Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 659 ｜ How the Fertility & Gender Industries Exploit Girls for Profit ｜ Guest： Jennifer Lahl

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. We've got a treat for you and that is Jennifer

00:00:05.860 Lal. She is one of my most popular guests. We are going to be talking again about the surrogacy 0.99

00:00:13.420 industry, why this is in the news, how women are being targeted to sell their eggs and what this

00:00:20.860 all means. We're also going to be talking about her new documentary, which is about detransitioning

00:00:27.620 and how this whole medical industry is pushing all of these things that are hurting young people

00:00:34.300 and specifically women's fertility. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:40.820 Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie. That's goodranchers.com slash Allie. 0.51

00:00:45.140 Okay, you guys are absolutely going to love this conversation as much as if not more than

00:01:00.780 you loved the conversations that I had with Jennifer at the beginning of this year when we

00:01:06.060 talked about the truth and the corruption of the surrogacy industry and some of the ethical

00:01:13.320 questions that we have about IVF and other kinds of reproductive technology. Now, if you have not

00:01:20.600 listened to those episodes or watched them on YouTube, I really encourage you to do that because

00:01:25.560 we don't get into all of the details of the issues with these things in today's episode. So as I can

00:01:34.240 imagine it will be, if it is sensitive to those of you who have either been a surrogate or you've gone

00:01:41.460 through IVF, please go back and listen to those episodes so you can get a full understanding in a

00:01:48.980 full context of what we are talking about. If you have questions of like, what about this scenario when

00:01:54.720 it comes to surrogacy? What about this scenario when it comes to IVF or embryo adoption and all those

00:02:00.440 things? We talk about all of that on those previous episodes. Today, we are going to talk more about

00:02:06.580 why these things are in the news, why they are becoming more popular, why it is, for example,

00:02:12.960 single men that are the largest buyers of surrogates and of eggs that are being sold by women. What does

00:02:23.280 all of this mean for our country? So that's really what we're getting into today, as well as the

00:02:28.500 detransitioning piece and how it's all connected. But before we get into that conversation, let me just

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00:03:45.980 Without further ado, here is our good friend, Jennifer Law. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us

00:03:54.320 again. Just as a recap, could you tell us who you are and what you do? Sure. I'm Jennifer Law and I'm

00:04:01.080 the president of a nonprofit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area called the Center for Bioethics

00:04:05.840 and Culture. And we're an educational nonprofit that really does a lot of work in the space of

00:04:12.960 new novel technologies and spend a lot of our time in the area of medical ethics as it relates to

00:04:18.920 fertility and infertility. And we've talked a lot about a lot of the ethical problems and questions

00:04:24.540 surrounding IVF and surrogacy. And we're going to talk more about that today and how it has become

00:04:30.160 so mainstream and almost this untouchable topic for people. But before we get into that, I want to talk

00:04:37.660 to you about your new documentary that's coming out, The Detransition Diaries, Saving Our Sisters.

00:04:44.640 So this doesn't have to do directly with the reproductive industry. So why is this something

00:04:51.020 that you are investing your time into? Yeah, well, a couple of reasons in case your audience doesn't

00:04:57.100 know. In a previous life, I was a pediatric critical care nurse for many, many years. I worked at UC San

00:05:03.120 Francisco, UCLA, Children's Hospital in Oakland. So I was always concerned around the area of

00:05:09.980 transgender children. So last year, we released a film called Transmission, What's the Rush to Reassign

00:05:17.520 Gender, which focused on the medical ethical issues around rushing children to change sex as if they

00:05:25.600 could actually do that. And what we saw in the audience reactions to that film was how much the

00:05:32.300 audience connected with the two people on camera that we interviewed who had detransitioned,

00:05:37.980 people who thought that transitioning to the opposite sex would help their problems, solve their

00:05:43.660 problems, and only didn't. And, you know, there is what's called a social contagion. So we're seeing

00:05:49.180 this space of people who think their gender confused is much more impacting young women, young girls.

00:05:55.980 And so we decided to quickly release The Detransition Diaries, which focuses solely on women 0.82

00:06:02.520 who thought that they were men and only to find out that they made terribly wrong decisions that had

00:06:10.980 irreversible harm. And it does relate to fertility in that children before they transition or young

00:06:17.440 adults before they transition are offered what we call fertility preservation. So little boys or young

00:06:23.580 men are offered to freeze and bank their sperm. Girls are offered to freeze and bank their eggs. 0.96

00:06:29.020 So when they transition, if and when they want to have children, because we know that medical and

00:06:34.340 surgical transitioning ruins your fertility. And so they've, you know, anticipated children down 1.00

00:06:41.960 the road, and they want to preserve fertility in some warped way. So not only does transition

00:06:47.360 medicine, medical care, and I say that very loosely, because this is not medicine, it creates these

00:06:53.280 patients for life. They'll forever have to be interfacing with the medical establishment to

00:06:58.640 maintain their facade of pretending to be the opposite sex. And then if and when they want to have 1.00

00:07:05.540 children, they will need the medical industrial complex again in order to have children. So the

00:07:11.980 issue does relate to fertility, but in a very obscure and bizarre and horrific way.

00:07:17.660 Yes. And I wish I had thought to pull this video before our conversation because I would play it. But

00:07:22.440 I saw circulating on Twitter, a video from Boston Children's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital

00:07:29.160 of this so-called gender specialist who said that she performs what she called, I mean, there's just

00:07:35.980 nothing more dystopian and more wicked than this phrase, gender affirming hysterectomies, 0.77

00:07:43.540 gender affirming hysterectomies. So we're talking about a children's hospital performing this on

00:07:49.800 minors. I don't know every single side effect or consequence of a hysterectomy, but I do know that

00:07:57.500 even in older women who get hysterectomies, there are side effects. There are hormonal issues that they

00:08:03.740 then deal with. Of course, the physical trauma of dealing with that big of a surgery. I have had two

00:08:09.600 C-sections, not a hysterectomy, but that in itself was traumatic in some ways, very painful. That comes

00:08:16.640 with its own long-term consequences. I imagine something much more invasive, like taking out not

00:08:24.220 just your uterus, but I believe your fallopian tubes, sometimes your ovaries as well. I cannot 0.50

00:08:30.160 imagine the physical effect that that has on a child, of course, ruining their fertility, 0.91

00:08:37.440 but ruining everything else as well. What do you make of that?

00:08:40.660 Oh, well, I think it's criminal. I can't even imagine. I sometimes wonder if I hadn't left

00:08:47.300 nursing. Because many of the hospitals that I practice nursing in are doing this kind of

00:08:53.880 treatment, and it's not treatment. I'm sure I would have been fired because I would have been

00:08:59.180 the one with the big mouth saying, over my dead body. But when you look at how fast that medicine

00:09:06.580 has shifted, because when I look back to when I was working in clinical nursing, and we had these

00:09:12.240 children in the hospital that were gender confused, or born with what we called ambiguous genitalia,

00:09:18.040 meaning they had an extra X or an extra Y, obviously, standard of care was prudence.

00:09:26.300 You know, don't rush these kids to do anything. A lot of these problems will sort themselves out.

00:09:31.960 We do not need to intervene. Maybe we need to do some kind of counseling or therapy,

00:09:36.940 but no medical surgical intervention at all. And I look at how fast that this is is unraveled.

00:09:44.600 But then I'm also optimistic when I look at how fast it's it's collapsing in the United Kingdom with

00:09:49.680 all these recent news articles about all the lawsuits that are being filed with people who bought

00:09:55.880 into this lie that this treatment was going to help them only to find like you said,

00:10:01.460 it's destroyed their body. I mean, our bodies are designed a perfect

00:10:04.840 particular way because there's a reason. There's a reason why we need estrogen as women. There's a 0.67

00:10:12.600 reason why men need testosterone. It has all to do with the development of our bones and our brains 0.99

00:10:18.440 and our, you know, our whole entire body. And when we think that we, you know, we're crazy out here

00:10:24.440 in California where I live about the environment. You know, we don't want to put anything in the soil

00:10:29.360 or the water that might harm crops or plants. But then in the human body, we think, oh, we can just

00:10:35.560 turn this off and chop that off and put this hormone in the wrong sex person. And nothing bad is going 0.94

00:10:41.780 to happen. It's kind of silly. You don't have to be a scientist to know that that's got to be risky. 0.89

00:10:47.800 Yeah. You know, I've never thought about it particularly like this. Of course, we understand that this is

00:10:52.260 the mutilation of a person's body. But especially when it comes to minors, I do think it is a form 0.99

00:10:58.080 of abuse because they are not, they don't have the capacity to consent. We understand that in other

00:11:03.760 ways. But for some reason, when it comes to gender affirming care, aka, you know, chopping up your body, 0.53

00:11:11.500 we think that magically that they do have the understanding to be able to consent. But I've never

00:11:16.300 really thought about that these kinds of surgeries and these kinds of procedures for the fantasy,

00:11:23.880 the delusion of gender switching views parts of your body as superfluous that we understand like

00:11:31.240 actually have a function like, oh, we can just chop off healthy breasts or we can just like castrate 1.00

00:11:37.960 a healthy male or we can take the uterus and the fallopian tubes and the ovaries out of like a healthy

00:11:44.280 young woman. And oh, you don't really need those things to survive. It's fine. I mean, that's like

00:11:50.320 taking off a part of your healthy liver and just saying, okay, you're probably going to be okay.

00:11:56.160 Sure, you might be okay. But maybe, maybe these parts of our bodies were given to us for, as you said,

00:12:04.760 a particular reason, maybe we actually do need them to function and to flourish. And I also think about,

00:12:12.480 like you said, the cross-sex hormones, not allowing someone to go through proper puberty,

00:12:18.260 is it puberty necessary, not just for physical maturation, but for mental maturation as well?

00:12:25.120 Absolutely. When you look at, you know, this whole area is called human development. And we start when

00:12:29.680 we're an embryo and then we develop into a fetus and then a baby and then a toddler and then a preteen

00:12:38.040 and a teenager. And I mean, it's all part of a normal process that you can't interrupt and think

00:12:45.420 that there's not going to be any kind of damage or harm. You can't shut off, you know, that's sort

00:12:50.880 of the whole transhumanist, you know, futuristic pipe dream of, you know, being able to turn ourselves

00:12:57.220 into whatever we want, which I don't think, I think there's a lot of hubris, you know, think Tower of

00:13:02.240 Babel. Yeah. And then God looks down at our folly. But yeah, it's just, you know, we are fearfully and

00:13:13.720 wonderfully made and everything fits together and works as it's supposed to according to our natural

00:13:20.440 human development.

00:13:22.360 Yes. And I think we talked about this last time, when you go, when technology takes you,

00:13:28.080 especially when it comes to the human body, but really when it comes to anything,

00:13:31.980 when technology takes you from what's natural to what's possible, whether you're talking about

00:13:37.960 the attempt to sex switch or whether you're talking about commercial surrogacy and IVF and things like

00:13:44.520 that, there are always at the very least questions about the consequences of going from what's natural

00:13:52.700 to what's possible. That doesn't mean all technology and medical advancements are bad, of course,

00:13:57.100 but there are at the very least ethical questions. And we're told when it comes to this gender stuff 1.00

00:14:02.980 that we can't even ask questions at all. Tell us some of the commonalities that you saw in

00:14:09.980 interviewing these detransitioners for your documentary. Were all of them kind of like 1.00

00:14:15.780 rushed into this process?

00:14:19.280 Yeah, absolutely. I would say that they were never offered any other alternatives.

00:14:23.940 You know, the theme is, and I follow a lot of the detransition people on social media that 1.00

00:14:30.320 aren't in the film too. So I can say overwhelmingly, these are, these are themes, you know, these are

00:14:35.480 people that had early childhood trauma. They had struggled with depression, with panic attack,

00:14:42.940 anxieties. These are young women, often more so young women that had eating disorders or histories of

00:14:48.860 self-harming. Suicidal ideation, suicidal attempts even, in some cases in the women that I've spoken

00:14:56.740 to and interviewed. So, you know, in my mind, these women had real mental health issues that needed to 1.00

00:15:05.500 be addressed through psychologists, through psychiatrists, through social workers, through family

00:15:11.200 therapists, on and on and on. But what these children were bombarded with was counselors,

00:15:18.940 educators, school counselors, school teachers, affirming peer groups. Another theme is that these

00:15:26.000 people are spending, these young people are spending way too much time on social media.

00:15:30.080 So they have these friends in online communities that they haven't even ever met who are affirming them

00:15:37.180 and saying, yes, you'll feel so much better if you do this. Well, the reason you feel this way is

00:15:41.040 because you're born in the wrong body. That's what the problem is. And once you transition,

00:15:45.340 you know, this will all go away. So there's so many themes here. And again, back to, you know,

00:15:50.400 many years ago when I was working in hospital nursing, we would have caught all that. Those would

00:15:55.040 be red flags before you rush somebody off to the gender affirming clinic for treatment and therapies. 0.99

00:16:07.180 There are still so many questions as much as I talk about this. And I know that you've looked into it so much

00:16:19.240 as well. I've talked to people of all different angles. I've talked to Christians. I've talked to

00:16:23.280 non-Christians. I've talked to conservatives. I've talked to left-wing feminists. And, you know, 0.75

00:16:27.780 we have a lot of mutuals. These are kind of people that we all interact with and are fans of and

00:16:32.560 follow. And so I think that I see a lot of what is behind this, whether it is just kind of like

00:16:40.820 powerful men in some cases, like playing out, honestly, their sexual fantasies. That's something

00:16:46.720 that Genevieve Gluck has kind of unveiled through her research, or whether it's seemingly well-meaning

00:16:53.480 people who actually think that they are just helping young people, but they're entirely misguided,

00:16:59.320 whether it's people who are making money from these pharmaceutical companies, whether it's people

00:17:04.180 who are scared because of the political backlash. But I still find myself asking, even knowing all

00:17:10.480 those things exist, why? Why? Like, what is really behind this? We know the harm. It's just common sense,

00:17:18.080 but also we see it through documentaries like yours. Why? Why are people pushing this? Why is there such a

00:17:24.740 powerful industry behind it? Why does the Biden administration push this completely uncritically?

00:17:29.320 So when you wrestle with that question, as I'm sure you do, what do you kind of come up with?

00:17:34.600 Yeah. I mean, I can't, I have my hypothesis or hypotheses and I can't prove why I think it's

00:17:42.800 happening. When I look at what's happening with the trans movement and then the men having babies 1.00

00:17:50.420 movement. I mean, I think there's an absolute, maybe it's too strong of a word, but I want to say hate

00:17:58.440 to sort of traditional families. You know, we have men having babies now, which is, you know, we throw

00:18:04.880 that phrase out there, like men having babies, whether they're trans women or gay men, or, you know,

00:18:10.440 we have this absurdity, but there is this sort of undermining of, um, the nuclear family and,

00:18:17.980 you know, and, and this sort of releasing, giving away or culture stealing our children. So now 0.96

00:18:24.980 parents no longer have authority. Um, you know, teachers have authority. Parents are afraid to

00:18:30.160 not affirm their children because they might lose their children. Social services might come in and

00:18:34.840 take your children away from you. I mean, can you imagine living with that? I mean, I live in the

00:18:39.560 backyard of a father out here who's in a really hard, nasty custody battle with his son and his ex-wife

00:18:47.480 who says that their son is really a girl. And this poor father has not seen his son for, I think,

00:18:55.000 several years now. He has no ability to even see his son. I mean, that's a terrifying, um, thing that's

00:19:01.360 happened in our society where parents can't, you know, are worried about losing their own children

00:19:07.360 and their children being destroyed. Um, you know, the media is of no help. I mean, you're, you're a

00:19:13.540 godsend to people like me because the media is only singing the narrative that the trans, the pro trans

00:19:20.820 community want them to sing. You know, we're fighting Senator Weiner out here in California because our

00:19:26.160 state's just like minutes away from becoming a sanctuary state for young minors who can come here

00:19:32.940 for their gender affirmation therapies and surgeries when states like, you know, Texas have said this is

00:19:39.980 child abuse. And I agree it's child abuse, but we're now going to become a sanctuary state where these

00:19:45.380 children will be able to come here and get their, you know, body mutilation surgeries. Um, and it's also

00:19:52.360 this, the corruption of medicine, which has been corrupted by money. Yes, that's, that's always

00:19:58.600 part of it. And it was Jesus who said the love of money, not money itself, but the love of money is

00:20:03.940 the root of all kinds of evil. And man, I've thought about that phrase a lot, especially over the past

00:20:11.120 few years, especially as it pertains to what you referred to. And I agree with this phrase, the medical

00:20:16.980 industrial complex, the love of money in that world, in all different spheres of society, but in that

00:20:23.760 world is the root of all kinds of evil. There might be lots of different groups with different, 0.99

00:20:29.840 different nefarious or political motivations. But at the end of the day, if chopping off the breasts of 1.00

00:20:37.180 young girls and castrating males and putting them on sex, uh, opposite sex hormones, and as you said,

00:20:44.420 creating lifelong patience, if that was not lucrative, it would not be mainstream.

00:20:51.540 Even the, even the political push behind it would fail. If it did not make money for people,

00:20:57.580 then it wouldn't be where it is. And I just wonder, like, are there any Republicans, they would have to

00:21:04.020 be Republicans, with the courage to go after that structure, with the courage to do something

00:21:10.700 that would make it not lucrative and actually make it riskier to perform genital mutilation on kids 0.97

00:21:17.660 than it is to actually perform it? Well, I've certainly seen politicians that have been willing

00:21:23.080 to do that in the, in the area of transing children. And, you know, um, you know, Ron DeSantis,

00:21:29.340 Governor DeSantis in Florida has been very outspoken. Um, you know, I know South Dakota has several times

00:21:35.500 tried to, um, advance, push legislation that would, you know, prohibit kids under 16 from doing any of

00:21:43.660 this. They haven't been successful. I could talk a little bit about my dissatisfaction with the

00:21:48.780 governor there on that. But on the other issue around this, you know, the surrogacy issue and,

00:21:54.700 you know, poaching eggs from young women, um, to make babies, that's been really hard to get

00:22:00.220 politicians on, on the left or the right, because the, the right loves babies. They love helping

00:22:07.020 people have babies. Uh, and the left loves a woman's right to choose to do whatever she wants 0.98

00:22:12.220 with her body. Yeah. Right. And so we'll talk more about the, the ethics of that in just one second.

00:22:18.460 And I, but first I want to play because I saw this circulating on Twitter too. Um, I want to play

00:22:25.660 this video. It's from NBC news and it's of this mother. I'm talking to her son who she says is

00:22:34.140 becoming a girl. And, um, the, there's an interview for those who are listening. You're not going to be

00:22:41.180 able to see this. There's an interview with the child and the mother, the child is being asked

00:22:46.220 questions by this reporter and, um, the mother, you can actually see her mouthing the words that her

00:22:54.860 child is saying because it is, um, it's rehearsed. So let me play that nine-year-old Kieran Clausen

00:23:01.260 collects crystals. She dabbles in face paint and she loves sports. What do you play? I did play

00:23:07.580 volleyball, soccer and I want to play basketball to Kieran, who's transgender. It's not about racking

00:23:15.900 up victories. I don't want to win any trophies for it though. I feel like that's the most,

00:23:21.020 the most unfair way to compete because it's not about winning. What's it about having fun

00:23:27.740 with your friends for it though. I feel like that's the most unfair way to compete because

00:23:33.500 it's not about winning. Kieran seems undeterred with a message now about her journey. Never

00:23:39.420 stop being you. That's it. Never stop being you. There's so many kids that don't even have the

00:23:45.020 opportunity to express who they really are. We are acknowledging more people as who they are

00:23:56.620 than taking something away from somebody else. So you saw that mother mouthing what her child

00:24:02.940 is supposed to say. That's a young boy pretending to be a girl. The mother also, I think, is pretending

00:24:08.780 to cry about it. What's your, what's your take on that? Yeah. I mean, earlier I said parents are

00:24:14.700 rightly concerned about having their children removed from them for not allowing their children

00:24:18.940 to change sex. I think this is a case where this mother needs therapy and that this might be a case 1.00

00:24:25.980 where this child needs to be removed from her care because I see all kinds of red flags. Of course.

00:24:34.220 That sort of hint of mental illness or projection or among childs and by proxy. Exactly.

00:24:39.500 Um, you know, a lot of these, these, you know, mothers in particular are just trying to seek

00:24:45.180 attention. Yes. I think, yeah, I saw someone say, maybe I think it was Lauren Chen on Twitter that

00:24:51.820 this kind of like makes white mothers feel like they're a part of an oppressed class. Um, you know, 0.98

00:24:57.980 tired of getting berated as not being enough of an, uh, of an ally when it comes to anti-racism

00:25:03.820 or something. And this is a way for them to kind of like take on an oppressed identity through their

00:25:08.940 child, which is kind of Munchausen by proxy. Yeah. And we see that just in the pronouns,

00:25:13.900 you know, but the easiest way to all of a sudden seem like you're, you're hip and on the right side

00:25:18.860 of this is just slap some pronouns in your email signature or, or introduce yourself as I'm Jennifer. 1.00

00:25:24.780 My, my pronouns are, you're an idiot. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's, oh my gosh. That's as soon, 1.00

00:25:30.540 as soon as I see pronouns in someone's bio, that's when I know I'm like,

00:25:33.500 I know it's a red flag. Yes. Total red flag. All right. Let's talk about how this all connects.

00:25:39.420 You mentioned at the beginning of this, how this all connects to the fertility industry by making

00:25:44.620 these lifelong patients, but can you kind of connect us ideologically or philosophically,

00:25:50.380 what connects the mentality of someone who is pro transition, pro transition for children

00:25:57.020 to advocacy for all the different kinds of reproductive technology that we are seeing kind

00:26:04.780 of take over the birthing pregnancy industry? Well, part of it is, I think embracing, um,

00:26:12.540 you know, this, this dualism of mind and body and that we can do whatever we want to the body

00:26:17.900 because it's not us. Um, and, and, you know, this, you hear these embracing my true self,

00:26:23.020 finding my true identity. Um, I really, I really am, you know, uh, a legless man,

00:26:28.140 so please chop off my healthy limbs so I can find my true self, you know, this whole transhumanist 1.00

00:26:35.420 that just sort of, um, whether it be Gnosticistic or Gnosticism, but just, you know, the, the human

00:26:42.460 body is nothing. It's just, you know, malleable. We can make, make it what we, whatever we want.

00:26:47.660 And, you know, what, why else would we have this technology if we're not supposed to use it?

00:26:52.860 You know, technology is great and wonderful and let's, let's, you know, just run with this.

00:26:58.540 Right. Right. Yeah. I do think that that is the mentality that whether people know it or not,

00:27:03.020 that connects them, that dualism, Nancy Piercy and her book, Love Thy Body talks about that a lot.

00:27:08.940 That was very enlightening to me, just the philosophical foundations of this idea that the

00:27:15.200 body is arbitrary and nothing and who we really are is a feeling deep down inside,

00:27:20.960 which runs counter, of course, to science and logic. But as a Christian, it also runs counter

00:27:25.980 to Christian theology. We are told that our body matters, that it actually has a purpose,

00:27:29.720 that our physical body, our gender tells us a lot about who we are and what we're for. And so

00:27:37.380 to me, the denial of that is not just a denial of the body and science and common sense,

00:27:42.500 but also a denial of the idea of a creator, that there is an authority higher than us that tells

00:27:47.980 us what we are and who we are. Ultimately, I think that's what it comes down to, whether people

00:27:52.500 recognize it or not. Let's, let's transition then into the world that you really focus on a lot,

00:28:11.100 which is reproductive technology and surrogacy. I want to get your reaction to a few stories that

00:28:17.660 I've seen come out in the news. And as soon as I saw them, I was like, I want to know what

00:28:20.880 Jennifer Law would think about this. So New York Post headline, I just gave birth to a baby for 1.00

00:28:26.060 strangers I met on Instagram. Lifestyle influencer and mom of two, Samantha Matthews, decided to be a

00:28:33.980 gestational surrogate for a Manhattan couple after they reached out to her on Instagram. She gave birth to

00:28:40.400 a healthy baby boy on July 27th. She was paid $40,000. So she thought that this was awesome,

00:28:47.180 a great way to make money. And maybe some people read the story and say more power to you girl. 1.00

00:28:53.200 Well, it's funny because so many of the surrogates I know found the intended parents,

00:28:58.680 we call them the intended parents on social media, either through Facebook or, you know,

00:29:04.060 because there's plenty of surrogacy groups, people that are looking for surrogates,

00:29:08.400 surrogates that are looking to be matched. It's kind of like online dating. So it's not uncommon

00:29:13.380 for surrogates to match up, if you will, with intended parents on social media. And it's not

00:29:19.400 uncommon for literally these women to give birth to strangers, you know, because we have so much 0.96

00:29:25.220 international surrogacy. So so many people from China hiring surrogates in California. And, you know,

00:29:31.640 of course, you never meet these people. So it's it is so bizarre, it gets but it gets back to the fact

00:29:37.480 that we don't have any sense of reverence for the for the body, any sense of dignity of the body,

00:29:44.200 that we're literally parceling it out, you know, to strangers, creating children with no respect or

00:29:51.660 dignity of them. You know, using eggs from somebody, you know, some beautiful Stanford

00:29:57.000 Ivy League school, using, you know, sperm from some handsome Danish guy from Denmark,

00:30:03.360 you know, hiring a womb in, you know, the middle of America and Idaho or something. 0.95

00:30:08.700 You know, it's just, you know, we if you have money, and you have technology, and you've got a

00:30:13.500 society and medical establishment that embraces all this, it's like, what could be wrong?

00:30:18.480 Right, if you can do it, then you should do it basically is kind of the mentality. And it's also

00:30:24.780 what you talk about what Katie Faust talks about a lot, this idea that people have a right to a

00:30:31.060 child, by any means possible, you have a right to a child. No one ever thinks about the child's right,

00:30:38.640 they think, well, you don't remember your time inside the womb, you don't remember your birth,

00:30:43.620 who cares. So what is the consequence on the child of something like this?

00:30:49.600 Well, you do, you do remember all that. And, you know, before surrogacy took off,

00:30:55.180 you know, we have tons of research in the medical literature on maternal child bonding.

00:31:01.560 I mean, we even have a phrase for it called maternal child. It's not child bonding,

00:31:05.720 or maternal bonding, it's maternal child bonding, because they go together. And, you know,

00:31:10.700 this notion that, you know, I always like to remind people that we don't allow puppies to be removed

00:31:17.900 from their mother when they're born. It's seen as animal cruelty and inhumane, inhumane treatment to

00:31:23.980 an animal, but we do it to a newborn baby. We know that even in a surrogate pregnancy, that that mother

00:31:30.440 is told not to bond. So she's told to dissociate from her body, and uses words like, I'm on a journey,

00:31:38.220 I'm helping to build a family. But that baby's not in a privy to any of those kind of agreements,

00:31:43.980 that baby hasn't agreed to not bond to the womb that it's growing into. You know, when a newborn

00:31:50.340 baby is born, I remind people all the time, because I was a pediatric nurse, the only thing that newborn

00:31:55.480 baby knows, and you don't have to teach them, they know their mother, they know their birth mother.

00:32:01.040 And you will hear from surrogates often about how when they do get to visit the baby or hold the

00:32:06.560 baby after they've given birth, how that baby immediately settles and quiets and calms when

00:32:12.320 they they hold them one surrogate. And one of my films that I produced, she gave birth to a gay 0.98

00:32:18.220 couple, a baby for a gay couple. And they called her basically, because this baby was just crying,

00:32:23.640 crying, crying, crying, crying, you know, how do we console this child? So she came over and the

00:32:28.600 minute that baby was in her arms, the baby quieted down. So we know that there's a trauma. We know

00:32:35.260 there's a trauma to mother and child. In our own research, which just came out in publication

00:32:40.100 two weeks ago now, when we took 97 American surrogate women through our survey, our peer

00:32:46.080 reviewed survey, they had more postpartum depression in their surrogate pregnancy than

00:32:52.180 they reported when they gave birth to their own children. And I'm sure that's because you go home 0.92

00:32:56.300 with empty arms. Yes, of course, because it's unnatural. And a lot of people say, well, that's why

00:33:01.640 surrogates are so selfless. They know it's going to be difficult. And yet they're doing this on behalf

00:33:07.380 of a couple who can't have children. I'm like, well, it's not necessarily selfless because you're

00:33:11.720 also getting paid tens of thousands of dollars. And who is it really selfless for on behalf of who

00:33:17.540 being selfless on behalf of the people who rented your womb? It's not being selfless on behalf of the

00:33:22.920 child who did not ask to be created and then taken away not just from the biological mother who

00:33:28.540 donated the egg, but also the gestator whose wound that they have been in. So who really is it

00:33:34.620 selfless for, especially when it comes to commercial surrogacy?

00:33:40.220 Yeah, and I see it really traumatizes the surrogate's own children, too. I mean, you're a

00:33:48.220 mom. I'm a mom. You know, when when little children are in the house and mommy tells them they're going

00:33:52.960 to have another baby, everybody's excited. Are we going to get a brother? Are we going to get a

00:33:57.160 sister? You know, and these little children don't get to have that kind of excitement. 1.00

00:34:01.960 Yeah, you know, they don't get to look forward to another sibling, you know, and they're they're

00:34:07.240 also groomed. I'm going to get into James Lindsay trouble here. Grooming, grooming. We're grooming

00:34:11.760 children that mothers keep some babies and mothers sell some babies to help other people. 0.53

00:34:18.040 Right. We really want those kind of messages sent to children that this is what mommy does with her 0.87

00:34:22.440 body. This is what daddy agrees to let mommy do with her body so that we can help somebody else 0.98

00:34:28.440 with a baby. You know, I think there's going to be all kinds of long term consequences that we can't

00:34:35.220 even imagine on little children that have been in raised raised in homes where they've seen their

00:34:40.040 mommies do this. And they've oftentimes seen their mommies do this several times. My partner,

00:34:46.760 Callie Fell, is the host of our podcast Venus Rising. And she had a young woman as a guest

00:34:53.960 last season. And this young woman as a little girl watched her mother die of pregnancy related

00:35:00.880 complications from her surrogate pregnancy. Wow. I can't imagine the long term trauma of

00:35:07.540 something like that. The biggest the biggest pushback that I get when I talk about this. Well,

00:35:14.300 there's a few. But one of them is, well, the woman is choosing. She's choosing. It's her, you

00:35:19.840 know, her body, her choice kind of thing. And she knows the consequences. She's going into it. She's

00:35:25.160 deciding this. Why is it the commodity? Because I call it the commodification of women, the 1.00

00:35:30.240 commodification of a womb. And people say, well, it's not it's not objectification. It's not

00:35:34.660 commodification because the woman is consenting to it. I have my own problems with that line of 1.00

00:35:39.400 reasoning. But how do you respond to that? Well, a couple ways. One is she's not choosing

00:35:45.040 to do this overwhelmingly. If you take the money out of the equation, the you know, the number of

00:35:51.160 women willing to do a pregnancy for nine months and give a baby away dwindles down to pretty close 0.73

00:35:56.980 to zero. You know, then you're left with maybe a sister's willing to be the surrogate for her sister. 0.82

00:36:02.060 Or you see the, you know, older women, the grandmothers carrying their grandchildren to 0.99

00:36:07.820 term. You know, those are not commercial contracts. You won't see the abuse in third world countries of

00:36:13.860 women. The women who are doing surrogacy for money are coming from impoverished countries. And if they're 1.00

00:36:20.100 not being paid, they're not going to be doing this. So I think the one hand, women aren't choosing 1.00

00:36:26.500 this. You know, it's sort of like when you look at informed consent of patients, you know, when does

00:36:32.300 your doctor offer you a big chunk of money to do something medically with your body? I push back too

00:36:40.300 because there are some things that medicine shouldn't allow women to do or people to do, men and women, 0.94

00:36:46.920 just because they choose to. You know, I want to sell my kidney. Why can't I sell my kidney?

00:36:52.200 You know, I don't want to just give it away to help somebody. I want to get paid for it. Well,

00:36:56.680 we don't let people, even though it's my body and it's my kidney. I don't think if I wanted to choose

00:37:02.120 to go in and have my healthy legs chopped off because I'm a body dysmorphic person who feels like

00:37:08.960 I'm a legless person, you know, I shouldn't be allowed to choose that. So everybody just goes,

00:37:14.120 we should be able to choose to do whatever we want with our bodies. And I can't, you know,

00:37:17.860 I can't choose to get stink, stinking drunk and get behind a car without a seatbelt on and text

00:37:23.960 while I'm driving drunk. I can't choose to do that. Even though it's my body, it's my choice. So,

00:37:29.220 you know, you can just sort of play that out and all kinds of absurd, but, you know, but closer to

00:37:33.200 home, um, I can't, I can't choose to put myself up on eBay as somebody's slave. Right. And sell my,

00:37:40.000 sell myself. Yeah. My body to the highest bidder. You want a 24 seven slave. I'm yours. Give me 1.00

00:37:46.060 $5 million. Yeah. I mean, in some ways people do put themselves up as a form of like sex slaves and

00:37:53.380 prostitution. Of course they get paid for that, but I mean, there is still a reason why there are 1.00

00:38:00.400 limitations and restrictions on something like that. And yet there are people who advocate for

00:38:05.040 that kind of thing to be legal because of what we're talking about, this kind of like

00:38:09.420 reductive understanding of morality as only the presence or absence of consent. Like consent is

00:38:17.100 the only thing that we should ask when trying to determine whether something is moral or not.

00:38:22.680 And I think that there are many questions beyond a yes or no consent that we have to ask. Of course,

00:38:31.120 we understand. And I think that's why this is all tied together, but we understand that when it comes

00:38:36.940 to children and sexual interactions, that it doesn't matter how much a pedophile said, oh,

00:38:41.940 this child consented, we understand that there are different dynamics and different ethical questions

00:38:47.060 at play than a simple yes or no, because that child doesn't have the capability of consenting.

00:38:51.940 That is always true when it comes to different kinds of power dynamics. And what you're talking about

00:38:56.520 is that in most cases with, with women who choose to be surrogates, there is a power dynamic there. 1.00

00:39:02.400 Many times they are poor, destitute women in places like Ukraine. And the only way they think that

00:39:08.660 they're going to be able to get out of poverty is by taking the $30,000 to carry someone's baby.

00:39:15.260 So is it really a choice? Is it really a choice? Same thing when it comes with abortion and all

00:39:21.380 kinds of things. Speaking of Ukraine, we saw the consequences of that too. Babies left without

00:39:26.500 parents, without anyone to care for them because of surrogacy. Yeah. And it's, you know, when you

00:39:32.820 look at who the number one target for surrogacy is in the United States, it's our enlisted military

00:39:38.080 wives. You know, husbands are enlisted men in the military and the big fertility surrogacy industry

00:39:44.720 targets are advertising to military wives. So it's, it's a money amidst an, it's an economic

00:39:51.820 inequality issue. And, you know, what little girl grows up going, you know, I want to be a paid sex 1.00

00:39:59.320 worker. All right. I want to be a paid surrogate. You know, where do I go to school? How do I study to 0.97

00:40:04.480 be that? You know, women, little girls don't grow up. You know, there's situations that have presented 0.90

00:40:10.060 in their life and circumstances that have come about that have led them to not choose, but in, you know,

00:40:19.520 because of economics, sometimes do things that they don't want to do because they need the money.

00:40:24.980 Yeah. I mean, overwhelmingly egg donors are just trying to pay off school debt, you know,

00:40:29.840 and the egg donor ads are heavily targeted to young women at universities, you know, who they know they

00:40:35.360 have a lot of debt and they may be graduating in a very uncertain job market. Yeah. And I'm sorry,

00:40:41.200 I know that this is like kind of intense or some people think it's intense, but I think a lot of

00:40:46.000 Christians don't think about this, but egg donation is child abandonment. Again, I think

00:40:51.300 some people think that it's okay to make money that way, or you're choosing to do it, or you're

00:40:56.800 being selfless. But especially from a Christian perspective, if we are called to care for our

00:41:03.180 children, care for our family in the New Testament, we're told that not caring for your family makes you

00:41:07.440 worse than an unbeliever. And people don't think of egg donation in that way, or sperm donation 1.00

00:41:14.000 in that way. But it actually is. It's abdicating your responsibility. It is abandoning what will be

00:41:21.040 a child, what will be a future child. And again, no one seems to be asking the question,

00:41:27.840 like, where do the rights of the child come into all of this? It's just about what adults want.

00:41:34.300 Yeah. I speak a lot on university campuses, and a lot of times they'll invite me to show my film

00:41:40.640 Egg Exploitation or my other film, Anonymous Father's Day, which focuses on sperm donation.

00:41:46.200 And I always tell the young students in the audience that you're not donating anything.

00:41:52.160 You are selling your future children.

00:41:54.660 Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. They do, you know, I didn't think about that. They do call it donating,

00:42:00.680 but it's not donating. It's not donating. You donate your items to Goodwill for no money.

00:42:06.280 You don't donate your sperm or your eggs. You are actually getting paid for that. You're selling

00:42:11.980 them, which is very different. You know, you talked about people being targeted on social media,

00:42:17.080 and Cosmo actually covered this, kind of surprisingly maybe, at the end of July. So they said social media

00:42:23.960 is encouraging young women to become egg donors. There's that word again. But is it actually a good 0.70

00:42:29.620 idea? So the author of this piece said that over the past few months, the social media algorithms

00:42:35.340 have been feeding her ads to donate her eggs. The donor goes through counseling, then treatment

00:42:41.400 that artificially suppresses the donor's hormonal cycle, usually through a daily injection over a

00:42:46.720 two-week period. Donors are then injected with hormones to boost the number of eggs produced.

00:42:51.920 A few days before collection, the donor is given an injection of HCG, which matures their eggs.

00:42:56.960 Then the eggs are removed while the woman is sedated. The woman may feel discomfort or pain for a few 0.98

00:43:01.020 days afterward. The eggs will either be frozen or mixed with a sperm sample that day from the

00:43:06.940 intended father of the child. So women are getting targeted Instagram ads to do this to their bodies, 1.00

00:43:13.340 which is also so strange to me because I'm constantly told that there are too many children

00:43:17.300 in the world and that we have an overpopulation problem. And yet the same kind of people seem to

00:43:21.460 be targeting women with this kind of thing. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, there's just Google

00:43:27.860 World Egg Banks. There's one in Arizona. You know, they want to be the providers of eggs for the

00:43:35.400 world. The United States owns, I want to say, over 75% of the global sperm market. Egg and sperm are called

00:43:45.580 gametes. And so, you know, gametes fetch a lot of money, make a lot of money. And people don't think that

00:43:53.300 it's harmful because, again, they're just fixated on the end product, which is this cute little healthy

00:43:57.920 baby that somebody is going to get that really wants it. But, you know, egg donation is risky.

00:44:03.020 The FDA just slapped another warning label on a drug called Lupron. Lupron is what is used to block

00:44:09.440 puberty in young children that think they're born in the wrong body. Lupron has been used for years

00:44:17.460 with egg donors. That's the first drug that they're given. And two of the women in my film,

00:44:23.620 Exploitation, suffered a massive stroke. And the FDA warning that was just put on Lupron last week,

00:44:30.840 as it relates to using this as a puberty blocking drug, related to pressure in the brain.

00:44:38.620 And what is a stroke? It's the brain.

00:44:41.640 Right. Oh, yes. We talked about that, how these puberty blockers at FDA is saying that it's causing

00:44:46.420 vision loss, it's causing brain swelling in minors. Also, just interesting, I just thought

00:44:50.860 about this, apparently using Lupron, which I'm pretty sure isn't, was that the medication that

00:44:56.220 is also, it used to be used for pedophiles to basically chemically castrate them?

00:45:02.940 Is that the same medication or is it? Yeah, yeah. What Lupron does is it, the reason it's used to block

00:45:11.060 puberty is because it stops the development of testicles and ovaries that produce egg and sperm,

00:45:17.500 right? And so in that regard, it was used on pedophiles because it sort of medically castrates

00:45:25.960 them. Gotcha. So, and that's been being used on children to block puberty. And you're saying that 0.59

00:45:32.300 that is also being used for egg donors as well? It has been for years. And it's what most people

00:45:39.820 don't realize is, you know, the FDA gives different ratings to drugs based on how harmful and dangerous

00:45:45.120 they are, how carcinogenic they are. And Lupron has what's called a category X rating. And a category

00:45:51.080 X rating means if you are taking this drug with this category X rating and you get pregnant, 0.80

00:45:57.200 you will have a child born with disabilities. Not you might have, but you will have a child. And so

00:46:03.280 when I think of the patient population of the egg donor, these are often young girls on college

00:46:08.480 campuses who are sexually active, but they're told don't get pregnant, don't have sexual intercourse 0.90

00:46:14.540 while you're going through your egg donation process. And how many times have you heard about

00:46:19.360 people that aren't compliant and don't follow doctor's orders? So they're kind of playing with

00:46:23.980 fire. And think about the egg donor or the minor child who you're blocking puberty. These are not

00:46:29.420 patients. They have no medical need. There's nothing wrong with their bodies to be putting these

00:46:35.060 powerful, dangerous drugs in them. I also just think about the fact, and again,

00:46:40.580 this is probably something that could get us kicked off YouTube. And so I'll try to be as cryptic as

00:46:44.600 possible. We were told that a particular medication for COVID, that it was very, very dangerous to use

00:46:51.480 the off-label uses of this particular drug that has been given to millions and millions of people for a

00:46:57.220 very long time for different reasons. We were told that you can only use it for river blindness,

00:47:02.820 that you can only use it for one thing, but you can't possibly try to use it with COVID. That's

00:47:07.520 very dangerous. But when it comes to something like Lupron, you can use it on all kinds of

00:47:12.540 patients for all kinds of reasons, even knowing that it's category X. That apparently is perfectly

00:47:18.980 safe, but using a drug that has been safely used for millions of people around the world for COVID

00:47:23.980 is not. Isn't that interesting? It's almost like one makes money and the other one doesn't.

00:47:28.140 It's just when we want to play fast and loose with the facts because they fit our narrative.

00:47:33.800 You know, and many, many, many drugs are used off-label. And a lot of times it's just absolutely

00:47:38.920 fine. I mean, the FDA approval process of getting a drug to market is quite lengthy and very expensive.

00:47:44.600 So, but once a drug is on the market and have, which is Lupron, Lupron was first FDA approved for

00:47:50.520 treating men at end stage prostate cancer. Again, because it does the menopause, it does the shrinking of

00:47:56.040 the prostate. And so, and then it went on later and got, I think, an FDA approval for treatment of

00:48:02.420 endometriosis in women. But, you know, it's used off-label as a puberty blocking agent. It's used

00:48:07.960 off-label, you know, with women who are becoming egg donors, egg sellers. So yeah, it's convenient to

00:48:14.840 sometimes say you can't use it because it's off-label, but other times it's okay.

00:48:26.040 Okay. I want to get your reaction to this story and I guess kind of just this topic. And this is

00:48:35.120 the one that we'll end on. So this is according to Daily Mail, two-thirds of applications from

00:48:41.120 single people to become the parent of a surrogate child are done by men. That raises a lot of red

00:48:49.620 flags for me. Almost two-thirds of applications from single people to become the legal parent of

00:48:53.680 a surrogate child have been from men. Single men. We're not even talking necessarily gay men. We're

00:48:58.400 talking about single men. Since the law changed three years ago to provide singletons with the

00:49:02.700 same surrogacy rights as couples, this is in the UK, 82 applications were made by single intended

00:49:08.420 parents according to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. Of those, 54 were men.

00:49:15.860 The experts said that the figures echo anecdotal evidence of a growing interest among single men,

00:49:20.780 both gay and straight, in parenting alone. That's a little troubling to me, Jennifer. What do you

00:49:26.960 think? Yeah. There's some red flags. There's some red flags that that's a growing trend. Single men. 1.00

00:49:33.600 Men having babies and now single men having babies. We actually, as a side, we have,

00:49:38.860 history was made in California. Again, my apology tour on the state of California. We have three men,

00:49:44.960 the first gay poly thruple that have two children through egg selling and surrogacy. And all three 1.00

00:49:53.540 of the men are listed as fathers on the birth certificate. So these children have no mothers,

00:49:57.440 no women listed on their birth certificate. So we have three men having babies. We have two men

00:50:02.160 having babies. And now we have single men. You know, I smell something rotten.

00:50:08.940 Um, you know, you know, the story of the Japanese billionaire who many years ago now, um, hired 13

00:50:18.260 women and was granted custody of all, all these children that these surrogate women, he had like 0.99

00:50:22.900 a little harem of children. I mean, I, I think, uh, child pedophilia, I think pornography, child 0.82

00:50:30.740 pornography ring. I mean, all kinds of nothing. Again, I can point to with facts and evidence,

00:50:35.280 but I just, I smell something untoward. No, I, no, on that one, I am sure that there was

00:50:42.000 actually reporting about that. There was actually reporting that it was, there was abuse there. It

00:50:46.880 wasn't just, Oh, he's, you know, father Christmas. He likes kids. It, there, there was some like

00:50:52.600 exploitation going on with that Japanese tycoon. And I'm sure that you saw the couple and this is

00:50:58.200 not, I don't think it's surrogacy, but it's the couple out of Georgia that was actually just

00:51:01.780 arrested because they adopted two young boys and ended up filming child sex abuse material

00:51:07.680 with those young boys. And look, I understand that can happen with any couple that can happen

00:51:13.540 with any type of people. I'm not saying that is only exclusive to, you know, one particular demographic,

00:51:19.120 but it does speak to the greater likelihood of those kinds of consequences. When you are creating

00:51:26.640 a child with the intention of tearing apart the biological ties that they have, of course,

00:51:34.400 adoption is one scenario that is different than purposely creating a child with the intention

00:51:40.780 of taking away them from, uh, taking them away from their mother, which is the egg donor or taking

00:51:45.860 them away from their father, which is the sperm donor, which is what commercial surrogacy does. 0.99

00:51:51.080 There are consequences to that, not just for the child, but also for the parents.

00:51:56.920 Yeah. And I'm not advocating for surrogacy. I'm a total abolitionist on the issue. I don't want to

00:52:02.860 see it regulated, but you know, at, at first blush, you hear these stories about all these, you know,

00:52:09.000 growing trends of just single men. And unlike adoption, there's no background checks done on

00:52:15.000 intended parents who are paying to buy eggs, buy sperm, rent wombs, you know, get children there. 1.00

00:52:21.580 You know, there's none of that that's happening to vet. Are these children going into wonderful homes?

00:52:26.880 And when you look at the international level of it, it's really even more, I mean, you don't even know

00:52:32.100 who you think you're having babies for. If in fact, those are going to be the people when those

00:52:36.540 babies leave America and go to a different country, who will they actually really even go to? 0.78

00:52:42.200 Yeah. Right. Kids have a right to a mom and a dad. And when you take that away,

00:52:48.920 they, there will be repercussions. Ricky Martin, he recently said, now he was also recently accused

00:52:57.140 by his nephew of like incestual sexual predation. So that's troubling. And he also said recently, 0.62

00:53:05.240 this is November, 2020. I have a couple of embryos waiting for me. So I think that you've referred

00:53:12.020 to frozen embryos as souls on ice, that again, I guess just don't have rights. And if you are

00:53:18.940 someone who wants them, you can choose to implant them at any time, you can choose to throw them in

00:53:23.620 the garbage at any time, or you can choose to just allow them to be frozen completely indefinitely.

00:53:29.920 It's just up to the whims of the parents, right?

00:53:32.200 Or you can donate them to science or research. So that's sort of the whole human cloning embryo

00:53:39.460 stem cell debate that we had under the George Bush presidency. Yeah. So yeah. And I can't take credit

00:53:46.560 for souls on ice, because actually Lisa Monday wrote a Mother Jones article during the great stem

00:53:51.380 cell debate of George Bush era. And she called them souls on ice. So I'll give credit for her.

00:53:56.720 It's a good phrase. I mean, it allows you to think about it.

00:54:00.160 Yeah. And you know, I'm not Catholic, but you know, one of the Catholic documents actually

00:54:03.500 talks about the absurd fate, the absurd fate of the frozen embryo. Somebody who heard me on one of

00:54:09.880 our past shows I've done with you, Allie, reached out to me just yesterday and goes, what do you think

00:54:14.280 about embryo adoption? And I'm like, I've written and spoken so much, you know, here, go read this

00:54:18.880 stuff. And then if you still have questions, ask me about that again. But yeah, it is. And we've

00:54:23.980 got, you know, well over a million in the United States frozen human embryos. And I just got an

00:54:29.940 email from some big people in Washington, DC the other day, because now everybody's scrambling with

00:54:35.140 the Dobbs decision. And what does that mean for IVF? And what does that mean for frozen embryos and

00:54:41.540 embryo creation? And so I'm already seeing, you know, probably in the next year or two, things will

00:54:46.500 really ramp up legislatively, because we've never really had any kind of legislation around assisted

00:54:52.680 reproductive technology. Yeah. Maybe because for the last 50 years, everybody's been fighting the 0.87

00:54:58.840 Roe versus Wade debate. So it's unclear to me how that will all shake out, because I know pro-life

00:55:05.780 people love IVF. Yeah. So it'll be really interesting. They think that they do. And many haven't thought

00:55:14.900 about it, or they're afraid that criticizing the process of IVF and what goes into it and the possible

00:55:20.240 consequences means that they don't believe that children created by IVF are made in the image of

00:55:25.760 God, or they feel bad because they took part in it. And of course, that's not the point of what we're

00:55:32.540 saying. But we are asking, you are asking the ethical questions that should have been asked a long

00:55:37.320 time ago. People can go listen to our previous two episodes if they have more questions about IVF.

00:55:43.400 I do want to play this video just so people kind of understand the process,

00:55:48.280 this seemingly beautiful, perfect process of surrogacy and egg donation. This is a couple

00:55:54.940 that I guess was on TikTok, adopted. I believe it's a baby girl or not adopted, sorry, bought this

00:56:02.360 little baby girl through egg selling and surrogacy. Here's how this brave new world looks today.

00:56:11.360 So this is how we chose our beautiful egg donor. So we wanted her to have lovely big eyes. I wanted 0.96

00:56:16.900 her to have really thick hair because I've had two hair transplants. I wanted her to have a really 1.00

00:56:21.000 wide, nice smile and just look like a kind person. Yeah. And we wanted her to be creative because we 0.52

00:56:27.140 love the arts. Yeah. So how it works is you join up with the egg donor agency and you literally go

00:56:32.340 through thousands. That's what Stuart did. That's what I did. I went through thousands,

00:56:35.560 thousands, thousands. I shortlisted them, sent them to Francis and let him decide. And then we had,

00:56:39.560 I had three or four in front of me and then we had a few Zoom calls with the ones that we liked

00:56:43.320 and then the first egg donor, let us down. Fuming. Second egg donor, let us down. Fuming. And then by

00:56:50.780 the third, we literally found her and I was like, oh, she's incredible. And when we got on the Zoom

00:56:55.720 call, we were like, be calm, play it down, don't be too keen. And luckily she said yes. And this is

00:57:02.540 the result. Tell me what you think. Disgusting. I mean, there are, you know, literally catalogs and,

00:57:11.460 you know, heterosexual couples do this too. Um, cause they want a particular baby that looks a 0.76

00:57:16.340 particular way. Uh, they want the right sex. They don't want down syndrome. They want eye color. 1.00

00:57:21.880 They want ethnicity. You know, it's just, you know, we have a, a horrible case out here in

00:57:26.760 California with a gay couple that did egg and, you know, egg buying and surrogacy. And, you know, 0.99

00:57:32.740 they wanted a boy and then they found out that they're going to get a girl and they're, you know,

00:57:36.300 they have a lawsuit. You know, we, we don't want just babies. We want the kinds of babies we paid

00:57:41.740 for and we ordered. And it's just, you know, it's sickening. It is. It is. This is glory. This is 0.53

00:57:48.960 like, you know, glorified or, you know, celebrated. I mean, we should be shunning people that do this

00:57:54.120 kind of stuff. It's eugenics. It's eugenics. It's the very same stuff that Planned Parenthood was 0.83

00:58:01.100 started with. And of course, like Planned Parenthood, it's all connected. It started as

00:58:06.120 a eugenics movement and it also was a pioneer, especially Margaret Sanger in the reproductive

00:58:13.760 technology and birth control technology, which that's another thing that women don't get informed 1.00

00:58:19.320 consent about. In addition to all the other things that we talked about, it is also then connected to

00:58:26.520 the puberty blockers and the hormones that are distributed by Planned Parenthood to minors.

00:58:32.440 And then, of course, abortion. And many of these surrogates, right, sometimes they are forced to

00:58:38.040 actually get abortions from the parents that originally paid them to carry a child, right?

00:58:44.140 It's written into their contracts, you know, that they are agreeing in advance to either terminate the

00:58:49.360 pregnancy or reduce it if they're, you know, end up with twins or triplets and the purchasing parents

00:58:55.440 decide that they don't want two or three babies. So we've had quite a few cases where women, 1.00

00:59:01.160 even though they had signed the contracts in agreement that they would do that when it when

00:59:05.360 they were faced with being asked to do it, they had a really hard time doing that. And then, of

00:59:10.800 course, it's all punitive. This, this, this, you know, you are in breach of your contract,

00:59:15.180 you're going to have to pay all the money back, you're going to have to keep these babies and raise 1.00

00:59:19.040 them because we don't want them. It's just, it's horrific. It's horrific. Think about that young girl.

00:59:24.220 Who would want these people to be parents? Exactly. And think, think about that young girl 0.99

00:59:29.000 who, I mean, I guess if she is not aborted, and she is given to these two men, say they even,

00:59:38.460 you know, grow to love her or whatever. I'm just terrified of even like the prospect of them having

00:59:42.640 custody of her. But growing up, realizing that they were engaged in a lawsuit because they didn't

00:59:48.620 want her because of their gender. The same people who, by the way, think gender is arbitrary,

00:59:54.640 I guess, believe it's so important. Social media lives on. It will be just a matter of time till

00:59:59.580 that child is old enough to, you know, find out on online that her, her dads, you know, wanted to

01:00:06.480 sue because they didn't get the product that they ordered. Yeah, man, it all goes back. Degradation

01:00:11.620 of the body and the complete ignorance of children's rights and who we are and what we're for. Thank you

01:00:22.160 so much for raising the questions that you do and for doing the work that you do. How can people

01:00:27.100 support you, reach out to you, watch your documentaries?

01:00:30.040 Well, our website is cbc-network.org. I'm very active on Twitter as well as Instagram,

01:00:38.620 less so on Facebook. We have a huge YouTube channel, Center for Bioethics and Culture Network,

01:00:45.160 where all of our films that I've mentioned while we've just been chatting today are there to watch

01:00:49.760 for free. And, you know, stay tuned and follow us because you'll be the first to know we're going

01:00:54.720 to release the Detransition Diary, Saving Our Sisters on September 19th, which is just a few

01:01:00.160 weeks away. So yes, and chip in if you want to help. We still are trying to close our budget.

01:01:05.940 Yes. Hey, that's really important for and we'll include the link, Jennifer, to that. But anyone who

01:01:10.720 is listening, even if you can just donate five dollars or maybe you can donate five thousand

01:01:14.940 dollars, I don't know what your resources are, but Jennifer is funded in the work that she does 1.00

01:01:20.240 to change people's minds on the things that we're talking about that have real consequences on the

01:01:24.520 most vulnerable people in our society. It's funded by people like you. It's funded by generosity.

01:01:30.640 And so if you are able to donate anything to Jennifer and her projects, that is you making

01:01:35.800 an investment in things that really matter and have a consequence on people's bodies and minds and lives

01:01:41.600 and babies. And so thank you so much, Jennifer. Really encourage people to support you in any way

01:01:47.560 that they can. Thank you.

01:01:54.520 Okay. I just want to end with some encouragement, some reminders for you guys. I know that the things

01:02:08.120 that we talk about, we talked about this a little bit yesterday at the end of yesterday's episode,

01:02:12.560 they can make us feel like the world is going to hell in a handbasket, that there's no hope.

01:02:17.200 We're scared of our federal government. We're scared of the powers that be.

01:02:20.500 It seems that things are getting crazier and less moral, less sane by the minute. But the fact of

01:02:27.560 the matter is, and I always remind you guys of this, because I don't think that I can remind you

01:02:32.680 enough that God is completely and totally 100% sovereign over every single aspect of our lives,

01:02:41.880 every second of every day, everything that goes on in the big picture and the small. He's in all of it.

01:02:48.240 There is nothing that surprises him. There is nothing that throws him off. There is nothing

01:02:52.660 that catches him off guard. There is nothing that shocks him or takes him aback. He is completely and

01:03:03.540 totally sovereign. There is nothing that can thwart his sovereign will. And even though that's confusing

01:03:11.120 to us as finite, fallible human beings, as we ask ourselves, how could God allow evil to occur?

01:03:17.420 How could God allow all of these injustices to be perpetrated? How can he allow bad to go on?

01:03:25.780 He is not doing nothing. He is not sitting back on his hands wondering what's going to happen next.

01:03:32.500 He is not a God who comes in and cleans up the mass later. But the fact is, is that his eternal plan

01:03:37.600 of redemption is always going off without a hitch and his anger, his wrath is kindling against

01:03:43.960 injustice, even as his patience is being sustained as more people come to him. So there will be a day

01:03:51.960 when he takes care of all of the evil that we talked about today, that we've talked about on so

01:03:56.760 many other episodes. All the different forms of wickedness that we see in this world will one day

01:04:01.520 be put to an end. He will wipe every tear, every sickness will be healed, every sorrow will be

01:04:07.640 completely disappeared. And we won't have to worry about the things that we are discussing.

01:04:15.620 He is coming back. He will rule in perfect righteousness and peace. And so what is our role

01:04:22.520 until then? Our role is to care about the wickedness and injustices that are going on and to try

01:04:29.680 with all of the resources and the strengths and the talents and the abilities that we have to do

01:04:34.980 something about them. God is not doing nothing about the wrongs that we see. He uses Christians 1.00

01:04:41.520 to help make things right, to display his power, to display his glory, to soften and change hearts and

01:04:48.920 to bring other people towards him to advance his kingdom. That is what he is doing, even if it doesn't

01:04:54.420 make headlines, even if it doesn't trend on Twitter, even if it's not what people

01:04:59.300 are talking about in your life or online, his plan is still going off without a hitch. And he will one

01:05:07.840 day do something about wrongs, about injustice. Psalm 37 is a wonderful reminder of how he will take

01:05:16.160 care of evil. So until then, we trust him. We obey him. We do the next right thing in faith,

01:05:23.540 with excellence, and for the glory of God. That's the only thing we can do. The reason I have this

01:05:28.760 podcast is because I feel like from a very young age, God gave me the ability and desire to talk

01:05:35.960 and to care about and to discuss the things that I'm passionate about, the things that I really

01:05:43.060 believe matter, to try to persuade people to a certain viewpoint, to try to talk to other people

01:05:49.200 that have interesting viewpoints that can enlighten me and can enlighten you. I have always wanted to do

01:05:54.220 what I do now. And so I am simply using the small set of resources and abilities that I have to do

01:06:03.440 what God has called me to do and to try to make my little tiny mark on the span of eternity and to make

01:06:10.880 my little small impact in the sphere that God has providentially placed me in. You're called to the

01:06:17.620 same thing in a different way because you've got different talents. You've got different connections,

01:06:21.940 different resources. You're in a different place. You're in a different stage of life. You've got

01:06:25.780 different things going on that God is calling you to. And it could just be changing the next dirty

01:06:32.260 diaper. It could be cleaning dishes with joy, or it could be something else. It could be taking that

01:06:40.220 next opportunity or that next risk that God is calling you to. All it is for all of us is using

01:06:48.280 what God has given us for his glory. And that's why we have peace in the midst of all this craziness.

01:06:53.780 That's why we have joy. That's why we have hope. Because our call as Christians is the same that

01:06:58.800 has been for thousands and thousands of years now, and that is to simply obey God for his glory.

01:07:06.240 To be a refuge as the church of both courage and clarity, even as the culture is just wallowing in

01:07:12.820 confusion and chaos. So thank you guys for supporting the show, for allowing me to do what

01:07:20.920 I do, and for all of your encouragement and your prayers in that. We truly are a community and a

01:07:26.340 family raising a respectful ruckus together about the things that matter. Thank you so much for all of

01:07:34.440 your feedback and your support and your encouragement and prayers over the years. If you love this podcast,

01:07:38.580 feel free, leave it a five-star review, or you can message me and you can tell me what we can do

01:07:44.320 better for you, what you like, what you don't like about the show. I take that step to heart. So

01:07:49.260 thank you guys so much. We will be back here on Monday.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 11, 2022

Ep 659 ｜ How the Fertility & Gender Industries Exploit Girls for Profit ｜ Guest： Jennifer Lahl

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