The John-Henry Westen Show - The moral CRISIS of IVF： Can Catholics Adopt Frozen Embryos？

00:00:00.000 The church has not condemned embryo adoption at all, so I disagree with Father Tad.

00:00:07.840 Hey my friends, it's an amazing thing that the issue of IVF has been raised because

00:00:13.840 that enables us to talk about it. It's been raised because Trump talked about it and all of a sudden

00:00:19.820 there's a new interest in it and a look at it that enables people to realize the absent destruction

00:00:25.460 that it causes the embryo. All sorts of pro-life leaders have now spoken out on it, especially

00:00:29.800 Bishop Joseph Strickland, who came out right away when the Republicans started talking about this

00:00:35.060 and said how it is immoral. Inside that debate, however, there is another problem. Because IVF

00:00:43.060 creates these thousands and thousands and thousands, in fact millions, of human embryos who are then

00:00:50.580 frozen and they're sitting there in suspended sort of animation waiting to be implanted by their

00:00:58.900 mothers. What does that do? What does that do? Are all those babies then doomed to die? Because 1.00

00:01:04.240 oh yes, they are babies. Yes, they're tiny, but they are babies. In the pro-life world, there is when

00:01:11.460 children are abandoned or mothers want to go for an abortion, they're offered adoption as an

00:01:19.560 alternative. Well, guess what? For all those frozen babies, the possibility of adoption has also been

00:01:27.880 offered. But it's fraught with some kind of worry about if it's moral or not. And many people are

00:01:36.380 debating that very question. In fact, if you saw an interview on Raymond Arroyo's recent program

00:01:42.100 with Father Tad, I'll get his last name later, he seemed to indicate that it was all negative,

00:01:47.820 that you could never do it. He didn't quite say that. In fact, he said in some cases, it is

00:01:54.360 totally impermissible, which leaves open the door. But you wouldn't have heard the other side because

00:01:59.360 he didn't say it. Most would have walked away thinking, oh, well, that's off the table.

00:02:04.120 But I'm here to tell you, it's not. We've got with us an expert in the issue. My friends,

00:02:09.740 we're here with Dr. Elizabeth Rex. So good to be with you. Thank you so much. You are a,

00:02:16.080 not only a doctor, you're a bioethicist as well. Is that right? Yes, I am a Catholic bioethicist.

00:02:20.740 I taught Catholic bioethics at Holy Apostles College and Seminary for many years. I have my

00:02:26.940 doctorate in Thomistic ethics from the University of Navarre. I was in Rome for three years.

00:02:32.280 And I'm fascinated by bioethics, especially beginning of life bioethics, and especially

00:02:39.140 the fate of these frozen embryos. And being an adoptive mother, my husband and I have two,

00:02:46.320 we suffered infertility. We looked into all medical reasons. And then we even looked into

00:02:53.460 not IVF, but using hyper ovulation, which is permissible. And I was an older mother. We got

00:03:01.180 married when I was 40 and he was 40. And how old were your kids when they were adopted?

00:03:05.260 My son was born when I was 45. And we were looking into adoption. That's when I got pregnant.

00:03:10.640 So we looked at each other and we said, wow, adoption really works. So why don't we try that

00:03:15.940 again? And then we adopted our son. And when we were 50, we adopted our daughter.

00:03:22.460 Wow.

00:03:22.780 And so adoptions...

00:03:23.840 And how old were they at your adoption?

00:03:25.220 Oh, it was newborns. So Christopher Slattery, who was expecting mother care, a couple walked in,

00:03:32.420 they were not married. It was an impossible situation. And fortunately, they thought they

00:03:37.260 walked into Planned Parenthood, but they walked into a pregnancy care center. And he asked them,

00:03:42.820 would you think about adoption? And they weren't so sure. They said they would think about it. And

00:03:49.060 then they came back. And so Chris called us and we said, bring them to our home. Let's meet them.

00:03:56.040 And the rest is history. Our daughter's now 26. We're so proud of her. She has met her biological

00:04:01.340 parents to thank them for choosing life and choosing adoption.

00:04:07.900 Absolutely beautiful. In a way, I'm really grateful to President Trump for raising the

00:04:12.360 issue of adoption because it brings back the idea of it. And people are thinking about it again. In

00:04:17.800 fact, there's more discussion now about IVF probably than there has been in the last 20 years

00:04:22.300 because of the focus on it. And it's enabled pro-lifers who are also very strong in the administration

00:04:27.300 to say, whoa, let's wait a minute. Let's talk about this. And in talking about this,

00:04:33.220 we got that interview with Raymond Arroyo. I want to play part of it because Raymond asks

00:04:38.560 Father Tad, what's his last name? I pronounce it Paholchik. I think that's who Rick.

00:04:43.680 Okay. So Father Tad, a part of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, very prominent theologian.

00:04:50.160 And he's asked by Raymond about IVF, but then he gets into, as Raymond asks him,

00:04:56.960 as we'll see now, about embryo adoption. Watch.

00:05:00.620 We've heard of adopting these embryos that are frozen, where women come in and say, you know, 0.99

00:05:06.140 I'm going to adopt this frozen embryo. And she has it implanted in her womb. And now, you know, 0.56

00:05:12.580 does that suddenly make it moral? Is it now a moral good?

00:05:16.980 Well, I think that, first of all, the church in its most recent document on the question of

00:05:22.800 embryo adoption was very clear that there are significant concerns around this. And in some

00:05:30.480 cases, it pointed out that it's not allowed at all. Before I continue, are you enjoying this video?

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00:06:04.080 freedom is worth fighting for. So that's interesting because he's talking about embryo adoption.

00:06:09.660 And then he says that, you know, the church has concerns about this. And then he says, in some

00:06:18.020 cases, it is not allowed at all. Which actually indicates, at least according to Father Tad,

00:06:26.140 in some cases, it is allowed. Because he said, in some cases, it's not allowed at all. So in some

00:06:33.980 cases, I guess that means would be there are other cases that it is allowed. So that's interesting.

00:06:40.680 But in this interview, he comes away, you only get a negative perception. In other words, it seems

00:06:47.860 like it's never allowed at all. That's not exactly what he said. But when you put it only in the

00:06:52.800 negative, that's what you'd walk away with. Dr. Rex, I'd like to hear from you where it is allowed

00:06:59.140 and where it is not allowed. There are concerns around embryo adoption. What are those? And where

00:07:08.220 is it morally permissible? The church, the Vatican, and the USCCB have both stated the day that

00:07:20.360 Dignitas Personae was released. What is Dignitas Personae? Dignitas Personae is the instruction that was

00:07:27.960 promulgated by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith regarding certain bioethical issues. It was

00:07:36.240 an update to important issues following the instruction in Dona Vitae in 1987. So 1987 to 2008,

00:07:47.220 there were a lot of issues. And one of the major issues was what to do with all of the frozen

00:07:52.320 embryos. So now we're under the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. Right. And you were saying the USCCB

00:08:01.220 and the Vatican both said something. Yes. The big question was prenatal adoption. And at that point

00:08:10.480 in 2008, the world's first adopted frozen embryo, Hannah Strege, was born on December 31st, 1998. So now

00:08:21.600 it's been 10 years and a lot of frozen embryos are being adopted. So President Bush actually promoted

00:08:29.880 embryo adoption. He banned embryonic stem cell research and he said they're children. He actually

00:08:36.220 invited all of the snowflake children to the Oval Office when he vetoed. His first veto was to veto the,

00:08:45.500 I believe it was the Senate's bill that had authorized taxpayer money to experiment on frozen embryos.

00:08:51.600 And these are the snowflake children. I want people to see these snowflake children were

00:08:55.420 children frozen as embryos, then adopted and implanted into wombs of their adopted mothers

00:09:03.080 and then born and alive. And now here's, as you'll see the background surrounding the president,

00:09:07.800 President Bush. Yes. And he is holding up one of these cute little babies, boys and others are

00:09:13.240 running around the Oval Office. And he said, they're children. These are not body parts to be

00:09:19.080 experimenting on. And he actually authorized embryo adoption awareness. I think it was a million or $2

00:09:27.200 million a year. And Snowflake's embryo adoption program grabbed those funds and started promoting

00:09:35.320 embryo adoption. And as of right now, there are probably about 3,000 children that would have

00:09:41.820 been adopted as frozen embryos. Hannah was one of 20. Her parents gave birth to her, gestated her and

00:09:51.620 gave birth to her. And now she's 26 years old. She's beautiful. I know the whole family. And they

00:09:58.320 are strong supporters. 19 of her siblings did not survive the freezing and the thawing or the

00:10:07.680 transfer. But she did. She was in the last transfer of three. There's a picture of her as a little

00:10:14.560 embryo before she was transferred to her mother's womb. And she managed to survive. We don't know which

00:10:20.080 of the three she is, but there she is. And she uses that. I was viable at conception. Here's a picture

00:10:25.520 of me. And I was frozen for two years. And so she actually filed an amicus brief in the Dobbs decision

00:10:32.900 saying viability is at conception. I am living proof. Here I am. So anyway, it's been a very important

00:10:43.540 instruction, dignitas personae. And the problem was that there were hundreds of thousands of frozen

00:10:49.900 embryos just here in the United States. For years, there were 400,000. And I was

00:10:55.200 probably a million and a half. And still the question is what to do with them. So I, as a

00:11:01.380 Catholic bioethicist and studying Dr. William Mays, I really recommend this book to all of your

00:11:07.320 listeners. It's called Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. And he's a strong supporter of

00:11:13.880 embryo adoption. And the church has not condemned embryo adoption at all. So I disagree with Father

00:11:21.000 Ted. And I wrote an article for the National Catholic Bioethics quarterly. And there was some

00:11:28.620 debate whether we could just discuss it, but not do it. And my position was, of course, we can discuss

00:11:35.300 it. We need to discuss it. But the church has not prohibited the practice of embryo adoption. And

00:11:42.220 actually, Monsignor Reno Fisichella, who was president of the Pontifical Academy for Life,

00:11:48.560 on the day that dignitas personae was released to the world, said the practice was not prohibited.

00:11:56.220 Let's take a look at that article. This was from an article from Cindy Wooden in 2008,

00:12:02.400 interviewing the archbishop. And what are the quotes exactly there?

00:12:06.320 She quotes Monsignor Reno Fisichella. And what he said, as president of the Pontifical Academy for

00:12:16.160 Life, was reiterated by the USCCB, who did their own official announcement and basically repeated

00:12:27.040 what the Vatican was saying. And so it has not been prohibited. And so in my article, I said,

00:12:35.280 if the Catholic, we can be certain that the church has not prohibited embryo adoption. They said so. 0.97

00:12:44.340 And to be clear, the church totally forbids IVF in the first quarter.

00:12:49.000 Correct.

00:12:49.600 So the creation of these things, the problem is this. There are all sorts of really good treatments

00:12:56.340 for infertility that are actually more successful than IVF. Napro technology, explain that really in a

00:13:05.260 and how it's more successful.

00:13:07.580 This is very important. There's Napro technology, there's reproduction medicine. And this is the

00:13:14.460 first, if a couple is infertile, check yourselves out. Go to a doctor. And there are clinics that

00:13:21.780 specialize in helping infertile couples. And it's about 50-50. You'd be surprised. Infertility in women 0.97

00:13:29.600 and sterility in men is about 50-50. So you both need to check yourselves out, as we did. My husband

00:13:36.420 and I did that. I had fibroids. I had to have surgery to remove the fibroids. And then I was older.

00:13:45.320 So again, they recommended something that Catholics could do. I would not recommend it. 1.00

00:13:52.140 But there's something called hyperovulation, which is you just, you give the woman, the older woman, 0.70

00:14:00.440 the hormones she needs. You shut down the ovaries for a period of time, and then you jumpstart them, 1.00

00:14:06.140 and you've got more eggs. So you've got a better chance of natural intercourse marital 1.00

00:14:10.980 relations to conceive a child. Well, we did that twice, and it didn't work.

00:14:15.960 Yeah. And that's really key. God ordained that life should come into the world from the sexual 1.00

00:14:23.260 union of a husband and wife. That's right.

00:14:25.700 And this is God's means method. This is God's ordination for how children are to come into the 0.62

00:14:32.640 world. In fact, the Vatican, well, they had a whole bunch of documents that I summarized into one

00:14:37.220 sentence. The child has the right to be conceived in a loving union of a husband and wife.

00:14:40.980 And so it is God's plan and the right of the child. We have no right to go against it.

00:14:47.920 So all these interventions that are allowed are ones that work with the bodies that are either on

00:14:55.440 the man's side or the woman's side that are somehow defective and medically or however, to assist that

00:15:02.000 natural act of procreation to be successful in achieving a child. And so that's licit. IVF procedure

00:15:10.260 is something totally different. Described probably crudely in layman's terms is it's they stimulate

00:15:16.880 the ovaries like that. But then the extract the eggs from the woman. Oh, I know, but but everybody 0.99

00:15:22.720 thinks of it as and then they get the man to masturbate, which is totally forbidden all by 0.93

00:15:27.720 itself. And those collect the semen and then combine them in like a Petri dish sort of thing. 0.95

00:15:33.100 And then you get all sorts of embryos, all sorts of living human beings created. Yes, God is still

00:15:39.260 involved in their creation, but they're not done. It's not happening in the way it's meant to. And so

00:15:45.400 that's a horror all by itself. Then take it from there. They then freeze these embryos. Tell us about

00:15:53.040 that because it's a it's a horror from the start, the way these poor children were brought into this

00:15:58.840 world. But even beyond that, then they do something that the Vatican's really condemned.

00:16:04.340 Cryopreservation. Both Don and Vitae in 1987 had one paragraph that condemned freezing of embryos.

00:16:12.480 And it says it harms them. It kills them. It presupposes their conception in vitro using IPF.

00:16:21.780 And it deprives them of maternal shelter and gestation. This is what the Catholic Church said.

00:16:30.020 You cannot deprive an embryo from maternal shelter or reception and gestation. Dignitas Personae says

00:16:36.960 cannot be deprived of maternal reception and gestation. So once you've got these little embryos,

00:16:44.400 you should put them in the mother and gestate them until birth if they will implant. That's a big gift.

00:16:52.880 But long story short, when they're frozen, they can also be destroyed. They can be thawed and

00:16:58.700 killed and discarded as medical waste. They can be donated, quote unquote, to research labs for

00:17:08.220 experimentation and killed. So the Church condemns all of these further violations that can happen once

00:17:15.900 a child has been frozen. It's susceptible. So freezing is absolutely condemned as intrinsically evil.

00:17:23.800 It's funny because a lot of the moral theologians arguing this point, I think Father Tad does this

00:17:28.300 well, not in this interview, but in other places, suggest that the moral way forward, because embryo

00:17:34.220 adoption is so controversial and morally uncertain, is to keep them frozen. But the Vatican's on and on

00:17:41.620 about condemning freezing. So that's really weird to say keep them frozen, then aren't you sort of

00:17:47.580 keeping doing what the Vatican said not to do in the first place?

00:17:51.500 And that's why Bishop Strickland actually said, read Donum Vitae, read Dignitas Personae, Catholics who

00:18:00.460 are suffering from infertility. And everybody wants a child when you're married and you think it'd be so 0.82

00:18:05.200 easy, but it's not sometimes. And so read what the Church has to say. And I might give a little plug to

00:18:12.380 my book here. I have just published with Charles Robertson, Dr. Charles Robertson. It's a handbook

00:18:18.720 on the moral arguments in the embryo adoption debate. There are two sides to the debate. We

00:18:24.020 actually debated each other and we found that we were getting closer and closer to finding common

00:18:28.260 ground. And one of the common grounds is you condemn freezing. And if you read it carefully,

00:18:35.200 every word is very important. It even condemns freezing temporarily. Because sometimes you have

00:18:42.660 to, if you're testing them, and that is eugenics. Father Tad was very right in saying that. It's 1.00

00:18:47.980 a testing, prenatal testing, prenatal genetic diagnosis, PGD, is eugenics. This is what the racial, 0.98

00:19:00.620 you know, no, no problems or I'm not going to transfer you. So while the tests come back,

00:19:07.200 they have to freeze them. Because the little embryo, there are four stages of human development

00:19:14.220 that happen in a week. Implantation happens at stage five. So for the testing to come back,

00:19:22.000 where you can determine sex, male, female, if there's Down syndrome, any number of problems,

00:19:27.680 then you have to freeze them until the test results come back. So if it's, oh, I wanted a girl, 0.97

00:19:35.020 not a boy, or, you know, oh, it's got Down syndrome, I'm not, I'm not going to do that.

00:19:40.580 Cryopreservation should be banned universally as a crime against humanity. I mean, Nazis were

00:19:45.560 experimenting with freezing human beings. That is absolutely, adults, it's against the law,

00:19:51.920 you cannot freeze yourself, let alone a child who's innocent, voiceless, defenseless.

00:19:57.680 So this is really, and it's because even temporarily, and let alone indefinitely,

00:20:04.940 they said evil, well, you're preserving his life, but you're using something evil for a good

00:20:09.580 intention. It doesn't work that way. The end does not justify the means. And especially taking out

00:20:15.600 a trust and saving up money so that when you're dead, you can keep paying fertility clinics to keep 0.58

00:20:22.680 your children frozen. Doesn't make sense. No. And those have been some of the suggestions because

00:20:27.120 the moral situation being sort of uncertain, some have suggested going down this road, except that

00:20:34.360 the cryopreservation, the freezing of them is right away condemned. So can't do that. So let's,

00:20:42.860 I want to play the second part of what Father Tad said to Raymond Arroyo, because that created extra

00:20:49.460 confusion, at least for me. If it's done as a treatment for infertility, it is not allowed at

00:20:57.300 all. So you ask yourself, all right, if the church is saying there are some circumstances in which

00:21:01.720 embryo adoption is simply forbidden, then, you know, what's behind that? There's a lot of concerns.

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00:21:38.820 bless you. He said for infertile couples, in some cases it's absolutely forbidden. What is he meaning

00:21:47.600 there? And does that mean that couples who are infertile, who have tried, let's say, everything else,

00:21:53.880 they shouldn't go for embryo adoption or what? That's Father Tad's position. And he's been defending

00:22:02.560 it for a long time. And I'm on the other side. Okay. And I've been defending embryo adoption for

00:22:09.400 a long time. So we have exchanged emails, we've spoken briefly. But I am convinced that the solution

00:22:19.900 is in the teachings of the Catholic Church, in the documents themselves, and that we have to look at

00:22:24.900 them and discuss these things together, as Charles Robertson and I have done in this book, and find

00:22:31.460 that in this case, this is a very confusing sentence. And what the Catholic Church, and I can read it if

00:22:39.480 you don't mind. Yeah, please. In Dignitas Personae number 19, it says, the proposal that these embryos

00:22:47.300 could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility, and it's italicized,

00:22:57.460 is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial, heterologous, which means

00:23:07.040 donor sperm, donor eggs, a donor, procreation illicit, as well as any form of surrogate motherhood.

00:23:15.820 The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment 1.00

00:23:21.480 for infertility is not ethically acceptable. What are they saying there?

00:23:28.320 My interpretation of this, and I have discussed it with others, is that this is referring to an

00:23:34.220 infertility treatment that is well known as the three-parent embryos.

00:23:41.400 Yeah, it says specifically that the proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal

00:23:48.060 of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable. And then it goes on to

00:23:55.100 say, for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit. Go ahead.

00:24:00.940 So the three-parent embryo...

00:24:03.140 Which is this treatment for infertile couples that they use embryos for? 0.94

00:24:06.760 The woman can have a mitochondrial defect, genetic problem in her cytoplasm of the egg. And so 1.00

00:24:16.840 they actually fertilize their own embryo.

00:24:20.640 Right.

00:24:21.100 And it has a diseased mitochondria around the pronucleus.

00:24:25.800 Yeah.

00:24:26.140 And so they take a donor embryo from another couple, and it's an embryo. So it's been fertilized. It's

00:24:32.920 a child. And that donor embryo can be used as a treatment for their own embryo.

00:24:41.680 Yeah.

00:24:42.080 And in the process, the donor embryo is destroyed.

00:24:45.960 Right.

00:24:46.300 They can transfer either the cytoplasm. They can transfer their own nucleus into the healthy

00:24:52.400 cytoplasm, believe it or not.

00:24:54.740 Yeah.

00:24:54.980 And there's also a spindle transfer. I mean, they can...

00:24:58.580 Well, I mean, just to simplify things, it's very much like... Because the children we're

00:25:03.700 talking about are live. So it'd be like taking lungs or a heart out of a live person to give

00:25:10.360 to another live person with a bad heart so that they could live.

00:25:13.000 That's a good example. And so the church condemns that, rightly so. An infertility treatment 1.00

00:25:19.500 for a couple like IVF or insemination or a surrogacy cannot use donor embryos for their

00:25:29.100 own embryo. So they're killing an embryo to save their own embryo.

00:25:33.820 That is what... That infertility treatment using embryos is what is specifically forbidden.

00:25:40.780 And where does the document say that it seems that there might... That there still is this

00:25:48.740 possibility of adoption of frozen embryos?

00:25:52.780 In the next paragraph, so it's separate, and it actually says, it has also been proposed

00:25:59.200 solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction,

00:26:04.540 that there could be a form of prenatal adoption. Dignitas personae calls these hundreds of thousands,

00:26:12.960 now millions of frozen embryos, orphans. It actually baboons the fact and says their parents 0.62

00:26:20.160 don't come back for them. In fact, all trace of the parents has been lost. So could, you know,

00:26:27.040 prenatal adoption be an option? And basically, you would say the Pope is hoping that yes, that they

00:26:34.260 could be saved, that these orphans could be lovingly adopted by another family and gestated and born and

00:26:43.820 raised in the family. I'm an adoptive mother, and there's only one mother. In order for embryo adoption,

00:26:49.880 which is completely different as an infertility treatment, it has to be legal. So parental rights are

00:26:58.660 terminated from the biological or the genetic parents and established. This is what should happen. And Georgia 0.98

00:27:06.500 does have an embryo adoption law. It's the first state to pass an embryo adoption law. And you can find an embryo

00:27:12.780 adoption model law on the website of Americans United for Life. They've created a model bill that

00:27:20.440 could be passed. And for the purpose of adoption, you don't adopt property. The embryo is labeled like

00:27:27.380 in Louisiana as a juridical person. So you're adopting a child. It's really an adoption, a legal

00:27:35.700 adoption like any other adoption, whether, you know, a newborn or an older child. This is an orphan

00:27:45.320 that can and should be adopted. If the parents, for whatever reason, cannot or will not raise their

00:27:54.040 own child, then the only two options are either raise the child yourself, or place the child for 0.66

00:28:00.440 adoption. It's for an unplanned pregnancy. Those are the two choices that are moral. And plan, you know, 0.97

00:28:08.100 to raise your own children. Look at, Hannah was one of 20. Somebody might have 20 embryos that are 0.99

00:28:14.780 frozen or more. They're not all going to survive, even with the best of care. But try to, if you have

00:28:22.720 two or three at home, or maybe five or six or seven or eight. There are larger families. I knew a family

00:28:27.480 had 21 kids in Chicago a long time ago. And so large families are blessed by the Catholic Church.

00:28:34.780 And that would be the first is open your heart, open your home, bring your children home. And,

00:28:40.120 but if not, adoption is a good choice. It's always been praised by the Catholic Church.

00:28:45.320 Widows and orphans, back to the Old Testament. Yeah.

00:28:47.700 So, they're orphans. And they're our neighbors. The last paragraph in Dona Vitae, and it's,

00:28:55.760 they are the least of our brethren. These are works of mercy to welcome the stranger,

00:29:01.820 to shelter the homeless, to feed and to clothe. Adoption means love. It is a loving choice by the

00:29:12.180 replacing family that doesn't want to destroy them, wants them to be. And it can be an open

00:29:17.160 adoption. You can choose a family and have an open adoption that the siblings would get to know each

00:29:24.000 other, and they would realize what happened. Maybe, you know, it's a lesson learned that

00:29:28.180 you really shouldn't have done IVF. And the neighbors and the family are all going to find out. And some

00:29:34.060 people don't want anyone to know, but let's save what the children who are innocent and who need

00:29:41.300 loving families. And if you really think you cannot raise your frozen embryos, there is a good

00:29:46.900 choice. It is adoption. So, there's the Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program in California. It's online.

00:29:53.100 And then there's the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. I recommend both of them.

00:30:00.380 But, you know, do your homework, and they'll help you. There's no cost to the placing family.

00:30:06.440 You know, they'll take your embryos. The National Embryo Donation Center,

00:30:10.080 you won't have to pay the fertility clinics anymore. Yeah. So, bring them. They'll keep 1.00

00:30:15.860 them safe. Their criers stored until they're adopted. They'll find you can work with them to

00:30:21.560 find a family, a faithful Catholic family who's going to bring them up and baptize them and all,

00:30:27.840 you know, that great education and support that they need all throughout until they die. Yeah.

00:30:33.520 Because that's what adoption is. Adoption is forever. It's a forever family.

00:30:38.300 So, I think there are many reasons that we should, we in the pro-life movement should be promoting

00:30:44.400 reading the documents yourself. Buy my book. You can hear both sides. And we really came together.

00:30:50.460 I think a lot of the confusion is when does pregnancy begin? Is it at fertilization or

00:30:59.260 implantation? And as we know, it's fertilization. And implantation is a week later. But Guttmacher

00:31:09.880 Institute and Planned Parents said, oh no, you know, it's not a child until it implants. It goes as far

00:31:15.960 as to say, conception and pregnancy begin at implantation. Well, that's false. Scientifically,

00:31:22.960 morally, it begins at fertilization, which is when God provides the soul created by God. Mother and

00:31:31.640 father provide the body, but the mystery of man is at the moment of conception when we become a child

00:31:39.560 of God as well as a child of the parents. Beautiful. Dr. Elizabeth Rex, thank you so very much for joining us

00:31:45.560 for explaining this to us. We're going to have many of your articles on LifeSite News so that people can go and

00:31:51.340 read more about it. They should get your book. And especially for those pro-life families that are

00:31:56.400 looking to adopt, this is one option. And as Dr. Rex said, read the documentation, discern in prayer

00:32:07.360 what you should do. But thank you so very much. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you. And God bless all of you.

00:32:13.080 And we'll see you next time.

00:32:18.860 Hi, everyone. This is Fr. James Altman for LifeSite News. We hope you enjoyed this video. For more content

00:32:26.020 like this, check the links in the description. You can also connect with us on social media to stay up

00:32:32.640 to date with the latest news on life, faith, family, and freedom. Thank you for watching, and may God bless you all.

00:32:41.000 Thank you.

00:32:46.780 Thank you.

00:32:50.780 Thank you.

00:32:51.540 Thank you.

The John-Henry Westen Show - March 26, 2025

The moral CRISIS of IVF： Can Catholics Adopt Frozen Embryos？

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