Ep 877 ｜ Should Gay Couples Adopt？ ｜ Guest： Katy Faust (Part Two)
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Summary
There are over a million embryos, little, tiny, image bearers of God, frozen on ice in the U.S. created through IVF. What s the answer to this? Should Christians be adopting these embryos? In this episode, we talk to Katie Faust, founder and director of Them Before Us, about the frozen embryos.
Transcript
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There are over a million embryos, little tiny image bearers of God frozen on ice in the United
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States created through IVF. What's the answer to this? Should Christians be adopting these
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embryos? We'll be getting into this question, also talking more about the ethical problems
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with surrogacy, surrogacy contracts, IVF in general, and then answering some policy questions
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for centering on children and their welfare in this episode of Relatable, which is with Katie
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Faust, founder and director of Them Before Us. This is part two of a two-part conversation. Go back and
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listen to part one for the full context. This episode is brought to you by our friends at
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GoodRanchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.
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So for these, a million, you said a million embryos, and as pro-lifers, we believe that
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those are human beings made in the image of God. We know that those are human beings made
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in the image of God. What do you think about, I'm sure you get this question a lot. I do too.
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What do you think about adoption of these frozen embryos? They're people. So are all of those babies
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that you just talked about at these orphanages. So what's the right answer? If someone wants to
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adopt one of these frozen embryos, they're deciding between that and maybe, you know, a five-year-old or
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a child who already, who is, you know, walking around in the world. Like what's the right and
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moral way to think about that? So the first thing that we need to realize is that when conception
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occurs, the people responsible for that child are the child's parents. And, you know, I would say in
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the world of an unplanned pregnancy, the solution is not adoption and it's not abortion. It's parenting.
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If you have a child that you have created through sex, the solution is for you to parent them, for you to
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reorient your life, you and the father around the baby. So the child's right to life is protected and the
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child's right to be known and loved by their mother and father is protected. So the same is true with
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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
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want to kill the child because they are a surplus kid. And it's not the job of somebody else to come
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in and raise the child. They are your babies. You made them go get them. You might have to take out a
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loan, buy a bigger house, reorganize your career plan. I know, I know a lot of even Christians who made 12
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embryos and because you need to have multiple embryos available for a bunch of different tries.
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Um, and the first two tries were successful. So, and some of them didn't make it. And now they've
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got two kids and they're busy and they're spending money on those kids. And now their career is taking
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a different turn. They're paying the storage fee for these seven kids. The solution is not to donate.
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So here's, so, all right, here we go. The American society for reproductive medicine has some
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recommendations for what you do with those surplus embryos. The first option is to thaw and discard.
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So, I mean, like think, I mean, the dehumanizing language is already just crazy, right? Thaw them and
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discard them. The second option is to donate them to research, right? Destroy those little lives so that
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we can better figure out how to increase our fertility rate successes in the future. The third
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suggestion that they have is donate the baby to another couple. Okay. So none of those three
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options honors children's right to life and right to be known and loved by their mother and father.
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The only option where children are not bearing the burden for adults, further bearing the burden for
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adults is for the adults who created them to go back and get them and put them in their womb and give
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them a chance at life. That is the only child honoring option. Now we've got a million kids on
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ice in this country. By some estimates, 20 to 40% of them have been functionally abandoned. Some of them
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have been on ice for 30 years or more. Some of their parents have died. Some of them are not paying the
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storage fee and they can't even track them down. So what do you do for those kids? Well, the answer is
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not to thaw and discard them or donate them to research or donate them to another couple. In that
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situation, the extreme cases where there's no option to protect the right to life or to protect the right
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to their mother and father, the only child honoring option is not embryo donation. It's embryo adoption.
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And that is where the prospective parents go through an adoption process and they are screened like every
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other adoptive couple has to be screened where whenever possible, we opt for an open adoption
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where the child is going to have access to their birth parents and at least information about who
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their birth parents are, if not an ongoing relationship. But then in those situations, you need to be aware
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that that is not a cost-free situation for the child. And in that situation, when we are properly
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understanding embryo adoption, not embryo donation, that is adults doing hard things on behalf of
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children, those couples need to go in with the mindset of, I am here to shepherd you through what
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is going to be the kind of questions that children in our species have never had to ask ever before.
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Right? Why is it that I am older than, I'm genetically older than my own mother? Right? You're going to have
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to answer those questions to your kids. Why is it that, you know, I was born and, you know, my parents had
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already died by the time that I was born. And we are going to have some incredible struggles parenting
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those kids. So parents who are mothers and fathers through traditional adoption, we already know that
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these kinds of questions are coming for our kids, right? We already know that they're going to, they're
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asking us why, why did my mom or dad give me up? You know, why is it that I was removed from my home?
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And we've already recognized that part of what we're going to do as a mom or dad is shepherd our
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children through what's very often painful questions. So people who are adopting embryos
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are going to have to prepare for a whole nother level of that. So it is, it is not a baby needs a
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womb, parents can, you know, help out ding problem solved kind of thing. It is, first of all, the people
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who made the baby need to go get the baby. But if there's no other option, then embryo adoption is the
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way to go. Now, the sperm and egg donor children that I know, most of them don't support embryo
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adoption at all, because they are concerned that both on a public level, but also in terms of the
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industry, that it won't do anything to stem the tide of the mass creation of surplus embryos. If there's a
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perception that, oh, no problem, the surplus embryos are just going to get adopted, then there's really no
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stop, right? There's no reason for either the public to say that doesn't seem right, or for the fertility
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industry to say, maybe we shouldn't do this very often. So it's a very complicated question. All I
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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
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problem for you. And I would also say that you should be able to implant, if you are going to
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do that, which I agree, there's, you know, it's very complicated. And while we don't say that the
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five-year-old's life is more important than the embryo's life, we don't say that. That's part of
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why we're pro-life. But also, like, there's, I would just say, like, there's a lot of questions
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when you're deciding also, like, why you want to adopt an embryo versus why you wouldn't want to
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adopt the five-year-old. There's even some heart individual things that I think someone should pray
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and think through. But I think that you would agree that you also need to be able to implant that
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embryo in you as the mother. Because I've heard of couples, um, I got a message the other day
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saying, okay, here's a couple. It's actually their own embryo. So it's a little bit different. I could
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see a scenario where it's not the own embryo. But so, uh, this couple, they have an embryo on ice,
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but the mother has been told you cannot carry a child anymore. You can't, she might've even had a
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hysterectomy. She can't carry a child. So they are considering hiring a surrogate to carry their
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embryo. That's a very difficult situation as someone who is not for indefinitely freezing that
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child, discarding that child, and also not for, uh, surrogacy. That really, my answer is like,
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well, that's why we shouldn't have gotten into this problem in the first place, but you're there.
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Okay. So whether it's that situation or you've got a couple that maybe they're older, they're 45,
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and they're like, you know what? We want to adopt this embryo, but we need to hire a surrogate to do
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it. I would say no, at least in that second situation. No, you shouldn't be adopting an
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embryo. I don't know the answer to the first situation when it's your own embryo. I just don't
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know the answer. Well, it's, you know, I get, um, Google alerts every day for surrogacy and for a
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variety of different, you know, tags and regularly things will come up. Like right now there is a, um,
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couple whose baby is stuck in Mexico, you know, this New Jersey couple created a child using an
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egg donor, the father's sperm. They went to Mexico because it was a lot cheaper than using a white
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womb to go, you know, gestate their child. But now the courts won't let the baby come back to the
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United States and they're stuck. Why? Why are they stuck? Because they have participated in a practice
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that is virtually indistinguishable from child trafficking. Right. Right. In adoption, right.
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There's a lot, you know, we talk at them before us, we talk about how from the children's rights
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perspective, adoption and reproductive technologies are polar opposites in terms of the way that the
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practice is, is conducted. And one of the big differences is in adoption, you can never, never
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pay the birth parents for the baby. Right. That's like, there are all kinds of safeguards to ensure that
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money never goes from the people that are going to be adopting the child to the people that are the
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child's first family. You can't pay the birth mother. You can't pay the extended family. You
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can't pay the father. If you do, it's no longer an adoption. It is trafficking. So what happens in
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surrogacy is the mother and father, the intended mother and the biological father are directly paying
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the surrogate for the baby. And from international practice, like especially when you're looking at
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inter-country adoption, that is child trafficking. And so of course, as always, the news is framing this
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as, oh my gosh, this couple is suffering so bad. They can't get their baby home. And the reality is
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it's his baby, but it's not her egg. It's never been her womb. And so like, is it her baby? Right.
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They are paying two different women, the genetic mother and the birth mother to hand over
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her baby to somebody else. And so these conflicts come up. Oh, what do we do now? We've got this
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child that's stateless and can't, you know, go home to their parents. Maybe we should legitimize
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commercial surrogacy. No. When you come into challenges, like we have an IVF child. Now I don't
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have a womb. Should we use a surrogate? The answer is not let's legitimize, incentivize and endorse
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these scenarios. We need to step back and say, how do we never get into this scenario ever again?
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How this should never be happening. But instead you take these sort of problem cases and say,
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look how hard this is on adults. Maybe we should make this easier on them. The answer is no. We
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need to go back to the reality that you should not be violating children's right to life through these
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technologies. You shouldn't be violating children's rights to their mother and father. So there's
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confusion about who the mother is and you shouldn't be violating children's right to be in relationship
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with the only woman that they know and paying her to sever that bond. No. Like it, when there are
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troubled scenarios, you need to say, maybe we should cease the activity and the practices creating
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these troubled scenarios. Yeah, exactly. Paris Hilton, a few months ago, I'm sure you saw the story.
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She said that she has, there's so many problems just in this headline, just in this quote alone,
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that they have 20 embryos on ice. You know, they have unlimited money so they can do this. They
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have 20 embryos on ice. The reason that they're not implanting those though is because they're all
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boys and she's waiting for a girl. So obviously there's a problem. She's not going to implant all
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20. She's probably going to discard them, donate them, whatever. Maybe she'll indefinitely pay for
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them to stay on ice because she has some kind of guilt, although she probably doesn't know fully
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why. But a lot of people don't understand, one, how common it is to have at least one or two
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children still on ice when it comes to even Christian IVF couples. But also, you mentioned
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this earlier, the eugenics process that goes into this. Oh, this is a strong embryo. This embryo
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doesn't have genetic anomalies. This one is a boy. I'm always so stunned at how many, for example,
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like when two men are using the IVF and surrogacy process, like how lucky they get to have two twin
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boys or to have a boy and a girl or to have, I mean, it seems like the gender they want is the
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gender they get. I think people don't realize like how often eugenics actually plays a part in the IVF
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process. Not for everyone, but I think it's a lot more common than we realize. And we don't call it
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eugenics. I don't know what we call it. We just call it, again, meeting the parents' desires. But this
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is pretty common, right? Yeah. And, you know, IVF costs like $12,000 to $20,000 per cycle. Surrogacy
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pregnancies are going to definitely run you in the six figures. When you're paying that much money
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for a baby, you need to get your order exactly right. And so you do want to select the sex that
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you want. In fact, you know, there's a, there's a situation in California where you've got a lesbian
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couple that is suing the clinic because they implanted to the wrong embryo, right? They ordered
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a girl, but they got a boy. And you've got a similar situation with a gay couple who ordered a boy,
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but got a girl. And so now they are suing the manufacturer, right? Because in this case,
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you can actually return the product, but you can sue them for faulty, you know, design. And so what
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happens when we are making children rather than begetting children? Well, we think that we own
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those children, right? And if, if children are begotten, but not made, we go into it with the
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mindset of, this is a gift that I'm going to receive. I don't get to decide the hair color of my
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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,
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I exist for them, but you go into it with the mindset of, I am making the child. It's very easy
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to get into the mindset of they exist for me, right? So there's unfortunately no shortage of cases,
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both celebrity couples who are, you know, waiting to implant the child that they want,
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or gay couples who are discarding the unwanted children that, that didn't come out exactly as
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they want. You probably have heard about the situation with the woman who was pregnant as a
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surrogate. The Center for Bioethics and Culture, Jennifer Law's organization broke this story just
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last week where she was pregnant with the child of two men, the child of two men, right? And what that
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means anytime a child has two fathers, you're really just talking about a child that has been
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separated from their mother and is going to be raised by an unrelated man. That's really what
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that means, you know, from a children's rights perspective. Which is statistically dangerous,
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as you've mentioned. Which is always statistically risky for the child. And the, she, you know, the
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surrogate got a cancer diagnosis at 24 weeks, realized she had to have very serious chemotherapy at 26 weeks.
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It was going to put the risk, the life of the child at risk. She sought to deliver the baby
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rather than abort the baby. But the gay couple threatened to sue her into oblivion because they
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did not want a premature baby. They did not want the health problems that could go along with a baby
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being born at 26 weeks. So they insisted that she abort. And we don't know exactly how that story
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ended, if she found a place to deliver or if she found a place to abort. But the baby is no longer
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alive. And the couple did not want the baby delivered early either because they did not
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want their DNA out in the world. They would rather have their own child, which was the genetic child
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of one of those two men die than alive and being loved by somebody else. So that mindset that this
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child exists for me, if they're not exactly right to my exact specifications, sue them, kill them.
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I mean, really what we are talking about is we are returning to the commodification of human beings
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that we fought a civil war to end. I mean, that is really what's going on in the world of big fertility
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right now. That's not all that uncommon. As Jennifer Law has talked about before,
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some of these surrogacy contracts explicitly say, if we want you to terminate, as long as it's legal
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to do so, you have to terminate. And I think, you know, the irony is, is that a lot of these couples,
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I would bet if I were a betting person to this gay couple that pushed the surrogate into termination
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is probably pro-choice, probably has uttered the phrase, my body, my choice. So it's your body,
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your choice until it comes to surrogacy. Then all of a sudden, what really matters is that
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now you acknowledge it's a baby, but that you don't want the baby to exist. And it's actually
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killing a child. I posted about this. And actually, as we're recording this, I have not interviewed
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that surrogate. As we're recording this, I am interviewing her tomorrow. But the episode will
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probably be out before yours and mine does. So I can't say how the story concludes yet. But those
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listening to this now have probably already heard it. So it's kind of confusing with all these pre-taped
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episodes. But I'm glad you found her. I'm glad she's going to talk to you. Yes, we need more
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stories highlighting the reality of surrogacy. And especially when it comes to abortion,
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you know, in surrogacy, abortion functions as quality control, which she experienced, but and
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quantity control. Right. And it's so fascinating, because you're right, the whole my body, my choice
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thing goes out the window. It's very interesting when New York legalized commercial surrogacy,
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one of their big triumphs was that in the in New York, if your surrogate is pregnant, and she wants
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to terminate the pregnancy, she can write that was their that was their women's lib, sort of triumph
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of their commercial surrogacy bill. And so now, in the state of New York, you can kill your own child,
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and you can kill somebody else's child. And contractually, there's no problem.
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Wow. And you know, speaking to that, when I posted about this, I got a couple messages,
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probably more than I even saw. But here's one message to your point, a friend of mine's mom was
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a surrogate and three embryos took. The biological parents said they didn't want the risk of three
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babies and had one of them aborted the surrogate, my friend's mom wanted the third baby and offered
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to adopt him or her. But it was in her contract that she had to have an abortion and kill the third
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baby. And you know, this isn't just true in surrogacy that I didn't realize honestly, until maybe a couple
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years ago, that reduction was something that was very often recommended when moms become pregnant with
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multiples, especially through IVF, because it's more likely to get pregnant with multiples. And so very
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often in IVF, moms themselves will abort, selectively reduce one of their children because they don't want,
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you know, they don't want quintuplets or they don't want quadruplets or even twins. But this
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is certainly true in surrogacy and the woman caring really doesn't have a say. And then I got another
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message from someone who said, I'm an ultrasound tech and had a patient in a similar experience. But
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in this case, the baby had a very minor finding, a slightly abnormally curved spine like scoliosis.
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The dads forced her to terminate at 22 weeks. She begged to adopt the baby, but they refused. She was
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horribly traumatized and broken. So many lessons in this that one thing that I see is that these women
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who are not biologically related to these babies have formed a bond with these babies at 24 weeks
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that they are willing to say, I will raise this child and that the parents don't have a bond. They
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don't have a connection, even though they do have that biological matter there. And they're, you know,
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they just say, just, you know, kill the child because we don't want the inconvenience. I feel
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for these women and obviously feel very much for these children. Well, we need to recognize that
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that surrogate is doing exactly what she was made to do. She was made to love that baby. And if we can,
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I think, especially most of us who have been moms recognize, well, obviously she loves those babies.
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How much more so the baby loves her back, right? Because that is the only person the baby knows,
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you know, even after children are on this side of the womb, that goes through a phase, you know,
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from like four months to seven months where they're growing in their awareness of the world.
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And they think that they're their mother, right? That's why you start to have the separation anxiety
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when the mom leaves the room because the baby thinks I've left the room because they can't
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distinguish themselves from the mother. They're that closely bonded. How much more so when the
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child is literally inside of her, that he is bonded to her. And so the whole premise of surrogacy is
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founded on the idea that the baby's like a magnet. You know, you can just, they'll just attach here or
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separate them and then easily attack somewhere else. That's not how babies are. That's not how mothers are.
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Yeah. That's not how babies are. So it's, it really is insisting that children sacrifice
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something that they aren't made for. I mean, like, think about it like it is the only relationship
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in our life where we are connected by a literal cord. You have to literally cut a cord to separate
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the child from the mother. You don't think that there's going to be a massive emotional bond between
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that baby and that mom. We can see it in the moms and the babies. So that's, you know, that's our
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appeal is we want people to be champions of those children because they are losing something that
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they not only have a natural right to, but that they long for and they crave.
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Yeah. You and I were both going back on a, on a post that I had posted about Chrissy Teigen's
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surrogacy on Instagram, where someone said, you know, I'm a Christian and I've been a surrogate.
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And look, we know, we understand the terms before it starts, but that's not really the point.
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Is it? The baby doesn't understand the terms. The baby didn't sign on the dotted line. The baby
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doesn't understand. Oh, okay. I'm not supposed to bond with this heartbeat, with this smell,
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with this feel, with this woman. Again, it's just amazing how even Christians, I mean, all of us have
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probably been at this place at some point, but we really need that perspective shift. It's not about
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parents understanding the terms. It's not even about what parents very, very strongly desire.
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It's about the needs and well-being of the kids. Go ahead.
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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
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,
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,
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
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
00:28:02.460
pregnant. It is the physical realities of their own bodies that are saying, look, you both have the
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
00:28:13.560
reproductive system, right? But because again, what biology is prohibiting the law, they want the
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.
00:28:25.860
This is correct because the birth certificate does not exist for adults. And that is honestly how a lot
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.
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
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.
00:30:33.640
They don't exist for gay parents. They exist to record the facts of children's birth. And if an
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.
00:31:19.400
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
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,
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
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
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
00:34:42.260
oppose, who think children, who think gays shouldn't be raising kids, go adopt. You go get in line and
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
00:34:55.760
kids. Go for the sibling groups. Go for the kids with special needs, right? If you're going to,
00:35:01.400
sometimes same-sex couples take on kids that nobody else wants. So the solution is, want them.
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.
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
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
00:38:15.580
Hey guys, if you love this podcast, please leave us a five-star review wherever you listen on Apple
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Podcasts or on Spotify. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks.