Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 877 ｜ Should Gay Couples Adopt？｜ Guest： Katy Faust (Part Two)

00:00:00.000 There are over a million embryos, little tiny image bearers of God frozen on ice in the United

00:00:09.180 States created through IVF. What's the answer to this? Should Christians be adopting these 1.00

00:00:17.680 embryos? We'll be getting into this question, also talking more about the ethical problems

00:00:24.020 with surrogacy, surrogacy contracts, IVF in general, and then answering some policy questions

00:00:31.920 for centering on children and their welfare in this episode of Relatable, which is with Katie

00:00:39.040 Faust, founder and director of Them Before Us. This is part two of a two-part conversation. Go back and

00:00:44.860 listen to part one for the full context. This episode is brought to you by our friends at

00:00:49.280 GoodRanchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:54.020 So for these, a million, you said a million embryos, and as pro-lifers, we believe that

00:01:11.240 those are human beings made in the image of God. We know that those are human beings made

00:01:14.460 in the image of God. What do you think about, I'm sure you get this question a lot. I do too.

00:01:19.460 What do you think about adoption of these frozen embryos? They're people. So are all of those babies

00:01:25.700 that you just talked about at these orphanages. So what's the right answer? If someone wants to

00:01:32.200 adopt one of these frozen embryos, they're deciding between that and maybe, you know, a five-year-old or

00:01:37.440 a child who already, who is, you know, walking around in the world. Like what's the right and

00:01:43.900 moral way to think about that? So the first thing that we need to realize is that when conception

00:01:49.760 occurs, the people responsible for that child are the child's parents. And, you know, I would say in 0.51

00:01:56.060 the world of an unplanned pregnancy, the solution is not adoption and it's not abortion. It's parenting.

00:02:03.400 If you have a child that you have created through sex, the solution is for you to parent them, for you to 0.86

00:02:10.820 reorient your life, you and the father around the baby. So the child's right to life is protected and the

00:02:17.860 child's right to be known and loved by their mother and father is protected. So the same is true with

00:02:22.660 children who are frozen surplus children, the ones that are on ice. It's not somebody else's job, right? It's we don't

00:02:28.980 want to kill the child because they are a surplus kid. And it's not the job of somebody else to come 0.89

00:02:33.780 in and raise the child. They are your babies. You made them go get them. You might have to take out a

00:02:41.160 loan, buy a bigger house, reorganize your career plan. I know, I know a lot of even Christians who made 12 0.67

00:02:50.920 embryos and because you need to have multiple embryos available for a bunch of different tries. 0.88

00:02:56.960 Um, and the first two tries were successful. So, and some of them didn't make it. And now they've

00:03:03.220 got two kids and they're busy and they're spending money on those kids. And now their career is taking

00:03:09.120 a different turn. They're paying the storage fee for these seven kids. The solution is not to donate.

00:03:15.880 So here's, so, all right, here we go. The American society for reproductive medicine has some

00:03:21.820 recommendations for what you do with those surplus embryos. The first option is to thaw and discard.

00:03:29.680 So, I mean, like think, I mean, the dehumanizing language is already just crazy, right? Thaw them and

00:03:35.080 discard them. The second option is to donate them to research, right? Destroy those little lives so that

00:03:42.440 we can better figure out how to increase our fertility rate successes in the future. The third

00:03:48.540 suggestion that they have is donate the baby to another couple. Okay. So none of those three

00:03:55.080 options honors children's right to life and right to be known and loved by their mother and father.

00:04:00.060 The only option where children are not bearing the burden for adults, further bearing the burden for

00:04:06.160 adults is for the adults who created them to go back and get them and put them in their womb and give 0.99

00:04:12.020 them a chance at life. That is the only child honoring option. Now we've got a million kids on

00:04:18.980 ice in this country. By some estimates, 20 to 40% of them have been functionally abandoned. Some of them

00:04:24.900 have been on ice for 30 years or more. Some of their parents have died. Some of them are not paying the

00:04:30.900 storage fee and they can't even track them down. So what do you do for those kids? Well, the answer is

00:04:35.860 not to thaw and discard them or donate them to research or donate them to another couple. In that

00:04:43.700 situation, the extreme cases where there's no option to protect the right to life or to protect the right

00:04:49.060 to their mother and father, the only child honoring option is not embryo donation. It's embryo adoption.

00:04:56.200 And that is where the prospective parents go through an adoption process and they are screened like every

00:05:02.060 other adoptive couple has to be screened where whenever possible, we opt for an open adoption

00:05:07.280 where the child is going to have access to their birth parents and at least information about who

00:05:12.700 their birth parents are, if not an ongoing relationship. But then in those situations, you need to be aware

00:05:19.160 that that is not a cost-free situation for the child. And in that situation, when we are properly

00:05:27.600 understanding embryo adoption, not embryo donation, that is adults doing hard things on behalf of

00:05:33.320 children, those couples need to go in with the mindset of, I am here to shepherd you through what

00:05:38.180 is going to be the kind of questions that children in our species have never had to ask ever before.

00:05:43.900 Right? Why is it that I am older than, I'm genetically older than my own mother? Right? You're going to have

00:05:50.140 to answer those questions to your kids. Why is it that, you know, I was born and, you know, my parents had

00:05:55.140 already died by the time that I was born. And we are going to have some incredible struggles parenting

00:06:01.940 those kids. So parents who are mothers and fathers through traditional adoption, we already know that

00:06:08.780 these kinds of questions are coming for our kids, right? We already know that they're going to, they're

00:06:12.840 asking us why, why did my mom or dad give me up? You know, why is it that I was removed from my home?

00:06:19.000 And we've already recognized that part of what we're going to do as a mom or dad is shepherd our

00:06:24.460 children through what's very often painful questions. So people who are adopting embryos

00:06:30.860 are going to have to prepare for a whole nother level of that. So it is, it is not a baby needs a

00:06:39.940 womb, parents can, you know, help out ding problem solved kind of thing. It is, first of all, the people

00:06:46.180 who made the baby need to go get the baby. But if there's no other option, then embryo adoption is the

00:06:52.140 way to go. Now, the sperm and egg donor children that I know, most of them don't support embryo

00:06:58.780 adoption at all, because they are concerned that both on a public level, but also in terms of the

00:07:05.240 industry, that it won't do anything to stem the tide of the mass creation of surplus embryos. If there's a

00:07:12.800 perception that, oh, no problem, the surplus embryos are just going to get adopted, then there's really no

00:07:18.140 stop, right? There's no reason for either the public to say that doesn't seem right, or for the fertility

00:07:23.120 industry to say, maybe we shouldn't do this very often. So it's a very complicated question. All I

00:07:29.060 can say is that if you do go into it, it has to be with the child in mind, not because it's solving a

00:07:35.660 problem for you. And I would also say that you should be able to implant, if you are going to

00:07:54.620 do that, which I agree, there's, you know, it's very complicated. And while we don't say that the

00:07:59.500 five-year-old's life is more important than the embryo's life, we don't say that. That's part of

00:08:03.680 why we're pro-life. But also, like, there's, I would just say, like, there's a lot of questions

00:08:09.520 when you're deciding also, like, why you want to adopt an embryo versus why you wouldn't want to

00:08:15.480 adopt the five-year-old. There's even some heart individual things that I think someone should pray

00:08:19.720 and think through. But I think that you would agree that you also need to be able to implant that

00:08:26.040 embryo in you as the mother. Because I've heard of couples, um, I got a message the other day

00:08:33.120 saying, okay, here's a couple. It's actually their own embryo. So it's a little bit different. I could

00:08:37.900 see a scenario where it's not the own embryo. But so, uh, this couple, they have an embryo on ice,

00:08:44.140 but the mother has been told you cannot carry a child anymore. You can't, she might've even had a

00:08:49.480 hysterectomy. She can't carry a child. So they are considering hiring a surrogate to carry their 1.00

00:08:54.300 embryo. That's a very difficult situation as someone who is not for indefinitely freezing that

00:09:01.220 child, discarding that child, and also not for, uh, surrogacy. That really, my answer is like,

00:09:09.020 well, that's why we shouldn't have gotten into this problem in the first place, but you're there.

00:09:14.320 Okay. So whether it's that situation or you've got a couple that maybe they're older, they're 45,

00:09:20.200 and they're like, you know what? We want to adopt this embryo, but we need to hire a surrogate to do 0.99

00:09:24.900 it. I would say no, at least in that second situation. No, you shouldn't be adopting an 1.00

00:09:30.480 embryo. I don't know the answer to the first situation when it's your own embryo. I just don't

00:09:34.740 know the answer. Well, it's, you know, I get, um, Google alerts every day for surrogacy and for a

00:09:41.640 variety of different, you know, tags and regularly things will come up. Like right now there is a, um,

00:09:47.700 couple whose baby is stuck in Mexico, you know, this New Jersey couple created a child using an 0.86

00:09:54.520 egg donor, the father's sperm. They went to Mexico because it was a lot cheaper than using a white 0.99

00:09:59.620 womb to go, you know, gestate their child. But now the courts won't let the baby come back to the 0.89

00:10:04.060 United States and they're stuck. Why? Why are they stuck? Because they have participated in a practice

00:10:10.720 that is virtually indistinguishable from child trafficking. Right. Right. In adoption, right.

00:10:16.180 There's a lot, you know, we talk at them before us, we talk about how from the children's rights

00:10:21.000 perspective, adoption and reproductive technologies are polar opposites in terms of the way that the

00:10:27.540 practice is, is conducted. And one of the big differences is in adoption, you can never, never

00:10:33.960 pay the birth parents for the baby. Right. That's like, there are all kinds of safeguards to ensure that

00:10:39.480 money never goes from the people that are going to be adopting the child to the people that are the

00:10:44.920 child's first family. You can't pay the birth mother. You can't pay the extended family. You

00:10:48.480 can't pay the father. If you do, it's no longer an adoption. It is trafficking. So what happens in

00:10:55.380 surrogacy is the mother and father, the intended mother and the biological father are directly paying 0.63

00:11:02.640 the surrogate for the baby. And from international practice, like especially when you're looking at

00:11:08.900 inter-country adoption, that is child trafficking. And so of course, as always, the news is framing this

00:11:16.260 as, oh my gosh, this couple is suffering so bad. They can't get their baby home. And the reality is

00:11:22.860 it's his baby, but it's not her egg. It's never been her womb. And so like, is it her baby? Right.

00:11:29.460 They are paying two different women, the genetic mother and the birth mother to hand over 0.99

00:11:33.740 her baby to somebody else. And so these conflicts come up. Oh, what do we do now? We've got this

00:11:40.420 child that's stateless and can't, you know, go home to their parents. Maybe we should legitimize

00:11:45.360 commercial surrogacy. No. When you come into challenges, like we have an IVF child. Now I don't

00:11:51.640 have a womb. Should we use a surrogate? The answer is not let's legitimize, incentivize and endorse

00:11:57.280 these scenarios. We need to step back and say, how do we never get into this scenario ever again?

00:12:02.760 How this should never be happening. But instead you take these sort of problem cases and say,

00:12:08.260 look how hard this is on adults. Maybe we should make this easier on them. The answer is no. We

00:12:13.520 need to go back to the reality that you should not be violating children's right to life through these

00:12:19.120 technologies. You shouldn't be violating children's rights to their mother and father. So there's

00:12:23.200 confusion about who the mother is and you shouldn't be violating children's right to be in relationship

00:12:27.520 with the only woman that they know and paying her to sever that bond. No. Like it, when there are

00:12:34.840 troubled scenarios, you need to say, maybe we should cease the activity and the practices creating

00:12:40.540 these troubled scenarios. Yeah, exactly. Paris Hilton, a few months ago, I'm sure you saw the story.

00:12:47.640 She said that she has, there's so many problems just in this headline, just in this quote alone,

00:12:54.580 that they have 20 embryos on ice. You know, they have unlimited money so they can do this. They

00:12:59.140 have 20 embryos on ice. The reason that they're not implanting those though is because they're all

00:13:04.240 boys and she's waiting for a girl. So obviously there's a problem. She's not going to implant all 0.99

00:13:09.740 20. She's probably going to discard them, donate them, whatever. Maybe she'll indefinitely pay for 0.93

00:13:14.940 them to stay on ice because she has some kind of guilt, although she probably doesn't know fully

00:13:18.860 why. But a lot of people don't understand, one, how common it is to have at least one or two

00:13:25.860 children still on ice when it comes to even Christian IVF couples. But also, you mentioned

00:13:31.080 this earlier, the eugenics process that goes into this. Oh, this is a strong embryo. This embryo

00:13:38.400 doesn't have genetic anomalies. This one is a boy. I'm always so stunned at how many, for example,

00:13:47.880 like when two men are using the IVF and surrogacy process, like how lucky they get to have two twin

00:13:56.320 boys or to have a boy and a girl or to have, I mean, it seems like the gender they want is the 0.93

00:14:03.260 gender they get. I think people don't realize like how often eugenics actually plays a part in the IVF 0.94

00:14:08.800 process. Not for everyone, but I think it's a lot more common than we realize. And we don't call it

00:14:14.540 eugenics. I don't know what we call it. We just call it, again, meeting the parents' desires. But this 0.79

00:14:21.060 is pretty common, right? Yeah. And, you know, IVF costs like $12,000 to $20,000 per cycle. Surrogacy

00:14:28.320 pregnancies are going to definitely run you in the six figures. When you're paying that much money 0.53

00:14:33.660 for a baby, you need to get your order exactly right. And so you do want to select the sex that 1.00

00:14:40.360 you want. In fact, you know, there's a, there's a situation in California where you've got a lesbian 1.00

00:14:45.060 couple that is suing the clinic because they implanted to the wrong embryo, right? They ordered

00:14:49.440 a girl, but they got a boy. And you've got a similar situation with a gay couple who ordered a boy, 0.87

00:14:55.280 but got a girl. And so now they are suing the manufacturer, right? Because in this case,

00:15:00.140 you can actually return the product, but you can sue them for faulty, you know, design. And so what

00:15:06.440 happens when we are making children rather than begetting children? Well, we think that we own

00:15:12.700 those children, right? And if, if children are begotten, but not made, we go into it with the

00:15:18.260 mindset of, this is a gift that I'm going to receive. I don't get to decide the hair color of my

00:15:23.040 child. I don't get to decide if it's a boy or a girl. I am going into it with the mindset of really,

00:15:28.060 I exist for them, but you go into it with the mindset of, I am making the child. It's very easy

00:15:33.880 to get into the mindset of they exist for me, right? So there's unfortunately no shortage of cases,

00:15:41.740 both celebrity couples who are, you know, waiting to implant the child that they want,

00:15:46.640 or gay couples who are discarding the unwanted children that, that didn't come out exactly as

00:15:54.060 they want. You probably have heard about the situation with the woman who was pregnant as a

00:15:59.340 surrogate. The Center for Bioethics and Culture, Jennifer Law's organization broke this story just

00:16:04.660 last week where she was pregnant with the child of two men, the child of two men, right? And what that

00:16:12.000 means anytime a child has two fathers, you're really just talking about a child that has been

00:16:17.340 separated from their mother and is going to be raised by an unrelated man. That's really what

00:16:22.340 that means, you know, from a children's rights perspective. Which is statistically dangerous,

00:16:26.200 as you've mentioned. Which is always statistically risky for the child. And the, she, you know, the

00:16:33.720 surrogate got a cancer diagnosis at 24 weeks, realized she had to have very serious chemotherapy at 26 weeks.

00:16:41.560 It was going to put the risk, the life of the child at risk. She sought to deliver the baby

00:16:46.640 rather than abort the baby. But the gay couple threatened to sue her into oblivion because they 1.00

00:16:52.680 did not want a premature baby. They did not want the health problems that could go along with a baby

00:16:58.140 being born at 26 weeks. So they insisted that she abort. And we don't know exactly how that story

00:17:04.820 ended, if she found a place to deliver or if she found a place to abort. But the baby is no longer

00:17:10.140 alive. And the couple did not want the baby delivered early either because they did not

00:17:15.540 want their DNA out in the world. They would rather have their own child, which was the genetic child

00:17:22.180 of one of those two men die than alive and being loved by somebody else. So that mindset that this

00:17:32.440 child exists for me, if they're not exactly right to my exact specifications, sue them, kill them. 0.98

00:17:40.860 I mean, really what we are talking about is we are returning to the commodification of human beings 0.98

00:17:46.720 that we fought a civil war to end. I mean, that is really what's going on in the world of big fertility 1.00

00:17:52.460 right now. That's not all that uncommon. As Jennifer Law has talked about before,

00:18:08.940 some of these surrogacy contracts explicitly say, if we want you to terminate, as long as it's legal

00:18:14.960 to do so, you have to terminate. And I think, you know, the irony is, is that a lot of these couples,

00:18:19.940 I would bet if I were a betting person to this gay couple that pushed the surrogate into termination 1.00

00:18:28.060 is probably pro-choice, probably has uttered the phrase, my body, my choice. So it's your body,

00:18:34.120 your choice until it comes to surrogacy. Then all of a sudden, what really matters is that

00:18:38.820 now you acknowledge it's a baby, but that you don't want the baby to exist. And it's actually

00:18:43.940 killing a child. I posted about this. And actually, as we're recording this, I have not interviewed

00:18:51.500 that surrogate. As we're recording this, I am interviewing her tomorrow. But the episode will

00:18:57.400 probably be out before yours and mine does. So I can't say how the story concludes yet. But those

00:19:03.040 listening to this now have probably already heard it. So it's kind of confusing with all these pre-taped

00:19:07.640 episodes. But I'm glad you found her. I'm glad she's going to talk to you. Yes, we need more

00:19:12.620 stories highlighting the reality of surrogacy. And especially when it comes to abortion,

00:19:18.840 you know, in surrogacy, abortion functions as quality control, which she experienced, but and 0.97

00:19:24.840 quantity control. Right. And it's so fascinating, because you're right, the whole my body, my choice

00:19:31.100 thing goes out the window. It's very interesting when New York legalized commercial surrogacy,

00:19:36.000 one of their big triumphs was that in the in New York, if your surrogate is pregnant, and she wants 0.99

00:19:44.480 to terminate the pregnancy, she can write that was their that was their women's lib, sort of triumph 0.79

00:19:50.900 of their commercial surrogacy bill. And so now, in the state of New York, you can kill your own child, 0.98

00:19:56.640 and you can kill somebody else's child. And contractually, there's no problem. 0.99

00:20:00.640 Wow. And you know, speaking to that, when I posted about this, I got a couple messages,

00:20:05.100 probably more than I even saw. But here's one message to your point, a friend of mine's mom was 0.92

00:20:10.400 a surrogate and three embryos took. The biological parents said they didn't want the risk of three

00:20:16.840 babies and had one of them aborted the surrogate, my friend's mom wanted the third baby and offered

00:20:22.540 to adopt him or her. But it was in her contract that she had to have an abortion and kill the third 1.00

00:20:28.820 baby. And you know, this isn't just true in surrogacy that I didn't realize honestly, until maybe a couple

00:20:34.660 years ago, that reduction was something that was very often recommended when moms become pregnant with 0.99

00:20:41.020 multiples, especially through IVF, because it's more likely to get pregnant with multiples. And so very

00:20:48.540 often in IVF, moms themselves will abort, selectively reduce one of their children because they don't want, 1.00

00:20:55.320 you know, they don't want quintuplets or they don't want quadruplets or even twins. But this

00:21:00.320 is certainly true in surrogacy and the woman caring really doesn't have a say. And then I got another 0.99

00:21:05.060 message from someone who said, I'm an ultrasound tech and had a patient in a similar experience. But

00:21:10.700 in this case, the baby had a very minor finding, a slightly abnormally curved spine like scoliosis.

00:21:16.440 The dads forced her to terminate at 22 weeks. She begged to adopt the baby, but they refused. She was

00:21:23.160 horribly traumatized and broken. So many lessons in this that one thing that I see is that these women 1.00

00:21:30.980 who are not biologically related to these babies have formed a bond with these babies at 24 weeks

00:21:37.400 that they are willing to say, I will raise this child and that the parents don't have a bond. They

00:21:43.800 don't have a connection, even though they do have that biological matter there. And they're, you know,

00:21:49.940 they just say, just, you know, kill the child because we don't want the inconvenience. I feel 0.90

00:21:55.860 for these women and obviously feel very much for these children. Well, we need to recognize that

00:22:02.240 that surrogate is doing exactly what she was made to do. She was made to love that baby. And if we can,

00:22:09.280 I think, especially most of us who have been moms recognize, well, obviously she loves those babies.

00:22:14.300 How much more so the baby loves her back, right? Because that is the only person the baby knows,

00:22:20.320 you know, even after children are on this side of the womb, that goes through a phase, you know,

00:22:24.900 from like four months to seven months where they're growing in their awareness of the world.

00:22:30.800 And they think that they're their mother, right? That's why you start to have the separation anxiety

00:22:34.800 when the mom leaves the room because the baby thinks I've left the room because they can't

00:22:40.680 distinguish themselves from the mother. They're that closely bonded. How much more so when the

00:22:46.420 child is literally inside of her, that he is bonded to her. And so the whole premise of surrogacy is

00:22:53.280 founded on the idea that the baby's like a magnet. You know, you can just, they'll just attach here or

00:22:59.360 separate them and then easily attack somewhere else. That's not how babies are. That's not how mothers are. 1.00

00:23:04.300 Yeah. That's not how babies are. So it's, it really is insisting that children sacrifice

00:23:10.840 something that they aren't made for. I mean, like, think about it like it is the only relationship

00:23:16.500 in our life where we are connected by a literal cord. You have to literally cut a cord to separate

00:23:23.580 the child from the mother. You don't think that there's going to be a massive emotional bond between

00:23:28.760 that baby and that mom. We can see it in the moms and the babies. So that's, you know, that's our

00:23:34.280 appeal is we want people to be champions of those children because they are losing something that

00:23:40.560 they not only have a natural right to, but that they long for and they crave.

00:23:45.180 Yeah. You and I were both going back on a, on a post that I had posted about Chrissy Teigen's

00:23:50.240 surrogacy on Instagram, where someone said, you know, I'm a Christian and I've been a surrogate.

00:23:57.280 And look, we know, we understand the terms before it starts, but that's not really the point.

00:24:03.600 Is it? The baby doesn't understand the terms. The baby didn't sign on the dotted line. The baby

00:24:10.040 doesn't understand. Oh, okay. I'm not supposed to bond with this heartbeat, with this smell,

00:24:15.380 with this feel, with this woman. Again, it's just amazing how even Christians, I mean, all of us have

00:24:22.540 probably been at this place at some point, but we really need that perspective shift. It's not about

00:24:28.720 parents understanding the terms. It's not even about what parents very, very strongly desire.

00:24:34.520 It's about the needs and well-being of the kids. Go ahead.

00:24:38.080 You absolutely see the limits of the consent arguments here, right? Because in a lot of

00:24:44.100 these situations, like I think about Chrissy Teigen's surrogate pregnancy, right? She's talking

00:24:49.220 about how we're like best friends. She's going to be in my child's life. I love her so much. She

00:24:54.720 totally freely consented to this. We're both so happy with the results. I mean, both women are

00:24:59.040 happy. They all consented. The biological father obviously consented too. Who didn't consent?

00:25:06.220 The child did not consent. The child will never consent. A child will never consent to the commercial

00:25:13.220 intentional separation of them from their birth mother, from their mother. The child always has 0.98

00:25:18.400 a right to and longs for and seeks to know and be near the woman that just gave birth to them.

00:25:24.560 Sometimes in tragic situations, the baby loses that relationship, right? But to inflict it

00:25:31.780 intentionally and commercially is a massive injustice.

00:25:36.080 Yes. Okay. I just want to end on this because I meant to talk about this earlier and then

00:25:41.940 we didn't. But what do you think about, just from like a policy perspective, what do you think about

00:25:48.420 what's going on in Italy right now? We've got a conservative prime minister, Georgia Maloney, 0.99

00:25:54.480 that she has pushed through parliament a bill that would make it a crime for Italian citizens to try

00:26:00.840 to become parents through a surrogate's pregnancy abroad. It's already illegal there in Italy.

00:26:04.580 By the way, surrogacy is illegal in a lot of places for some of the reasons that we listed. But this

00:26:12.560 would actually, you can't even go abroad to get a surrogate and to carry a child. And then she also, 0.92

00:26:21.460 this is according to Reuters and the AP, her government has ordered city councils to stop

00:26:27.840 registering the children of same-sex couples, saying the move applies to a ruling by Italy's top

00:26:31.940 appeals court. This would limit recognition of parental rights to the biological parent only

00:26:36.820 in families with same-sex parents. Maloney says that for a child to grow up while they need a mother

00:26:43.080 and father, even if decades of research say otherwise. Of course, that's according to a left-wing

00:26:48.980 perspective. So tell us what you think about this. From a policy perspective, ensuring the rights of a

00:26:55.180 child in this way you think it's good? Absolutely. Maloney's right on. And I'm reading articles that

00:27:02.320 talk about how, I mean, it's hilarious. They're quoting gay couples who are saying Maloney's ban 1.00

00:27:09.220 on surrogacy is the new, using gays as the new target of the far right. But the reality is that the

00:27:15.120 ban on surrogacy in Italy applies to everybody. It's not just gay people that cannot use surrogates

00:27:19.760 abroad and bring them home. It applies to married heterosexual couples as well. So it's not anti-gay.

00:27:26.540 It is pro-child. And that's actually what we're talking, we're always talking about is it's pro-child.

00:27:32.020 And the answer is if it's pro-child, then yes, that is good policy. So it's amazing to me because I hear,

00:27:37.920 I like, I read these quotes of gay couples that are saying this law will sterilize gay couples in Italy.

00:27:45.340 And it's just fascinating that they think that it's the law that is making them sterile and not

00:27:51.560 the very realities of their bodies, right? That they're in a sterile relationship. And that is

00:27:57.960 why they're struggling with pregnancy right now. Not because the law is prohibiting them from getting 0.98

00:28:02.460 pregnant. It is the physical realities of their own bodies that are saying, look, you both have the 0.96

00:28:08.680 same half of the reproductive system. If you want to have a baby, you need to find the other half of your 1.00

00:28:13.560 reproductive system, right? But because again, what biology is prohibiting the law, they want the 1.00

00:28:19.700 law to accomplish. And Maloney has said, no, she's also said that two women can't be on birth certificates. 0.94

00:28:25.860 This is correct because the birth certificate does not exist for adults. And that is honestly how a lot 0.97

00:28:31.900 of same sex couples see it. I want the validation of both my biological child and my wife's, you know,

00:28:39.980 my partner's name on the birth certificate because that validates me, right? But that's not what the

00:28:45.980 birth certificate is for. Children actually have a right to have their identity preserved on their

00:28:51.500 birth certificate. This is something that's outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

00:28:55.500 The birth certificate exists to anchor the child's identity, the biological facts of their birth,

00:29:02.540 so that they can, because the child's going to need that information later on.

00:29:05.920 And one of the best ways that children, one of the best chances they have to access their biological

00:29:10.380 identity, the knowledge of both people to whom they have a natural right, is that piece of paper.

00:29:16.280 But in the name of adult equality, right, and progress for adults, many adults are now using that

00:29:22.880 not as an instrument to serve the rights and well-being of children, but almost as like a second

00:29:29.080 marriage license. So that's not what it's for. Biological parents need to go on birth certificates. 1.00

00:29:34.580 Adoptive parents should have their parental rights secured in another way. But what's so interesting

00:29:42.680 is we have been putting adoptive parents on birth certificates in this country for a long, long time.

00:29:48.880 And that originated because they didn't want the stigma, right, of adopted children having parents

00:29:56.260 that were not listed on their birth certificates raising them. And so they did that thinking,

00:30:00.180 this is going to be helpful to adoptees, right, for us to erase their first family from their birth 1.00

00:30:05.340 certificate. And we will issue them a new birth certificate with their adoptive parents.

00:30:10.080 But what's so fascinating is adoptee groups here in the United States have been lobbying for decades

00:30:15.680 to get access to what? To their original birth certificate. Because that is one of the main ways

00:30:22.680 they can find out the question, answer the question, who am I? Because that will tell them,

00:30:27.320 whose am I? So birth certificates exist for kids. They don't exist for adoptive parents. 0.54

00:30:33.640 They don't exist for gay parents. They exist to record the facts of children's birth. And if an 0.99

00:30:39.300 adoption needs to take place, and if you need to secure parentage, you need to do that in a way that

00:30:44.160 does not adulterate the child's birth certificate. So I'm a Maloney fan. If you're watching this,

00:30:50.200 Georgia, hook me up, hit me up. I want to know, I want to cheer you on because she is standing firm,

00:30:56.000 right, against the commodification of children and insisting that kids need a mom and dad.

00:31:00.720 Yes. Prime Minister, come on the show too. Reach out to Katie, but also reach out to Relatable.

00:31:06.000 I would love to have her on the show. 1.00

00:31:19.400 What do you think about gay adoption? Do you think it should be legal for two men or two women to adopt?

00:31:24.400 So let's be very clear about what adoption is. A lot of people say, do gay people have a right to

00:31:32.420 adopt? And the answer is no, not at all. But that's because nobody has a right to adopt. The

00:31:39.400 sweet Christian heterosexual couple that is dealing with infertility, they don't have a right to adopt 1.00

00:31:44.660 either. No adult has a right to adopt. Children who have lost their parents have a right to be

00:31:52.280 adopted. So this is again, where adoption is drastically different from third party reproduction

00:31:59.000 and third party. In big fertility, the adult is the client. The goal is to get them a baby, 0.95

00:32:04.780 no matter the cost, no matter the cost to their checkbook, no matter the cost to the child's life,

00:32:09.560 to their rights, to their mother and father, to their health. It doesn't matter. The adult is the

00:32:14.720 client. You get them the baby. In the world of adoption, the child is the client. When I was working

00:32:21.140 at the adoption agency before I had kids, the founder would say, Katie, the adults are paying

00:32:26.420 us, but they are not the client. The goal is not to give every adult who wants them a baby.

00:32:32.240 The goal is to find loving parents for every child that has lost them. So if we are successful,

00:32:38.200 every child will be placed in a home, but not every adult who wants a kid who applies to this agency is

00:32:42.240 going to have a child placed with them. So what does it look like for the child to be the client?

00:32:46.920 That means that, and this is reflected in adoption best practice, that the rights and well-being,

00:32:53.700 the best interest of the child is elevated to the highest good. That is what dictates agency decision

00:33:00.720 making. So what is the best interest of the child? Many things. Number one, that they be placed with

00:33:08.460 relatives whenever possible, whenever it is safe and healthy for the child to be connected to

00:33:13.400 relatives, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, so they can remain in relationship with their kinship

00:33:18.600 network, that is a high priority. The next thing that's a high priority is to be placed with a man

00:33:24.900 and woman because the child is going to benefit from maternal love and paternal love. Their development 0.99

00:33:30.320 is going to be maximized in the complementary ways that mothers and fathers interact with their

00:33:34.360 children. The child would be placed in a married heterosexual couple because marriage advantages 0.99

00:33:41.360 children in the sense that it is the way that children experience stability in their lives.

00:33:47.000 Then you also have to evaluate, is this couple ready to take on a sibling group so the children

00:33:51.980 can remain together if there's a sibling group, for example, in foster care? Are they able to care for

00:33:56.960 the child's special needs if the child has a cleft lip or a cleft palate or some kind of hole in their heart

00:34:02.900 that's going to need repair? Are they financially ready? All of these kinds of things. So that is the list that

00:34:09.200 you go through to determine the child's best interest. Now, sometimes you don't have a heterosexual

00:34:16.760 couple who's financially ready, who's able to take sibling groups, who understands that special need,

00:34:22.440 especially in this country with foster care. There are not enough moms and dads that are making

00:34:28.580 themselves available for some of these children. And in some of those cases, a single or a same-sex

00:34:34.760 couple may be the best or the only option for kids. So my suggestion is for the Christians who 1.00

00:34:42.260 oppose, who think children, who think gays shouldn't be raising kids, go adopt. You go get in line and 0.96

00:34:49.680 don't get in line for the white drug-free infant. Go for the kids that nobody wants. Go for the older 0.99

00:34:55.760 kids. Go for the sibling groups. Go for the kids with special needs, right? If you're going to, 1.00

00:35:01.400 sometimes same-sex couples take on kids that nobody else wants. So the solution is, want them. 0.99

00:35:09.140 Go and get them. And that's a hard message to hear, right? Because those are challenging cases.

00:35:17.900 But if you have a problem with gays adopting, the answer is you adopt instead. 1.00

00:35:22.620 I've never thought about it to the conclusion that you went to, that basically you should be adopting the

00:35:29.000 kids that really don't, most people don't want to adopt. I'm sure that's going to be difficult for

00:35:35.200 some people to hear. But I mean, obviously, I agree with you. We should, I mean, I typically say

00:35:42.720 we should do everything possible to make sure kids have both a mother and a father. Ideally,

00:35:50.380 their mother and father. But if not, a mother and father is the next best thing. If we have expended

00:35:56.060 every single resource and every single effort to ensure that every kid has that and has access to

00:36:03.940 that right, then I will say it's hard for me to say, no, you know, two men still can't adopt the

00:36:11.420 child who is languishing in an orphanage, even while knowing that the ideal is for that child to

00:36:17.080 have a mother and a father. So yeah, I agree with you. But I don't think I've articulated it as

00:36:21.920 explicitly as you did at the end. So thank you so much. Where can people find your book, learn more

00:36:28.140 about Them Before Us, maybe even follow your speaking dates? You're a busy woman. So tell people 0.71

00:36:34.020 how they can follow you. Twitter is the place you get all of my opinions. Advo underscore Katie.

00:36:42.140 ThemBeforeUs.com is the place you can find us online. Subscribe at the bottom. We just launched a

00:36:47.020 podcast. You'll be getting all kinds of children's rights information, headlines. We're going to be

00:36:53.200 interviewing some incredible family scholars as well. So we will fortify you. I think though, if you

00:36:59.340 want to be an expert, if you really want to understand all of these issues, how they're really

00:37:04.480 manifestations of the same question, are you protecting or are you violating the rights of

00:37:09.560 children? The book will make you an expert. Them Before Us, Why We Need a Global Children's Rights

00:37:14.020 Movement. You are going to be confronted with over 100 stories of kids who are raised in modern

00:37:19.820 families. You're going to have to look them in the eye at the struggles, identity struggles, the

00:37:24.960 mother hunger, the father hunger, the primal wound, the instability that they experience when children

00:37:29.440 are forced to sacrifice for adults and not the other way around. And the reality is you're some of

00:37:36.800 their only hope. Like the politicians have abandoned these questions in a lot of ways. Celebrities

00:37:42.280 obviously are not going to be any kind of moral leader or offer us any kind of clarity on these

00:37:47.500 questions. It's really just you, ordinary mom and dad, you Christian woman who is going to be able to

00:37:53.420 champion their rights and speak out on their behalf. And the book is probably the best tool you're going

00:37:59.460 to find to be an effective advocate. Thank you so much, Katie. I am so thankful for the work that you do.

00:38:06.220 Please keep going and God bless you and may he continue to multiply your message. Appreciate you

00:38:13.040 being on. Thanks for having me again.

00:38:15.580 Hey guys, if you love this podcast, please leave us a five-star review wherever you listen on Apple

00:38:34.240 Podcasts or on Spotify. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks.

00:38:45.580 you

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 21, 2023

Ep 877 ｜ Should Gay Couples Adopt？｜ Guest： Katy Faust (Part Two)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 21, 2023

Ep 877 ｜ Should Gay Couples Adopt？ ｜ Guest： Katy Faust (Part Two)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

Ep 877 ｜ Should Gay Couples Adopt？｜ Guest： Katy Faust (Part Two)