Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 756 ｜ Dystopia Update： Brain-Dead Surrogates？｜ Guest： Libby Emmons

00:00:00.000 A medical journal suggests brain dead women should serve as surrogates for those who are looking to rent a womb to grow their child. 1.00

00:00:08.480 This is just one of many examples of the ethical problems with the commercial surrogacy industry, and it demonstrates how grossly unjust the process already is.

00:00:18.020 We will be discussing this and other surrogacy-related stories today with Libby Immons, editor-in-chief of Postmillennial and a former liberal feminist who woke up to the reality that leftism is a force for destruction.

00:00:31.900 She's got a fascinating perspective that I know you are going to appreciate so much.

00:00:36.760 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers, American Meat Delivered.

00:00:41.620 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:00:43.320 Use code Allie at checkout. 1.00

00:00:44.720 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:48.020 Libby, thanks so much for joining us.

00:00:58.660 First, before we start, can you tell us who you are and what you do?

00:01:03.520 I'm Libby Immons.

00:01:04.680 I'm the editor-in-chief at the Postmillennial.

00:01:07.420 We are a breaking news and culture outlet, and I've been with the outlet for a couple of years.

00:01:12.940 We have a great team, and it's really an exciting time to be working in media, given the amount of backlash against it and how much people are tuning in.

00:01:25.360 So that's been really interesting.

00:01:26.700 My background is in theater, however.

00:01:29.540 My master's degree is in playwriting.

00:01:32.520 I studied at Columbia University.

00:01:34.780 Before that, I studied theater and philosophy as well.

00:01:37.700 So I have a long history of making theater in downtown New York City.

00:01:43.540 I was in New York City for a very long time.

00:01:46.140 I'm a mother to a wonderful 12-year-old boy.

00:01:49.320 And, yeah, that's pretty much my whole story.

00:01:54.080 And let's see, you have not been a lifelong right-wing conservative activist.

00:02:00.360 That's correct?

00:02:01.840 Mm-hmm.

00:02:02.540 That's correct.

00:02:03.740 Yeah.

00:02:04.260 What was really interesting to me, my whole life, I've been very in favor of free speech.

00:02:10.220 I'm very pro our Bill of Rights.

00:02:12.700 I'm also Catholic.

00:02:14.720 I'm opposed to abortion pretty much across the board.

00:02:19.420 I just don't think people should do it.

00:02:21.140 And that's been true, you know, since before my confirmation when I was just a young woman.

00:02:28.760 I'm also very anti-war.

00:02:31.280 And one thing that's interesting is these positions, which used to be widely accepted on the left, are no longer particularly leftist positions.

00:02:41.920 So it was very interesting to watch the ground shift.

00:02:46.400 But you considered yourself on the left, you considered yourself a liberal feminist, correct, even holding all of these views?

00:02:52.100 Yes, that's correct.

00:02:53.340 That's correct.

00:02:54.660 Yeah.

00:02:55.080 And that used to be okay.

00:02:56.400 You used to be able to be a pro-life Democrat.

00:02:58.940 At this point, I am no longer a Democrat.

00:03:02.540 I changed my voters registration so that I am actually registered Republican at this point.

00:03:08.840 I voted for Trump in the last election, and I voted straight Republican in New York City.

00:03:15.400 I voted for Lee Zeldin.

00:03:17.460 I've watched the feminist movement entirely and thoroughly betray women, destroy women's rights, and destroy, you know, women's ability to make their own choices in a lot of ways with regard to their thoughts and how they want to live their lives. 1.00

00:03:33.860 It's so upsetting to see what happened to that.

00:03:37.680 But in a lot of ways, I think feminism is to blame for the current state of affairs where women are now, according to new research, meant to be called egg donors if they are mothers, which any mother will tell you to mother is a verb. 0.98

00:03:52.140 This is not a one-time thing.

00:03:54.640 It is not a bodily function to mother. 1.00

00:03:58.060 That's not what that is.

00:04:00.100 Yeah.

00:04:00.240 Yeah.

00:04:00.520 So at this point, my views are squarely on the conservative side.

00:04:05.320 Yeah.

00:04:05.620 But I will say that I stand on my values and my principles, and I'm not particularly beholden to the ethos of any political party.

00:04:14.100 Right.

00:04:15.060 But you considered yourself growing up, I guess, a liberal feminist, and I guess certainly in college, it wasn't until, as you said, a few years ago when you said, wow, actually, I'm looking at my views and my values, and they don't align with the current feminist movement or the current left.

00:04:32.940 You said you voted for Donald Trump.

00:04:34.720 Was there an experience that occurred, or was it just kind of a slow realization that, wow, the left is getting further to the left, especially with the gender madness and what you're talking about, the erasure of women, and wow, I just don't align with that anymore.

00:04:53.100 Like, what did that kind of moment look like when you realized, I am no longer a Democrat and I'm voting Republican?

00:04:58.720 Well, it was really sort of a slow burn, and I would say that it started closer to 2010, or maybe even a little prior to that.

00:05:08.560 But by 2013, the plays that I was writing were satirical.

00:05:14.020 They were a thorough send-up of the entire idea that men could become women. 0.55

00:05:19.820 I was writing about, I had this totally crazy play that my friend and I performed, where one of the characters in the play, who was our boss, decided to be trans and was looking for a uterus transplant and then a surrogate and all of these things.

00:05:38.800 So you saw this stuff coming before most of us did.

00:05:41.900 If you're talking like 2010, I mean, you must have been really in tune where that movement was headed.

00:05:47.120 Yeah, well, I was there sort of where it was beginning, which was in the arts.

00:05:53.520 So a lot of this emerged from the extremely leftist arts movement.

00:06:00.000 And arts didn't used to be necessarily leftist.

00:06:02.960 They were focused on aesthetics and beauty and honesty.

00:06:06.160 Certainly, that was the kind of theater that I was interested in making.

00:06:09.580 And that began to change.

00:06:10.920 And the idea started to emerge while I was in grad school.

00:06:14.360 I watched it morph from the artist being, you know, meant to be telling the honesty and truth of their own heart and their own vision and what they could see of the world.

00:06:25.960 And it started becoming that artists needed to be activists.

00:06:29.980 And the idea of art activism started to emerge.

00:06:32.820 And I remember thinking and talking to colleagues and saying, isn't that actually just propaganda?

00:06:37.440 That's what propaganda is, is when you take an artistic form and you warp it to to do the work of a political movement.

00:06:45.620 That's propaganda, not art.

00:06:47.500 And I was very frustrated by that because I didn't get into making art to do the work of a political movement.

00:06:55.440 Politics was really completely outside of the realm of what I was interested in.

00:06:59.920 I wanted to discuss beauty.

00:07:01.560 I wanted to discuss, you know, relationships and human nature.

00:07:06.200 I wanted to discuss myths and legend and tell the stories of who we are in our time.

00:07:12.540 And suddenly we had to be activists.

00:07:15.360 And there was no way I was going down that road.

00:07:17.720 So I ended up I ended up being a little bit on the outs with my artistic colleagues, even prior to my complete turn away from the entire leftist agenda.

00:07:31.360 Yeah.

00:07:31.720 And I specifically want to talk to you about your passion, not for, but against surrogacy and the surrogacy industry.

00:07:40.520 As you know, this is not something that a lot of people talk about or even think about.

00:07:45.880 And even on the right, as you know, most people don't really have or I wouldn't even say most people.

00:07:52.640 I would say most people in the comment, the commentator realm don't seem to have a problem with it.

00:07:58.580 And I have been after I talked to Jennifer Law, whom I know, you know, and my eyes were kind of opened like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even really think about the fact that this was happening.

00:08:09.680 When I started talking about it, when I would post about celebrities going, you know, going through the surrogacy process and I would criticize it.

00:08:17.620 I would get messages from Christian conservatives, people on the right saying, you know, I thought you were pro-life.

00:08:24.000 You're attacking these people.

00:08:25.960 This is so judgmental.

00:08:27.440 Why do you care?

00:08:29.000 People go through a lot.

00:08:30.700 Surrogacy is fine.

00:08:31.740 And what I realized is that all those people saying saying those things, they were like I was previously in that I just didn't know.

00:08:41.140 They just don't know. 0.99

00:08:42.340 They are actually ignorant. 0.99

00:08:43.520 And most people don't want to be educated because it puts them in the awkward position of having to go against something that a lot of even so-called conservatives are for. 0.99

00:08:55.020 So tell us about why.

00:08:56.840 Why do you care about this?

00:08:58.200 And when did you start really researching this?

00:09:01.840 Yeah, I care about women and I care about children and I care about children growing up with their parents.

00:09:08.180 I think that that it matters.

00:09:09.900 You know, we we are always saddened when a child has to grow up without their mother.

00:09:15.580 We know that that's painful.

00:09:17.300 Of course, we've all had friends who've lost their mothers or fathers at young ages.

00:09:22.160 And we know the kind of damage that losing a mother can have on somebody for their whole life.

00:09:27.540 It takes a very long time to get over that if you ever really do.

00:09:31.640 Um, I had a child in 2010, as I said, he's 12 years old and I realized the incredible, um, strain on a body going through pregnancy.

00:09:45.660 It's, uh, it's really quite a thing.

00:09:47.960 I mean, there's good sides, there's bad sides, there's what is happening to my body sides.

00:09:52.240 I mean, all of those things combined.

00:09:54.200 And I learned about surrogacy.

00:09:57.380 I also talked to Jen Law. 0.95

00:09:58.880 Um, I had been researching about surrogacy prior to that because I had actually been commissioned to do a play at the Williamstown Theater Festival in, I want to say, 2007, 2008, something like that, where I was working with a director who specifically wanted to do a project about single motherhood by choice.

00:10:18.100 Um, she was getting older, she did not have a partner, she was wondering what her options were, and so we had gotten into it.

00:10:26.040 Um, I ended up doing a lot of research into sperm donation.

00:10:29.400 I discovered that people are meeting each other online due to ancestry apps and things like that, finding that they have all been the product of the same sperm donor.

00:10:40.720 And I started digging into surrogacy as well as to what that looks like.

00:10:45.520 There was also a radiolab report, which I, which was some time ago at this point, it might have been 2008, I'm not entirely sure, uh, that talked about a gay couple from Israel who had purchased eggs from a woman in Estonia.

00:11:00.200 Um, and then those eggs were mixed with sperm from, from both men, both men wanted to be fathers.

00:11:08.320 If I'm remembering the details correctly, that, uh, embryo was then implanted in an Indian woman in Nepal.

00:11:16.120 Nepal does not allow Nepalese women at the time to go through surrogacy, commercial surrogacy.

00:11:22.200 India did not allow surrogacy, so women from India who sought the income from being surrogates would go to Nepal and be surrogates there. 0.97

00:11:31.540 Uh, there was an earthquake in Nepal.

00:11:34.000 The men went to get the baby.

00:11:35.940 Um, no one could figure out whose baby it was or where the baby should go or what the nationality of the baby was.

00:11:43.260 And I started wondering, who is this baby?

00:11:46.400 Where are they from?

00:11:47.540 What is their nation?

00:11:48.780 Who are their parents?

00:11:50.680 Uh, what is this about?

00:11:52.540 Are they Indian?

00:11:53.640 Are they Nepalese?

00:11:54.480 Are they Estonian?

00:11:55.480 Are they Israeli?

00:11:56.340 Who are they?

00:11:57.280 What kind of creature has just been manufactured to be motherless?

00:12:01.340 And I got to thinking about the manufacture of motherless orphans and what that means for the future of humanity, what that means about how we value motherhood, how we value our children, how we value their futures and their understanding of who they are and where they come from. 0.93

00:12:20.200 All of us, when we look at our mothers, we say, you know, I have her nose.

00:12:23.940 I have her eyes.

00:12:25.640 I think like her about this.

00:12:27.420 These are similar habits that we have.

00:12:29.380 We make the same gestures here.

00:12:30.920 Or we think about where she came from and her ancestors.

00:12:35.440 And we go back through our maternal line, just like we go back through our paternal line.

00:12:40.180 And how is this child supposed to figure out who their mother is?

00:12:44.380 Are they, where are they from?

00:12:47.060 Where do they set their ground?

00:12:49.180 Where do they find a home?

00:12:50.600 Everything has to be created for this child.

00:12:53.120 And that's true of so many who are manufactured through commercial surrogacy.

00:12:58.200 And I do make a distinction between voluntary surrogacy and commercial surrogacy.

00:13:05.220 I think they are two vastly different things.

00:13:07.620 As in, um, as in voluntary surrogacy versus commercial, you mean like, um, personal, like a sister carrying, uh, something more along those lines.

00:13:21.280 Yeah.

00:13:21.520 If you have a brother, for example, and their family cannot conceive.

00:13:25.180 And you want to do this for your brother.

00:13:27.600 That's something that I think is up to the people in that situation.

00:13:31.940 But I don't think that we should be buying or selling babies.

00:13:35.660 Yeah.

00:13:36.340 I, I always draw the distinction too.

00:13:38.840 I'm not, honestly, I don't think that even that transaction is without ethical and moral questions.

00:13:46.180 I will say that.

00:13:47.640 Oh, I thoroughly agree.

00:13:48.760 Right.

00:13:49.140 Yeah, I agree.

00:13:49.720 But I totally agree that there are fewer moral and ethical questions there because of everything that you just mentioned.

00:13:56.720 You're not completely detaching that person from their family history, from their biology, who they are.

00:14:03.380 You are creating so many degrees of separation for that child from their origin.

00:14:08.500 Because not only do you have to go back to the woman who just saved you, you also have to go back to the woman who's, you know, whose eggs you actually came from, whose body you actually came from.

00:14:19.140 Now, explain to people.

00:14:20.600 I know the answer.

00:14:21.540 A lot of people who have been listening to this podcast know the answer.

00:14:24.240 But for those who say, okay, but how is that different than adoption?

00:14:28.940 Because adoption, you're also taking a child away from their biological parents.

00:14:32.800 They may never find their biological parents.

00:14:35.000 And therefore, you're also separating them from their family history.

00:14:37.800 How is that any different?

00:14:41.360 Well, I know that there have been a lot of ethical questions regarding the adoption industry.

00:14:46.860 And for sure, there have been questions raised about, you know, international adoptions and whether or not the agencies facilitating those international adoptions are doing so ethically and with the families and children in mind.

00:15:00.100 And that's definitely a concern.

00:15:02.120 However, I feel that with adoption, it's substantially different and my family would not be the family that it is, you know, my extended family without adoption.

00:15:11.180 And I'm very grateful for the women that gave up my family members so that they could be in my life.

00:15:16.900 And I know that it's been difficult for those family members to reconcile having been, you know, internationally adopted.

00:15:25.040 But I do think there's a difference in that these children already exist.

00:15:31.560 They need loving homes and families.

00:15:33.960 We are not creating them to fulfill our own desires and whims to be biological parents.

00:15:41.280 We are instead accepting the gift of life that God has given us and that God has given these children.

00:15:48.160 And we are seeking to create a family from human beings that already exist with God's love.

00:15:53.840 And I think that that's a huge difference.

00:15:56.660 I feel that in a lot of ways when we undertake surrogacy, what we are doing is we are saying, you know, our biological material is so incredibly important that we need to rent women and buy babies in order to further that line. 0.94

00:16:12.960 And I don't think any of us can possibly come up with that as anything other than our own desire.

00:16:23.080 That's what that is.

00:16:24.000 It's the fulfillment of adult desires to obtain posterity and legacy.

00:16:29.840 It has nothing to do with the children that are created through that process.

00:16:35.360 Yeah, that's the distinction.

00:16:37.160 You are adopting a life that has already been created, who needs a loving home, whose mother is saying, I can't take care of this child versus purposely creating a child to take them away from their mother or father or both.

00:16:53.480 In some cases, depending on what the circumstances.

00:16:57.620 And it's interesting what you said about this is really about adult desires.

00:17:02.760 We really are placing children in this case, children that are part of this commercial surrogacy industry on the altar of adults.

00:17:10.600 Those whims, those adults are not willing to adopt, they say, and this is kind of message that I get a lot.

00:17:15.860 Well, you know, you have biological children, so you have no idea what it's like to long for a biological child and to not be able to fulfill that for whatever physical reason, whether it's a gay couple or whether they're dealing with infertility or something, something like that.

00:17:31.880 And it's true in the sense that I do have biological children, but that doesn't change what you just said.

00:17:38.820 That doesn't change the fact that the child in this case is being created to go through a process that is not natural and may very well be harmful.

00:17:47.220 And yet you see tweets like this.

00:17:48.480 I'm sure you saw it from Mark Lowen was his name.

00:17:52.760 A lot of conservatives were commenting on this.

00:17:54.940 I was commenting on this.

00:17:55.960 He's the BBC Rome correspondent covering Southern Europe.

00:17:59.020 That's what his Twitter bio says.

00:18:02.460 And then he tweeted with his partner, after six weeks in wonderful Canada and tearful farewells to our incredible surrogate and friend, it's time to go home to Lisbon with our new family member, our most beautiful hand luggage.

00:18:15.900 Canada, you are a shining light of democracy and equality.

00:18:18.560 Thank you for letting us fulfill our dream.

00:18:22.420 And they post a picture with what I'm assuming is a beautiful little baby girl.

00:18:27.840 I mean, there are so many parts to every single line of that tweet that, to me, points to the injustice of surrogacy.

00:18:38.200 The first being, well, we keep puppies with their mothers longer than six weeks.

00:18:42.660 But, I mean, break this down for us.

00:18:44.480 Like, how do you think this is an indication of part of the problem with commercial surrogacy?

00:18:48.380 I think it's just a complete foray into narcissism, and I think that it's a shame.

00:18:54.700 And I do wish the family all the best, and I hope that they have a wonderful future, and I wish their child all the best as well.

00:19:02.740 I do feel, however, for the difficulty that this child will have upon realizing that they have no mother and that they intentionally were created to have no mother.

00:19:13.320 And I think that that is a crime.

00:19:15.520 I think that's not a punishable crime or anything like that.

00:19:19.260 But I do think that it's not in keeping with human nature to want to deprive a child of their mother.

00:19:26.580 And further, this child will never know who their mother is, to the extent that they know who gestated them.

00:19:32.000 They may never know who they are actually biologically related to at all.

00:19:39.300 And I think that that's really a shame.

00:19:42.400 It is hard once the child exists.

00:19:44.860 You really just want the best for them, and you want the best for the family, of course.

00:19:49.740 But it is a shame that this is how they sought to undertake this.

00:19:54.220 And I do feel that it is in service to the fulfillment of desire, as opposed to keeping the interests of the created child in mind.

00:20:09.300 I mean, children need a mother and a father.

00:20:20.640 And sometimes that makeup isn't possible.

00:20:24.380 Sometimes the mother or the father dies.

00:20:26.220 Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances where that's not possible.

00:20:29.720 But as you mentioned, to purposely manufacture a situation in which a child does not have a mother or a father, these two men may be great dads.

00:20:39.920 Maybe.

00:20:40.320 They might be great dads to this child and love this child.

00:20:43.320 I have no idea what kind of people they are.

00:20:45.520 I'm not doubting that.

00:20:47.100 But neither of them can be a mother.

00:20:48.980 They can't be their mother. 0.66

00:20:50.320 They can't even be a form of an adopted mother.

00:20:52.260 They can't be a mother figure.

00:20:53.860 And it's kind of wild to me how I see this on the conservative side a lot.

00:20:59.020 Like the same people who reject this absurd idea that a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man.

00:21:07.420 They embrace the equally absurd idea that two men or two women can just as well raise a child as a man and a woman.

00:21:17.740 And that is the same math like trans woman or trans women or women. 0.68

00:21:22.940 It's equally absurd to say, well, a woman can be a dad or a woman can replace a dad or a man can be a mom or replace a mom.

00:21:31.740 Like it's just as destructive of a lie.

00:21:34.520 But I think a lot of people are just scared to talk about it because I don't know.

00:21:40.120 They don't want to be met with all these different kinds of accusations and labels.

00:21:43.880 Yeah, I mean, since I spoke out about it, I've written about it for years.

00:21:49.520 I've been opposed to surrogacy for years.

00:21:51.360 That's not new.

00:21:52.120 But I recently spoke out about it on a podcast on Timcast.

00:21:56.500 And I was I was met with excessive vitriol after that.

00:22:00.000 And I was just like, well, that's really your problem, everyone, because I'm not going to change my views based on your whims.

00:22:06.860 And I think it's interesting there have there are a lot of Christians who will push back against this idea that surrogacy, commercial surrogacy, the commercial surrogacy industry is an abomination against women and children.

00:22:20.300 And Christians will push back against that. 0.96

00:22:22.600 And it's very hard for me personally to reconcile my Christian faith with the idea that women should be rented and babies should be bought and sold. 0.99

00:22:31.260 I just don't see how that's something that God and his infinite wisdom is looking for human beings to do.

00:22:39.760 And you must have some sort of God complex when you undertake to manufacture children to satisfy your own desires for posterity and legacy.

00:22:50.060 Not every line goes forward.

00:22:52.700 Not every name goes on to survive for centuries and centuries.

00:22:58.480 That's just how it is.

00:22:59.340 And in terms of, you know, not having a mother as a child, I my parents divorced when I was very young.

00:23:06.060 I grew up with my father.

00:23:07.620 I my father is a great dad.

00:23:09.520 I saw my mom on summer breaks and winter breaks on school vacations.

00:23:16.380 I adored spending time with my mother.

00:23:19.660 And I wished that she was in my life every day.

00:23:23.200 And that that pain and that difficulty that I had in trying to adjust to that has literally never gone away.

00:23:31.760 I mean, it's just never gone away, you know, no matter how much time I've spent with her.

00:23:35.920 And she and I have a great relationship now.

00:23:38.040 We had a good relationship when I was a kid.

00:23:39.900 I just longed for her all the time.

00:23:42.240 And so, you know, to see that in children who have been adopted, you understand, you know, you can see that that's very difficult.

00:23:51.960 And to understand what a mother means to you or what a mother means to me, having had an absent mother.

00:24:00.240 And I had a stepmother who was, you know, very determined to be a good mother to me.

00:24:05.300 And she she tried so hard, I have to say.

00:24:10.500 And she's, you know, a beautiful person.

00:24:13.000 But there's really a difference.

00:24:15.600 Yeah, there's a difference.

00:24:16.580 And I know that, you know, children of surrogacy are going to feel that as they grow up.

00:24:22.060 They're going to know that they have no mother.

00:24:24.240 And I mean, that book, that classic book, Primal Wound, written a long time ago, I mean, it talks about the wound that happens in adoption.

00:24:35.520 Like, I believe that adoption is beautiful and redemptive.

00:24:38.000 That's not to say the adoption industry doesn't have its problems.

00:24:41.260 I mean, we saw that horrible story out of Georgia where those two men adopted this special needs child from a Christian adoption agency, horrifically abused them, all that stuff.

00:24:49.140 So I think that there are plenty of problems, but adoption in itself is a beautifully redemptive process where you're taking that life already created, giving them a loving home.

00:24:59.160 And I think that that is wonderful.

00:25:01.560 But there's still a wound there.

00:25:03.340 Like, we still recognize that that is not the ideal.

00:25:06.080 The ideal for the child would be to be with their biological mother and father in a stable home where they are loved and taken care of.

00:25:13.860 Adoption is the next best thing.

00:25:15.820 And so, like, there is a wound there, even in wonderful situations where loving parents adopt the children.

00:25:24.520 The children are still wondering very often, who am I?

00:25:28.320 Like, where do I come from?

00:25:29.620 Where do I get this trait from?

00:25:31.540 Who am I connected to when their parents are talking about who their ancestors are?

00:25:35.380 Well, that's normal.

00:25:36.900 I think God created us that way.

00:25:38.520 I think that's part of why he calls himself father and why he cares so much about orphans.

00:25:43.540 Like, he is our home and our refuge.

00:25:46.520 And I think that's beautiful.

00:25:47.520 But he also created the family for that sense of belonging.

00:25:51.220 So, I mean, that's exacerbated many, many times when you're talking about surrogacy.

00:25:56.300 When you realize that your mom was picked out of the catalog, has no connection to you whatsoever, does not care about you, does not feel anything for you.

00:26:04.720 Doesn't even know you exist.

00:26:05.740 Doesn't know that you exist, but you have her eyes, you have her laugh, you have her propensity to, you know, I don't know, to do math, whatever it is.

00:26:16.420 And then the woman who carried you is also probably, maybe she's still thinking about you at some point.

00:26:21.760 You do form that emotional bond.

00:26:23.280 That's a whole other part of this.

00:26:24.640 And you heard her heartbeat for nine months.

00:26:28.260 You were, you knew her smell, you knew her voice for nine months of your life.

00:26:32.280 You've been ripped from both of those.

00:26:34.260 And you are constantly gaslit by people saying, no, be happy with what you have.

00:26:40.840 Your parents went through so much to buy you.

00:26:44.020 And you shouldn't even be thinking about that.

00:26:46.240 That's a really, really tough existence.

00:26:48.620 I think that's really hard, too.

00:26:51.540 And with adoption, too, you have the potential for open adoptions where the child can still know who their parents are.

00:26:59.180 And perhaps, you know, parents have children and they're not able to care for them.

00:27:03.360 And open adoption, I think, gives at least an avenue to have an understanding of where you're where you came from, you know, where your ancestry came from.

00:27:14.060 And even as you have the opportunity to be raised in a loving home, you know, maybe you can get a little bit of both.

00:27:21.320 And I think that that's very valuable, too.

00:27:23.640 Yeah.

00:27:24.780 Okay.

00:27:25.420 This kind of segues, well, what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago, Des, when you were on TimCast, you mentioned that you were going back and forth with Jeff Younger.

00:27:35.000 And I'll just remind everyone who that is.

00:27:36.560 That is the Texas dad who went through that horrific, horrific story where the mother of their twin boys was saying that one of the twin boys was actually a girl trying to transition the little boy at a young age.

00:27:48.900 We're talking like six, seven, eight years old to be a girl.

00:27:52.120 He fought this.

00:27:53.120 He said, no, this is a boy.

00:27:55.060 This is my son.

00:27:56.060 My wife is manipulating my son. 0.99

00:27:58.640 The court sided with her.

00:27:59.920 Apparently, they've moved to California so she can pursue this whole transition thing.

00:28:03.380 I have so much sympathy for Jeff Younger, and I'm so sad about the whole situation.

00:28:08.220 But he made a comment on Twitter and then, I guess, repeated it on TimCast when you were also on TimCast, basically saying, look, in order for men to preserve their progeny, they just need to use surrogates, not mess with the wily women out there who are going to basically take our sons and castrate them. 0.91

00:28:26.500 You know, I understand his pain, but I don't agree with him.

00:28:29.600 I just want to play everyone, y'all's interaction on TimCast and then get your commentary on it.

00:28:36.540 You'll see that I was swarmed by feminists when I suggested that men may have to start using surrogacy and adoption if they want to have children. 1.00

00:28:46.040 And a lot of conservatives and religious people are really mad at me right now over that.

00:28:50.240 Well, surrogacy is an abomination.

00:28:52.600 And surrogacy should be entirely illegal, commercial surrogacy.

00:28:56.940 What about someone else hosts the baby?

00:28:58.480 It's not someone else, no.

00:29:00.340 It's when you rent a woman's body, jack her full of drugs, and then take her baby once it's born. 1.00

00:29:05.500 But unfortunately, it's the only way for fathers to be secure in their posterity under the law.

00:29:10.160 There's absolutely no reason.

00:29:11.900 I think we should change the laws.

00:29:13.060 There's absolutely no reason that women should be subjected to men's whims and have their bodies forced into that for money.

00:29:20.480 There's absolutely.

00:29:22.040 Well, it's consensual if they're getting money, ideally.

00:29:25.280 I mean, I agree that no one should be forced into it.

00:29:26.800 Sure, it's consensual to buy women. 0.99

00:29:28.700 Yeah, you can buy women with money. 1.00

00:29:30.300 You can definitely do that.

00:29:31.520 You can definitely do it.

00:29:33.220 But that doesn't make it right.

00:29:34.380 I just loved your response to that and just even your attitude in the face of all of that, because I'm sure that all of the people there probably had maybe a slightly different view than you.

00:29:45.680 So just like add on to that a little bit.

00:29:48.280 That consent piece, I think, is so important because that is what I hear a lot.

00:29:52.260 Well, they consent to it.

00:29:53.360 These women in commercial surrogacy, they're consenting to the egg donation. 1.00

00:29:56.500 They're consenting to be surrogates.

00:29:58.260 They're making a lot of money.

00:29:59.420 They like it.

00:29:59.960 They're happy.

00:30:00.460 Whatever.

00:30:00.820 Why is that not a good argument?

00:30:03.680 It's not a good argument for a variety of reasons.

00:30:06.520 And if we look back in the history of America, we can see that you're not allowed to sell yourself into slavery.

00:30:13.340 You're just not allowed to do that.

00:30:15.560 You're not allowed to sell yourself into indentured servitude.

00:30:20.080 We had that prior to the founding of the United States.

00:30:23.140 That was extant in the 13 colonies.

00:30:25.940 You're not allowed to do that now.

00:30:27.560 It's just not possible.

00:30:29.020 But for some reason, people think that it's perfectly fine for women to consent to sell themselves into being gestating wombs for the whims of, you know, whoever wants to buy those babies. 0.89

00:30:42.720 And so, yeah, we have historical and legal precedents that you're not allowed to sell yourself into slavery or indentured servitude.

00:30:51.060 Excuse me.

00:30:51.860 And that's sort of something that I think is very akin to commercial surrogacy.

00:30:57.260 Also, I think that when we look at the industry itself, no one wants to consider the toll that it takes on women's bodies.

00:31:07.000 And there's a couple of things that's important to consider and realize, which is that women, when they undertake surrogacy, they have to go through intensive IVF.

00:31:18.520 IVF, as we know, you get pumped full of hormones.

00:31:21.740 You get implanted with a bunch of embryos.

00:31:24.920 But women who undertake surrogacy with the egg of another woman also have to take drugs that prevent organ rejection because it's the same process. 0.84

00:31:34.880 A woman's body, a human body, doesn't want somebody else's liver. 1.00

00:31:39.000 And a woman's body, a woman's uterus doesn't want somebody else's egg. 1.00

00:31:42.600 So you have to take these kinds of drugs as well.

00:31:45.020 Additionally, in the surrogacy industry, the only women who are eligible to become surrogates already have gone through pregnancy.

00:31:54.220 That means you already have a child.

00:31:56.640 So now you are a woman who is selling her body and your children get to watch you sell your body. 1.00

00:32:02.460 Further, if you are married, which a lot of American surrogates, this is a big industry in the United States, not just in Canada, and many European countries, it's illegal.

00:32:11.900 France, it's illegal.

00:32:13.100 So American women are married. 1.00

00:32:17.640 A lot of surrogates are married. 1.00

00:32:19.660 So you're married.

00:32:21.260 You have a husband in your home.

00:32:22.700 You have children.

00:32:23.840 They are watching you undertake this sale of your body and then the sale of what would be another child or a brother or sister.

00:32:32.920 And I think that that would be incredibly detrimental to the family.

00:32:37.000 Could you imagine being as emasculated as that if you're a man and you're home and you have a family and you're meant to take care of your wife and your children and do all of that and then you watch your wife sell her body to another for another man's whim?

00:32:53.940 I mean, could you imagine?

00:33:23.920 And I also think that, like, you compared it to indentured servitude or slavery.

00:33:39.920 I think some people would say, well, it's not the same because they're getting paid $40,000 or whatever.

00:33:45.360 I would also compare it to prostitution. 1.00

00:33:49.520 Sure, you are consenting. 0.97

00:33:53.360 Sure, prostitutes say that they are consenting to sex. 0.78

00:33:56.960 But how did they get to that situation? 0.87

00:33:59.480 Why are they there?

00:34:00.400 How desperate are they for money that they are willing to sell their bodies and to endure all of the terrible consequences that come with prostituting yourself?

00:34:11.540 And really, is it truly consent when you are at the point of desperation that you are willing to do absolutely anything just to get by?

00:34:21.720 Many of these women, especially the women in places like Ukraine and Nepal and places like that, technically they are consenting because they are signing on the dotted line.

00:34:32.920 They are doing it out of powerlessness and helplessness and desperation.

00:34:37.740 So is that really consent?

00:34:41.340 And another thing is, is that I just reject entirely, though, this construct of consent-based morality.

00:34:48.680 Not to say that consent in general is not important, but it is not the only thing that determines if something is moral or not.

00:34:58.100 There are some things that people will consent to that I will still say, that's wrong, and I don't think it should be legal.

00:35:04.480 Think about it.

00:35:05.020 Like, just let your mind go.

00:35:06.420 Think about all of the sick stuff that people could consent to that we still say, sorry, that's not legal or that's immoral or whatever.

00:35:13.880 Just because someone consents to something doesn't mean it's right.

00:35:17.120 And even if you do obsess over this consent-based morality model, which, as we're about to talk about, is really, really flimsy, the child doesn't consent.

00:35:25.560 The child isn't consenting to this whole process into being bought and sold.

00:35:30.960 Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.

00:35:32.960 A hundred percent.

00:35:34.040 And I think that it's crazy also with prostitution, which I also compare it to. 0.98

00:35:38.360 You know, I've said that surrogacy is like prostitution, except you're getting screwed for nine months. 0.96

00:35:43.120 I think that it's also true that it's hard to say, if a woman is consenting to prostitution, is she really consenting to having sex with 20 men per day for money? 0.96

00:35:54.240 Is there any amount of money that would make you willingly do that day after day?

00:36:00.060 I can't imagine a sum that I would be comfortable if I had a daughter or my sisters or myself to go through with something like that.

00:36:09.680 A hundred million dollars?

00:36:10.980 Not really even close.

00:36:13.120 Um, to, you know, what I think the lives of our daughters and sisters and mothers are worth.

00:36:21.360 Yeah, absolutely.

00:36:23.120 And people also don't realize like, okay, we're not even just talking about the baby that gets to be born, their consent and their well-being.

00:36:30.860 Like you just said, the woman has to go through very intense IVF. 1.00

00:36:34.160 A lot of times that means that not everything that's implanted makes it.

00:36:39.420 So you're talking about multiple miscarriages in some cases, in a lot of cases, cases that I know about these, um, the couple that's buying the baby from first the egg donor, then, you know, using the surrogate's body.

00:36:51.460 They want to pick out certain embryos.

00:36:54.200 They want a boy or they want a girl. 0.71

00:36:57.160 They want to make sure that they don't have any genetic anomalies.

00:37:00.240 And so they create all of these children, put them in, you know, the Petri dish.

00:37:05.340 And then the doctors, the scientists say, okay, these are good embryos.

00:37:10.300 We'll implant these.

00:37:11.600 We'll see how many make it.

00:37:12.860 There are so many lives lost.

00:37:15.900 I guarantee there is not probably a single commercial surrogacy situation in which there was like one embryo created, one embryo implanted and one baby born.

00:37:27.000 I guarantee you at every single commercial surrogacy situation, you are looking at basically abortions, like in some cases, because you're going into it knowing that you are going to kill those children or placing children in a situation, you know, is dangerous.

00:37:42.840 On top of all of that, the pregnancy itself is very dangerous for the mother and child in surrogacy for the reasons you've already mentioned.

00:37:50.580 Yeah.

00:37:51.200 And there was a case actually of a woman who underwent surrogacy, didn't know who the client was.

00:37:58.420 Turned out the client was a man who lived in his parents' basement and had no family other than that and who was undertaking parenthood on his own.

00:38:06.920 Um, and when he found out that all of the embryos that she had, um, you know, been implanted with survived, he asked her to abort some.

00:38:18.360 Yep.

00:38:18.560 He asked her to abort some after he was already buying these babies and paying to rent her body. 1.00

00:38:23.360 It's just absolutely shocking.

00:38:24.840 There was another case where it turned out that the person who was the man, again, a single man who was buying children from a surrogate was actually intending to use them, um, you know, for really nefarious purposes.

00:38:40.740 Um, and that was, I think in Australia, I was following that case and yeah, I mean, really difficult things.

00:38:48.060 And what kind of single man wants to raise children all by himself without a mother ever being in the picture? 0.78

00:38:54.660 It's one thing to have a divorce, you know, and then you're raising the child, but you know, this is absolutely, um, this is not something that I understand why a man would want to do that, would want to, uh, take a mother out of the picture entirely.

00:39:10.960 Yeah, I know every single red flag that I have goes up when I hear that a single man wants to go through the surrogacy process for a child.

00:39:24.340 I mean, I think commercial surrogacy should be illegal in general, as it is in many countries, by the way, a lot of people don't.

00:39:30.420 A lot of Western European countries.

00:39:32.220 Right.

00:39:32.540 And that's why Europeans come to North America to buy their children here. 1.00

00:39:36.480 Right.

00:39:36.820 But I, I especially believe, I especially believe that single men should not be able to buy these children. 1.00

00:39:45.380 I mean, literally every red flag.

00:39:48.080 All right.

00:39:48.680 I want to talk about this story that originally kind of kicked this off.

00:39:52.060 Why even wanted you on?

00:39:53.660 It took us a while to get to it, but this kind of goes back to what we were talking about, about how flimsy this whole consent based morality model is because it just so quickly leads to, well, what is really consent?

00:40:06.820 Like, does it really, does consent really matter in all circumstances?

00:40:11.600 I mean, we see obviously all of that with the gender madness, but we also see it when it comes to surrogacy. 1.00

00:40:17.540 And this is a line from Redox or a headline medical journal floats concept of using brain dead women as surrogates through whole body gestational donation. 0.80

00:40:28.720 An entry from the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics is prompting outrage from women on social media after theorizing that the bodies of vegetative or brain dead female patients could be utilized as whole body gestational surrogates.

00:40:41.320 The article, originally published in November 22, it's titled Whole Body Gestational Donation.

00:40:47.180 It proposes that it may be a may be viable to utilize the donated bodies of women for gestational purposes in the same manner that donated organs are used.

00:40:57.500 So, I mean, just react to this.

00:41:00.000 Tell me, tell me your thoughts about how terrible this is.

00:41:02.440 It's so terrible.

00:41:04.440 And I think generations of science fiction writers that we have their work tell us exactly how terrible this is.

00:41:11.220 We can read Brave New World and we can see that creating pods made out of made out of women's organs in order to create a new group of human beings is not an acceptable way to go. 1.00

00:41:23.080 And it actually, not only is it immoral to that woman, but I think that what it spells is a very deadly and unpleasant direction for humanity.

00:41:33.080 When we create children that have no past, who do these children belong to?

00:41:40.300 When we create children that have no way to figure out who they are or where they're from, what kind of futures can we expect them to have?

00:41:49.920 And what kind of quality of life can we expect them to have?

00:41:54.420 And how are they supposed to treat other human beings?

00:41:57.680 How are we supposed to have any value of each other if we don't have any, you know, provenance of ourselves?

00:42:05.120 Oh, my mother is that brain dead woman in the hospital there. 1.00

00:42:08.900 That's just not acceptable.

00:42:10.180 Not only is there no consent for the brain dead woman. 0.95

00:42:12.860 I mean, who's supposed to consent for her?

00:42:14.480 Is her family just supposed to sell her off as though she were, you know, like, I don't want to use mean language here.

00:42:22.040 Well, she's supposed to give consent before she became brain dead. 1.00

00:42:24.020 How is she supposed to do that? 1.00

00:42:24.700 Oh, I think I'll be brain dead next time.

00:42:25.540 Is this our organ donation thing?

00:42:27.940 Yeah.

00:42:28.480 Like, you put it on your driver's license?

00:42:30.140 Put it on their organ.

00:42:30.800 Yeah.

00:42:31.300 I think that that's unacceptable.

00:42:33.440 And I think that it's cruel.

00:42:34.600 I think it's cruel not only to the individuals involved, but it's cruel to humanity.

00:42:39.420 And I think it betrays our human nature.

00:42:41.660 Instead of turning to our better angels, instead of seeing ourselves as children of God, we see ourselves through this method.

00:42:49.180 We would be seeing ourselves as lumps of flesh, as commodities.

00:42:52.920 And the human being, in a Christian sense, is not a commodity.

00:42:57.200 We are not here to be bought and sold.

00:42:59.140 We are here to be children of God.

00:43:01.180 We are here to seek grace.

00:43:03.000 We are here to give kindness.

00:43:06.680 You know, that's what we're here for.

00:43:08.720 We're not here for just to further ourselves.

00:43:12.100 So this Darwinian approach is not in keeping with our best selves at all.

00:43:17.980 And if anyone thinks that consent in any way would be involved in this, even when it comes to the family, like, you haven't been paying attention.

00:43:39.040 Consent is manipulated.

00:43:41.720 It is manufactured.

00:43:43.240 It is redefined so that the people who want to do something and are willing to pay money to do it can do it.

00:43:50.500 And by the way, I just think about how you're going to have to impregnate this woman with someone else's embryo and fill her with it. 0.99

00:43:58.000 I mean, you're basically going to have to rape her in order to do that. 1.00

00:44:01.760 So, like, let's consider all of that. 0.99

00:44:03.740 And then you consider, like, you've been pregnant.

00:44:06.240 I've been pregnant.

00:44:07.260 All the things that the doctor tells you to do when you're pregnant.

00:44:10.000 Well, you need to get exercise.

00:44:11.360 You need to make sure you're talking to the baby, playing music to the baby, reading books to the baby.

00:44:16.160 You need to make sure that you're eating all of these things, that you're moving around, that you're not laying on your back. 0.98

00:44:20.340 You know, like, all these things that a brain-dead woman can't do. 1.00

00:44:23.400 So not only are you not thinking about her at all from the so-called bodily autonomy crowd, but you are also not considering, once again, the well-being of the baby.

00:44:33.960 I mean, it's just wild.

00:44:36.540 We're dealing with our depopulation crisis that we're having.

00:44:39.960 It's not overpopulation.

00:44:40.920 It's depopulation crisis.

00:44:41.860 Not by saying, hey, let's value marriage.

00:44:44.820 Let's try to value love and togetherness and true healthy intimacy and childbearing.

00:44:50.440 But let us instead manufacture new.

00:44:53.280 And as you said, very Huxleyan ways, like straight out of Brave New World.

00:44:59.360 Let's try to create those new, very scary ways to create children.

00:45:05.140 I mean, it really is just horrors beyond our imagination when we start to play God.

00:45:13.020 Yeah.

00:45:13.640 And when we go from what's natural to what's possible via technology without ever pumping the brakes and asking any questions.

00:45:20.700 And there's also certainly been cases of women obtaining the sperm of their deceased husband and trying to use that to get pregnant.

00:45:32.060 And I don't think that that's particularly better just because there's less strain, if you will, on the male body in that case.

00:45:41.160 I don't like that either.

00:45:42.020 Yeah.

00:45:42.560 No, I just don't think that's how it's supposed to be.

00:45:44.880 Again, when we go from what's natural to what's possible via technology, that's not always a bad transition.

00:45:50.840 But we do have a responsibility, especially as Christians who understand human nature and that we're all made in the image of God.

00:45:56.800 Is this okay?

00:45:58.280 Is this an okay process?

00:45:59.880 Yeah.

00:46:00.420 And we have to understand what it is that we want humanity to be.

00:46:04.320 What are human beings?

00:46:05.580 What is our purpose?

00:46:08.160 What do we want our societies to look like?

00:46:11.060 What do we want our culture to look like?

00:46:12.760 And what kind of value do we place on each other?

00:46:16.120 What kind of value do we place on life?

00:46:18.000 And I think in a lot of ways of late, Western culture has become something of a death cult. 0.99

00:46:25.080 We embrace abortion by saying that this is better for women to kill their babies. 1.00

00:46:31.980 I just don't see how that's possible.

00:46:34.140 We embrace euthanasia, murdering young people because they say that life isn't worth living for whatever variety of reasons instead of trying to talk them out of it.

00:46:44.700 And we embrace the dissolution of the family.

00:46:47.800 We embrace the dissolution of mothers. 0.53

00:46:50.440 We embrace the dissolution of biological sex, which is actually a remarkably beautiful thing.

00:46:56.720 We don't look at ourselves as, you know, creatures who are here at God's grace or searching for God's grace.

00:47:05.940 We don't consider the meaning of life anymore.

00:47:08.620 We consider the meaning of our own desires.

00:47:11.740 We consider how to fulfill our whims at any given moment.

00:47:16.040 You know, eat, eat, eat all the cake, have all the sex, manufacture all the children, you know, whatever stage of life you're in.

00:47:24.440 There's a way to justify the fulfillment of your own personal desires, you know, using technology, using whatever you want.

00:47:35.660 And I just don't think that it spells a good future for humanity.

00:47:39.960 It spells a future for humanity where death is at the center of our culture.

00:47:44.420 And that's really not life should be there.

00:47:46.740 Yeah.

00:47:47.580 Yep.

00:47:47.940 Man, there's so many other things that I want to talk to you about.

00:47:51.300 It's really all the consequence of exchanging the God of scripture for the God of self.

00:47:55.680 I mean, that has what seems like petty consequences, pursuing whatever makes you happy in the moment, even if it hurts other people, relationships and things like that.

00:48:03.760 But it has big consequences.

00:48:05.120 What we just talked about, when we try to replace God, we see the horrors that can happen.

00:48:10.520 We didn't have time to get into it.

00:48:12.540 But as you mentioned, Canada is pushing euthanasia.

00:48:16.780 And it's not just for, not that it's okay in this case either, but it's not just for the elderly who have, who are dying of cancer.

00:48:23.940 But as you mentioned, it's also young people who have a really good chance of surviving a sickness. 0.98

00:48:29.580 And yet they are being told, well, you should probably just kill yourself.

00:48:32.940 And then we've got a Yale professor, the New York Times reported, who suggested that mass suicide for old people in Japan could possibly be a good thing because there's so many old people, so few young people.

00:48:43.440 I kind of don't understand how that solves the problem of needing more babies.

00:48:48.600 But what we're seeing across the board is, I'm sure you would agree, is just the denigration of life because, again, we've replaced God with the self.

00:48:57.980 And so we no longer believe that human beings are made in God's image.

00:49:02.320 We no longer believe that human beings have souls and innate value, which is what, by the way, Western civilization was built on and why we have come to it.

00:49:09.860 Which is what makes democracy possible.

00:49:12.520 Yeah, that's what makes democracy possible.

00:49:14.360 And when you say that we've replaced God with the self, we have so thoroughly done that. 0.90

00:49:19.240 And we have replaced the soul with gender. 1.00

00:49:21.460 And that's where we stand now.

00:49:23.120 And it's really it's really a denigration of humanity and human beings.

00:49:29.820 We don't seek to to live out our lives in God's image.

00:49:33.920 At this point, we seek to live them out according to our own whimsy and desire.

00:49:37.900 It's just absurd.

00:49:39.280 It's absurd on the face of it.

00:49:40.620 And if you read Western literature and the history of our culture, you see that this can only lead to bad things.

00:49:48.640 This really isn't new.

00:49:50.040 It goes all the way back to the garden where the first temptation that Satan gave Eve was, don't you want to be like God?

00:49:58.340 You can be powerful.

00:49:59.920 You can have all knowledge.

00:50:01.940 He just doesn't want you to be like him.

00:50:04.040 Bite the apple.

00:50:05.620 Eve bit it. 0.57

00:50:06.440 Here we are.

00:50:07.360 And still reaping the consequences of that sin.

00:50:10.460 Thank you so much.

00:50:11.620 Thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

00:50:13.560 And thank you for your strength on these issues.

00:50:15.180 I so appreciate it.

00:50:16.080 Can you tell people where they can find and follow you?

00:50:18.100 Yeah, thanks for having me on.

00:50:21.440 It's been a real joy.

00:50:22.700 My name is Libby Emmons.

00:50:23.980 I'm at Libby Emmons on Twitter.

00:50:25.960 And you can check out what we're doing at thepostmillennial.com every day.

00:50:30.660 Thank you so much.

00:50:31.600 Yeah, definitely check out the Post Millennial.

00:50:33.200 I love going to y'all for news.

00:50:34.580 Y'all are always covering things that other people aren't.

00:50:36.700 So thanks for that.

00:50:38.040 Thank you so much.

00:50:39.040 Thank you so much.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 16, 2023

Ep 756 ｜ Dystopia Update： Brain-Dead Surrogates？｜ Guest： Libby Emmons

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 16, 2023

Ep 756 ｜ Dystopia Update： Brain-Dead Surrogates？ ｜ Guest： Libby Emmons

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Ep 756 ｜ Dystopia Update： Brain-Dead Surrogates？｜ Guest： Libby Emmons