception, that is a distinct human

01:01:10.360 being with distinct DNA, DNA that is distinct from her mother or father. But it's interesting that

01:01:17.660 the same pro-life people, even though we have that belief when it comes to defending life against

01:01:22.980 abortion, they do obviously draw a line between an embryo and a child outside of the womb when it

01:01:34.140 comes to justifying IVF. I mean, we would never put a child outside of the womb. I mean, it's different

01:01:39.560 a little bit, but we would never, you know, put a child outside of the womb in, you know, some kind

01:01:47.480 of facility by themselves in the same way that people are doing with embryos and are justifying

01:01:56.680 it, I guess, because that child is smaller in the earliest stages of development. And so it's

01:02:01.540 interesting that we don't justify abortion that way if you're a pro-lifer, but you do justify 0.91

01:02:05.660 putting that child on ice as a pro-lifer. It just seems a little, like there's a little bit of

01:02:12.540 cognitive dissonance there. But I mean, I understand why people kind of want to make that defense

01:02:19.160 because it's a difficult, it's a difficult subject. Well, if I could circle back to the

01:02:25.160 federal law in Germany that, you know, does not allow embryos to be frozen, you know, Germany allows

01:02:30.620 IVF. Germany just allows only three embryos to be created and the law says all three must be

01:02:38.320 implanted. Now that's a little bit problematic to me as a nurse, because I know that even twin

01:02:43.440 pregnancies are high risk and the triplet pregnancy is even higher risk because the mother's carrying 0.95

01:02:48.160 three babies and it gets back to octumon, you know, where our body's designed to carry two and

01:02:53.020 three and four and five and six babies. And we know that embryos can split. That's how we get twins.

01:02:57.760 So technically a woman who's implanted three embryos could end up with six babies if all three of 1.00

01:03:03.360 those embryos split into twins. But I do think that's a more palatable as a matter of public

01:03:10.800 policy approach to me is the German federal law. You know, thou shall not create more than three

01:03:16.900 embryos and thou shall not put any of them in the freezer because then you don't have the problem of

01:03:21.920 a million frozen embryos in the United States. And you don't have the problem of, you know,

01:03:27.460 creating a bunch of embryos that are just discarded.

01:03:29.860 Yeah. And embryo, putting your frozen embryos up for adoption is not kind of like this.

01:03:39.140 It's not without its own issues as we already talked about several times. You know, I talked

01:03:44.420 about the potential of that child, your child being adopted by parents that aren't great parents

01:03:50.100 that don't have the same, you know, religious values as you do. But there's no guarantee also

01:03:56.360 that if a woman adopts that embryo that you don't even know if that woman's going to carry the baby

01:04:05.520 to term. You don't know if that woman is going to get an abortion. Like you don't even know what's 1.00

01:04:09.440 going to happen in the pregnancy. And so again, there's so there are so many questions. I think

01:04:15.700 we like to think that, OK, well, as long as the embryo is put up for adoption, then everything is,

01:04:21.360 you know, well and good. But again, you are unfortunately, I hate to put it this harshly,

01:04:28.240 but you are kind of abdicating your own responsibility to the child that you created.

01:04:33.940 You know, it's one thing when, say, a woman, she got pregnant, she's surprised by her pregnancy or

01:04:41.220 she's surprised by her circumstance. She's in some dire circumstance. She's on she knows she's

01:04:45.380 unable to take care of this child. So she puts the child up for adoption. That's one thing. But 1.00

01:04:51.160 when we create these embryos through IVF, you are doing that purposely. Like you went through a lot

01:04:56.420 of time and money and and care and deliberateness to bring that child to life and then just to say,

01:05:03.860 well, I'm not going to take care of that child. I don't know. I just have a little bit of a hard

01:05:07.520 time with that. And I don't want to come across as condemning. But I mean, that's just something that I

01:05:12.480 think that we really need to wrestle with before saying this is an open and shut thing.

01:05:17.520 Yeah. And this gets me back to, you know, you know, my my grief, grievances with medical

01:05:23.420 professionals. And I've talked with people that work in the Snowflake Embryo Adoption Agency

01:05:28.580 program space. And, you know, in my mind, I want to tell if there's anybody listening here that's,

01:05:34.640 you know, involved in embryo adoption agency work,

01:05:38.400 they should be leading the charge to work themselves out of a job, not starting another

01:05:45.360 cottage industry business of here's another way that we can help people have babies is through 0.97

01:05:49.700 embryo adoption. You know, they should be leading the charge on Capitol Hill, demanding legislation

01:05:56.620 that stops freezing human embryos instead of, you know, just keeping us employed. And now we need to

01:06:02.640 hire more workers because we have more frozen embryos. We need more adoption to happen. You know,

01:06:07.400 as much as like in adoption policy, we need to change our policy so that that mother who finds

01:06:12.400 herself in a particular instance, can keep her child if she wants to if she's not an unfit mother 0.98

01:06:18.560 or unfit father, you know, changing the, you know, the policy to create to stop creating surplus

01:06:25.560 embryos. I mean, I can do my part on Capitol Hill to try to lobby for legislation like that. But to me,

01:06:32.440 I would say that most likely candidates would be those that are actively working in embryo adoption

01:06:36.960 agencies to demand legislation to, to work them out of a job.

01:06:42.320 Yeah. And unfortunately, that's just not how these kinds of industries, whether it's in the government

01:06:46.900 or in the private sector work, they are always working to keep their jobs. It actually reminds me

01:06:53.660 of the huge welfare bureaucracy in this country that should be working to get people off of welfare

01:07:00.980 and providing for themselves through work. And actually they measure their success by how many

01:07:05.620 people are enrolled in their programs, not how many people phase out of it, which is a whole

01:07:09.400 backwards thing. That's a whole other subject, but it just, the nature of this industry and what

01:07:14.200 you're talking about just reminds me of anything that becomes lucrative, that becomes bureaucratic,

01:07:19.440 where people feel like they have power and they're making a lot of money. Corruption just thrives.

01:07:24.840 And I have a question about, you talked about the individual doctors and the providers. It seems like

01:07:31.880 a lot of the women who go through IVF, we talked a little bit about some of the potential risks.

01:07:38.340 It doesn't seem like the doctors are telling women about the potential risks. They're just saying,

01:07:44.680 this is how you get a baby. If you've been struggling for a few months or a few years,

01:07:49.040 not having kids, this is just what you do. It's totally safe. You'll have a baby within a year.

01:07:53.900 Of course, what mom is it going to be like, oh my gosh, of course I'm going to do that. That's been

01:07:57.660 my dream. I'll do absolutely anything to have a child. It doesn't seem like the risks, the physical

01:08:02.340 risks are being articulated to women so that it's really, truly informed consent. Is that right?

01:08:09.120 That's absolutely right. And even if they do talk about risk, they always lump it into,

01:08:13.400 well, there's risks with pregnancy. So the woman in her mind, even if she's thinking that there's 0.98

01:08:18.860 risks, she's thinking those are just the same as if I was carrying a pregnancy. And we know in the

01:08:23.400 United States, we have horrible maternal mortality and morbidity rates. So we're well aware of the

01:08:30.420 fact that women still sadly die in childbirth. So the doctor, if he even talks about the risks of

01:08:36.020 assisted reproduction, they're sort of glossed over in the, well, pregnancy has its risks anyway,

01:08:41.260 instead of, no, these have inherently extra and different types of risks in addition to

01:08:47.720 the risk of pregnancy.

01:08:50.160 And there's so much that I'm thinking that it's a whole other episode, a whole other thing that I

01:08:57.480 really need to dig into is why the United States, one of the most prosperous countries in the world,

01:09:03.860 has such a high maternal and even infant mortality rate. And there's so much within our, you know,

01:09:12.900 after having two babies, I've realized like there's just so much in our healthcare industry that I

01:09:18.480 didn't realize that really isn't, especially for women, it's just not pro-woman. Like the C-section 0.97

01:09:25.060 rate is way too high. Women are pushed into C-sections for no medical reason, way too often.

01:09:31.940 And there's, there are just a lot of questions as to why, like, and I'm not asking you to answer

01:09:37.940 the question about the C-section thing. It just is kind of all lumped together. But is there,

01:09:42.800 is there a monetary motivation for doctors to not talk about the risks of something like IVF or

01:09:51.920 fertility treatments?

01:09:54.420 Absolutely. I mean, because fertility medicine is very expensive, it's very lucrative. I mean,

01:10:01.080 I watched recently, I can't remember which show, Dope Sick, you know, which was on the scandal of

01:10:06.900 OxyContin and doctors over prescribing. And, you know, big pharma was in collusion with physicians

01:10:12.760 that were prescribing, you know, just obscene amounts and getting people hooked. You know,

01:10:18.000 again, Miriam Zoll's book on, on Cracked Open, her book Cracked Open, you know, talks about getting

01:10:23.140 on that super high, super highway. And the doctor will say, well, we'll just try it again. It failed.

01:10:28.440 We'll just try it again. Or we'll try this dosage, or we'll try that. There's no, the doctor isn't

01:10:34.300 saying, this is going to be rough on your body to keep doing this. But it's that, you know, that,

01:10:38.960 and that, that, that, that lure, the next time I'll get pregnant, the next time the pregnancy will

01:10:44.960 take, the next time I won't miscarry. So, you know, it's just that, that tension of that, it's,

01:10:51.840 it's the sort of the perfect storm between dealing with an industry that's making more money, the more

01:10:57.900 times that they have, you go through this. And then that lure that the next time will be the, you know,

01:11:02.460 like the gambler, the next time I'll win, the next time I win.

01:11:05.440 So how does the, if you know, like, how does the doctor though directly, like an OBGYN, well,

01:11:14.100 okay. So the OBGYN, just your standard OBGYN, are they the, does it have to be a specialist who

01:11:22.260 offers IVF in these fertility treatments, or does your standard OBGYN, are they able to offer these

01:11:28.040 treatments to women? You're usually sent to a specialist and they're called reproductive 0.98

01:11:32.200 endocrinologist. So does the OBGYN though, that refers, because we've talked about like how women 1.00

01:11:37.720 just, they typically don't really get a good diagnosis. And I know I'm going to a million

01:11:43.220 different directions, but I'll just use myself as an example. It took us both times, it took us

01:11:48.900 four or so months. And the first time, you know, I wasn't told any reason why it was like, okay,

01:11:56.380 you're in your, you're in your twenties. And the doctor kind of made me almost feel bad. Like,

01:12:01.100 it shouldn't have taken you more than, more than one month. And so if you haven't gotten pregnant

01:12:06.740 after six months, okay, there's probably something wrong. And I'm just looking back at that. It took

01:12:11.280 us about, like I said, four or five months. And one thing that I did know that I didn't, I don't

01:12:16.720 know if it affected it or not, is that my thyroid levels were off. And I'm glad I got that checked.

01:12:21.380 No one, not my endocrinologist or my OBGYN ever said, yeah, you know, that was probably why you didn't

01:12:25.880 get pregnant. But after we fixed those levels and I got on some medication, I did get pregnant like 0.88

01:12:31.360 a month later. And I'm just so happy because I wouldn't have known. And I, you know, obviously

01:12:36.180 we wanted a child so badly. If we had waited six months, would my OBGYN have said, you know what,

01:12:41.760 let's just go ahead and send you over to this fertility specialist and get you on some kind 1.00

01:12:46.020 of medication when I didn't actually need it. I just needed to kind of explore some other things

01:12:50.360 or maybe just wait. Maybe I just, maybe it just took five months. I'm not sure.

01:12:54.400 Um, I do think that these OBs seem to just be expediting women who may not even have fertility

01:13:02.540 problems into the hands of a specialist. And I don't understand why.

01:13:07.620 Well, that happens all the time. One is, um, we're impatient, right? We're a live, we live in a,

01:13:12.620 you know, microwave world. We want things instantaneously. And, you know, it's like,

01:13:16.100 okay, I'm ready to get pregnant. I'm going to go off my birth control pill or whatever.

01:13:19.540 And things don't happen quickly. Um, you know, I, I hear this all the time with women that, 1.00

01:13:25.720 you know, women for as smart as we are, we don't understand our own bodies. And when you look at 1.00

01:13:33.380 how many days in an actual month that you actually can get pregnant, it's a very small window. And I

01:13:39.980 love, again, because I'm not like you anti-technology, there's all these new fertility apps

01:13:44.740 and women becoming more in tune to their fertility. And when are they fertile? When are they ovulating? 0.98

01:13:50.580 Whether they're using an app or whether they're using old fashioned thermometers and checking their

01:13:55.020 temperature and their, their mucus and all that, you know, but we, we can easily for many months

01:14:01.180 because of our busy lives, my husband and I both travel all the time with our jobs. I can imagine if

01:14:06.620 we were in the heyday of our child, we were in, you know, trying to get pregnant days, we could easily 1.00

01:14:11.340 not get pregnant for a year because we maybe wouldn't even be in the same, under the same roof

01:14:15.720 at the same time when I was fertile. Um, so, so I think that's a lot of it. And because we don't

01:14:21.580 get pregnant after three months of trying, that seemed like three years, you know, we do think,

01:14:27.340 oh, what's wrong. And I need to get in and I get a doctor to diagnose me. But I'm so thankful when I

01:14:32.440 hear stories like yours, it was just your thyroid and, you know, our fertility is controlled by our brain.

01:14:37.500 You know, everything that happens, you know, below our belly button is controlled by our brain,

01:14:43.960 whether it be the pituitary or the thyroid, all of our hormones, our cycle is controlled by our brain,

01:14:50.080 which is why a lot of the, the egg donors I've met who went on these fertility drugs, 0.95

01:14:56.040 two of them had strokes, affects the brain. Um, so yeah, a good proper diagnosis and, and to know

01:15:03.500 when you really are fertile and make sure that you're having, you know, intercourse during your 0.92

01:15:08.060 fertile days. Yeah. And just to kind of start to close, close it out a little bit, um, going back

01:15:16.900 to something that I think you might've said in this conversation, but you definitely said it in the

01:15:20.780 last conversation because the pushback that you just, you know, you'll continually get is, but this

01:15:26.320 was IVF, whatever, was the only way for us to have a biological child. Here's the most like

01:15:30.940 controversial thing that it, the hardest thing I think to hear is that no one has a right to

01:15:40.100 have a child. Is that correct? That's something that you've said, right?

01:15:44.900 Yeah. We don't have a right. It's like, I don't have a right to be married. I don't have a right

01:15:49.180 not to have cancer. I don't have a right to have a child, you know, get in line with all the things

01:15:53.720 we don't have a right to. Um, we want these things and, and it's good. It's good to want those

01:16:00.200 things. It's not bad to want those things, but when those things don't come, you can't

01:16:04.580 just say, well, I have a right to it. Therefore I'm going to go and get it. And if your, your

01:16:08.460 audience, which I, I could tell by this, the emails and messages from people, you've got

01:16:12.760 a lot of Catholic women who listen to you. You've got non-Catholic women who listen to 1.00

01:16:16.960 you. Um, you know, and if, you know, everything that they believe is, well, children are gifts

01:16:23.360 gifts. And if children are gifts, we don't have a right to a gift. You can't wake up on

01:16:28.080 Christmas morning and go, well, I have a right to a new bicycle. You know, if I'm given a

01:16:33.140 new, it's, if it's a gift, but I don't have a right to that. Um, so we have to, you know,

01:16:38.000 rightly orient, you know, what are children? Are they things that we have a right to? Are 0.97

01:16:43.000 they objects that we can go and purchase or get, or are they gifts? And some, some people

01:16:48.700 get the gifts of children and some people get the gifts of not children. And adoption

01:16:53.820 too, I think is a very often overlooked way to have that gift. I'm not saying adoption.

01:16:59.860 Oh, adoption is so easy. And it's just, why doesn't everyone just adopt? I know that adoption

01:17:04.640 is also a very complex process and it can also be very expensive, but there are not only over

01:17:10.820 a million embryos, but there are also many children who have been born, um, who need adoption

01:17:17.440 as well. And that is also something that we are called to because while we don't have a right

01:17:22.020 to conceive children, we don't have a right to do that. I do believe that every child has a right

01:17:28.440 to a mother and a father. Yeah. And back to the surplus human embryos, I think the children living

01:17:34.520 today present in the world, um, that are without homes, without mothers and fathers, you know, our,

01:17:41.580 our duties and obligations are to them first than to the surplus human embryo, which is,

01:17:47.420 why I land on the controversial position. If it's not okay to keep them frozen for decades,

01:17:53.640 if, if they've been abandoned, um, you know, and then our duty and obligation is, is, you know,

01:18:00.860 if you're religious, thaw them out, you know, Mylander, Dr. Mylander says, have a little religious 0.96

01:18:06.300 service, baptize them and let them go be with Jesus. Um, or if you don't share that view of,

01:18:12.220 of, of afterlifes, you know, that it's, it's our duty and obligation not to just keep them in this

01:18:17.700 absurd state of frozenness. Um, for, like I said, the last one that was born was frozen longer than

01:18:24.940 the mother that gave it life was, you know, alive. Yeah. I have the, I have to think about,

01:18:31.220 I have to think about that. I haven't really, I've just kind of just thought while adopting an embryo

01:18:36.160 is a wonderful thing because they need a home. And of course I don't want these, I don't want

01:18:41.300 these children to be discarded. I don't want them to be thawed. I mean, it's such a terrible

01:18:45.480 dehumanizing, like thing to even think about, but, um, yeah, I mean, there are children who are born

01:18:53.180 who also need homes. We have millions of them as well. And we just have, there are so many things

01:18:59.640 to think about and such an obligation to the vulnerable people that exist. Um, let, one thing

01:19:06.680 I just want to clarify when you were talking about, um, we don't have a right to have children.

01:19:13.500 Obviously we are talking about in the context of conception, parents have a right to their children

01:19:21.420 that are born. We have parental rights. We don't believe that the government gets to take those

01:19:26.500 away. We don't believe that anyone supersedes, um, you know, parental authority and the parental care

01:19:33.980 that a parent has for their child, either a natural child or adopted child. So I just wanted to

01:19:39.740 clarify that we're talking about in the context of conception. Correct. Yes. Um, all right. Is there

01:19:47.460 any, I mean, any of the last things that you want to say that we didn't bring up that you want to

01:19:51.800 talk about? If not, you can direct people where you would like to direct them.

01:19:57.040 I just, one, one thing, because it only came into my inbox this morning is that there's a new

01:20:02.180 piece of legislation that's been introduced in the state of South Dakota. Um, and we've been

01:20:07.100 actively involved in, they're trying to legalize commercial gestational surrogacy in South Dakota.

01:20:12.940 Um, you know, the United States, we have 50 States and every state has different laws around this.

01:20:17.660 So it's kind of always a patchwork of trying to find out, um, you know, what's, what's happening

01:20:22.740 at the legislative level. So if anybody listening is in the state of South Dakota, I would love

01:20:28.500 to you to reach out to me. Um, uh, cause we'll, we'll be heavily involved in trying to stop that

01:20:36.680 piece of legislation from passing in the state of South Dakota. Right now, South Dakota has no law.

01:20:41.980 So when babies are born through surrogacy, you can do surrogacy in South Dakota, but you're not

01:20:46.640 protected by the law and they're trying to enshrine legalized surrogacy there so that when babies are

01:20:52.220 born, they immediately go to the intended parents and the surrogate has no rights. So, um, but I'm 0.56

01:20:57.820 very active on Twitter, uh, at Jennifer Law and I got a lot of Instagram followers. So through,

01:21:05.780 through your podcast, so people can follow me on Instagram if they spend more time there.

01:21:10.100 And then our YouTube channel, because all of our films are available there for free. Um,

01:21:15.940 the center for bioethics and culture network is our YouTube channel. So you can find our films and

01:21:21.580 watch them, but it's been great being with you again. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jennifer,

01:21:26.340 for waking up early since you're on California time and, uh, taking the time to talk to us. I really

01:21:32.560 appreciate it. Me too. My pleasure. Thank you.

01:21:40.100 Thank you.

01:21:42.100 Thank you.

01:21:43.100 Thank you.

01:21:44.100 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 27, 2022

Ep 554 ｜ IVF, Embryo Adoption, & Surrogacy： Answering the Hard Questions ｜ Guest： Jennifer Lahl

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