Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - "An Uncomfortable Conversation About IVF, Surrogacy, Gay Adoption & Divorce.” - Children's Rights Activist Katy Faust

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Think you have a grasp on your stance regarding IVF, surrogacy, adoption or divorce? Think again. This riveting episode of The Spillover is a crucial deep dive into the moral arguments surrounding Big Fertility. Culture has completely normalized putting the temporary “wants” of adults above the very real “needs” of children. Prepare to be challenged on several sensitive topics that you almost certainly have a personal connection to. Alex Clark has a bold conversation with Katy Faust – author,...

Take everything you thought you knew about adoption and the fertility industry and just throw it out the window. There is no doubt in my mind that our guest in this subject will completely divide listeners, even the ones who identify as conservative and pro-life. We all know people that have had challenges becoming parents, and so they turn to alternative options like adoption, surrogacy, and IVF. But is the fertility industry really black and white with no gray area? Are there pros and cons to some of these methods? And the biggest question of all, does everyone have a right to be a parent? Our guest is here to dive into the morality of IVF and embryo adoption, give her take on whether it's healthy for a child to grow up with gay parents,

has no issues or ramifications at all, and even the ethics of surrogacy. Some of you might have a light bulb aha moment during this episode. You might find yourself changing your opinion on things you've never even thought twice about. Others might be vehemently against what our guest says in this episode, and that's okay too. This will be a little brain stretch, a little stretch for our brains. Our guest is the founder and director of Them Before Us, an organization that fights for Children's Rights. She's also the author of Them Before Us, Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement. Please welcome Katie Faust to The Spillover.

So there's this misunderstanding with you, and I totally fell for this misunderstanding. And then I read your book, and I was like, oh, okay, this makes sense. You address this at the very beginning to, and the misconception is that you were raised by two moms. But explain why people get this wrong. Yeah, well, because it's so much easier than the long version, which is my mom and dad were married until I was 10, and then they divorced, and my dad dated and remarried, and my mom fell in love with another woman, and they've been together ever since. But that's not super clickbaity, and it's really, really long. And so it's so much easier to say, women raised by lesbians defends traditional marriage. So I do have a mom who's in a relationship with another woman.

I love her. I love her partner. but I don't consider her partner to be my mom. Right. I do consider her partner to be my friend. But thankfully, my father was in my life before and after the divorce. So I never, I'm not the person with the story of, you know, the fatherless girl raised by two women. But at them before us, we do catalog the stories of a lot of kids that were, that were raised by exclusively two women or most of their life or two men or whatever.

And so I am more than happy to speak out on their behalf. And I also always want to fit that in with the fact that, like, I am probably one of the most fierce advocates for traditional marriage and for mothers and fathers. And people will say, well, aren't you arguing against your own mother? Right. And the answer is absolutely not. Because what this idea, this modern idea of modern families and gay marriage and reproductive technologies and all of that, what that really is. is saying, if you're looking at things from a child-centric perspective, is that my mother was optional in my life. That narrative says that my mother could have been replaced by two men.

And that is just the biggest lie ever, because I need my mom. I needed her when I was a kid. I still need her today. She still comes up and mothers me because that's what moms do all of their life. And this narrative that she was an optional fixture for me is one of the greatest lies, right? So this campaign that I have, right, that kids need moms and dads is because I know that she's irreplaceable for me, just like my dad was irreplaceable for me. And you advocate. What Them Before Us does is advocate for the rights of children when it comes to things like divorce, embryo adoption, donation, same-sex parents, surrogacy, IVF. So what are the rights of a child being violated in each of those situations? Yeah. So thankfully, especially among conservatives, we understand very well that children have a natural right to life, right? And we have been building a very successful cultural and legal campaign to defend that natural right for the last 50 years. But children also have rights on this side of the womb as well. Primarily, the right to be known and loved by both people responsible for their existence. This is a critical natural right. And we can get into the social science about that later on. But if you can preserve and protect this right,

to the two people that made them, what you're going to give to children is three things automatically. Number one, you are going to grant them with the perfect gender balance in the home every time, right? They are always going to get the maternal love and the paternal love that maximizes child development. Number two, you are going to give them statistically the safest, most connected and most invested in them adults in the world, right? That these are the two adults that are going to maximize the likelihood that. that children are going to be safe and loved. And number three, you're going to grant children something that they crave, and that is their biological identity. Only the two people that contribute the genetic materials to a child are going to be able to tell a child who they are

in ways that actually really matter to kids. And we know that now that we've listened to the stories of kids who were adopted or kids that are created through third-party reproduction. And so we take those core unbending child realities that they need, deserve and have a right to these two adults. And we take that principle into every discussion about marriage and family. So if children have a right to these two adults, then we learn that the definition of marriage is actually a matter of justice for children. Because only marriage, only natural marriage unites the two people to whom children have a natural right. And while we understand that there may be some situations where divorce is necessary, no fault divorce or casual

divorce is always going to sever a child's relationship with their mother or father by at least 50 percent and often introduce great instability in their life. Wow. Now, see, some parents, I mean, so many people are divorced and they might be listening to this and just their heart is just in their stomach hearing you say that. Well, and I'll talk, yeah, sure, the adults that went through the divorce and whose kids are now suffering through that mother or father loss or that instability. Yeah, they might be thinking that. But let me talk to you, child of divorce. Because I'm after the kids' perspective here. I talk to a lot of adults that are pretty defensive about their decision to leave their child's father or mother.

And there are cases where that might be justified. But 70% of cases of divorce these days are not because of adultery abuse or abandonment. It's because there was insufficient commitment or somebody fell in love with somebody else and decided to leave. And really what that means in those cases where it's a low conflict, marriage, not a high conflict marriage, not an abusive marriage, but in those low conflict marriages where one spouse chooses to exit the marriage, what they're doing is they're handing their kids lifelong, physical, emotional, academic, and relational loss, right? They're saying my own desire, for my own romantic and relational and sexual fulfillment is more important, kid than your need

to have both your mom and dad loving you and loving each other every day of their life. And so I sympathize, I empathize with adults who are in challenging marriages, but I'm here to advocate and defend the kids. And my guess is a lot of your listeners understand exactly what I'm talking about because they were the product of divorce. They did have to live through the split home. They did have to live through the split lives. They did have to live through maybe, for some of them, a revolving door of men in their mother's life or women in their father's life and the instability or maybe, you know, the repartnering of their dad with somebody else that in essence started a new family and, prioritize the new kids over them or whatever it was. And so no fault divorce, you know, we spend a lot of time in as conservatives do, I'm talking about gay marriage or gay parenting or whatever. Gays and lesbians are not responsible for the abysmal state of the family in the United States. Ooh. Ooh, that's spicy. Yeah. That belonged, that title belongs to heterosexual adults. Heterosexual adults who normalized no fault divorce.

Heterosexual adults who peaked to divorce in the 1980s when a lot of us gen Xers, you know, were. growing up. My husband is a product of divorce. I'm a product of divorce. And in his very liberal town where he was growing up as a kid in third grade, there were 52 kids in his third grade class, and three of them had married parents. Right. You can't inflict that kind of loss on an entire generation and then just expect everybody to be okay. Right. And so right now, we're talking about gays and lesbians. We're talking about the redefinition of marriage. But no fault divorce was the original redefinition of marriage. That was the first time legally when we said, marriage is no longer an institution centered around the well-being of kids. Marriage is now just a

vehicle of adult happiness. And when a marriage ceases to make you, mom or dad, happy, it can cease to be a marriage. Right. That was the original redefinition, removing the permanent aspect of marriage. And so that train just kind of stayed on the rails and eventually moved to the redefinition of marriage in terms of gay marriage. Because gays and lesbians said, well, if marriage is not about kids, if it's really just about my own personal fulfillment and happiness, well, somebody of the same sex personally fulfills me and makes me happy. So it was no-fault divorce that originally reoriented marriage away from children and towards a vehicle of adult fulfillment. You know, you discussing this reminds me that in season one of the spillover,

one of the guests that ended up being my staff's favorite guest was a woman who three weeks into her marriage, her house explodes. So her husband survive, but she ends up with her body 96% of it burned. Obviously is to spend the next couple years in surgeries, skin grafts, all that kind of stuff. I mean, she looks like a completely different person, all of this. And so I'm talking to her about, you know, did you, were you nervous that your brand new husband was going to leave you? Like, well, I'm still really young. Now my wife doesn't look the same. You know, I would struggle with those insecurities. Like, would he still want to stay with me? And basically, the whole story ended up being like, no, they were fiercely devoted to each other despite that

and did not get divorced. And it was that episode that multiple, even my male staff members who work on the show said that episode touched me because I see everybody get divorced now for zero reasons. That couple just went through hell and they still stayed together. Yeah. Three weeks into their marriage and they were like, that was inspiring. You know what's fascinating is we have this cultural narrative that if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy. And we just repeat that over and over with every new kind of family fragmentation. That's the lie that we say, that if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy. And so that is often the line of reasoning that justifies somebody leaving their kids, right, or leaving their husband or leaving their wife

or whatever it is. But what's so fascinating is it's the kids of the low conflict marriages. So a lot of times in that 30 percent where there's a high conflict marriage or there was a or something like that, when a divorce takes place, sometimes the child feels relief because they recognize, okay, there was a major problem here, right? And so now, like, studies show that those kids, even though divorce is still harmful to them, it does not have the same psychological impact that the child of low-conflict divorce experiences. Because for those 70% of the kids, they look at this and say, it didn't feel like there was anything wrong, right? It just feels like my father left for no reason or my mother abandoned us for no reason. And it's

those kids that move into their own relationships and say, I don't know if I can commit. I don't know if they'll stay. Because what I know about love and marriage is that anyone can leave for any reason when seemingly nothing is wrong. Yes. Right. And so it's those kinds of pictures that we have. And we go, is any marriage going to be able to last? And then we hear about this fierce devotion, right, of a couple like that that went through the hardest kind of crucible you can go through. And we say, wow, it looks like it is possible. But no fault divorce literally trained to generation to believe that it's not. So I want to get into all these different topics that you advocate for, but I also have some listeners who might be teenagers or early 20s. And so they're not really

in that season of life where they're thinking about, you know, conceiving and babies yet. So for those members of my audience, could you explain what terms like, just, you know, a brief definition of what is IVF versus embryo adoption and surrogacy? Like, what are those things? Great. So I defend children's rights to their mother and father. And this puts me at odds with almost everything that goes on in the reproductive technology world. Because this is a world not where babies are being made in the loving embrace of their mother and father. This is a world where children are being designed and purchased and commodified. And so IVF simply means in vitro fertilization. So fertilizing children in glass, literally making babies in a laboratory. That's what IVF means. You are making babies in the laboratory. You are bringing together sperm and egg in a petri dish to create a baby instead of doing that through heterosexual sex. Okay. And there are different ways to do this, right?

If you've got a heterosexual couple, you might use the sperm and egg of the intended mother and father. Or maybe you're using the egg of the intended mother, but you are purchasing sperm through a quote unquote donor, which is a misnomer. Right. There's nobody donating here. This isn't a this isn't a benevolent nonprofit adopt. option agency. This is a for-profit industry. And so you might purchase sperm or you might purchase egg or you might purchase or receive a donated embryo completely, right? And so that is what we call third-party reproduction. You are now using a third-party to create a child outside of the people

that are going to be raising the child. So a third-party reproduction situation is using somebody else's egg, somebody else's sperm, an embryo that's completely unrelated to the people that are going to be raising it, or maybe the womb of a third party, right? So third party reproduction means some other adult is contributing parent-making materials to the couple that is going to, in essence, be raising the child or the single that's going to be raising the child. Because once you're making babies in laboratories, what that really means is anything goes. Anybody that can put together sperm and egg and womb, can in essence make a baby and walk out of that hospital with full parental rights to that baby, even if the child's not genetically related to them.

So surrogacy is the name that we use for somebody that is going to be offering or usually renting their womb to two men, one man, a heterosexual couple who would like to create a baby but doesn't have a womb or doesn't want to use their own womb or cannot use their own womb to that baby. So at them before us, we reject all third-party reproduction because all third-party reproduction violates the rights of children. It violates their right to be known in love by the two people responsible for their existence. And we are very wary of any kind of baby-making in the laboratory because very often IVF will also violate children's right to life. Right now we've got fertility doctors and fertility clinics in red states absolutely pain. panicked over the Dobbs decision, absolutely panicked that they're not going to be able to operate if their state identifies humans as being humans from the moment of conception because their business model is built on grading and discarding undesirable embryos.

So what does undesirable mean in this industry? It means that they're going to make a baby in a petri dish, right? Maybe it'll be the sperm and eggs of the intended couple. Maybe it's going to have a third party involved. We don't know. They don't keep a lot of records about that. But they're going to make the babies in glass. And after three to five days of development, they're then going to grade the babies, right?

They're going to determine this one does not look like it says good quality. And so we're going to discard them, right? Just toss them out, right? Right. Or we've got too many male babies. We want to, we don't need that many. we're not going to preserve as many, and so we're going to discard them, right? Or maybe there's some kind of genetic markers that don't look advantageous.

We're going to discard them. And so right at the moment, right, right, when you're like first taking a look at what is developing, you're going to discard maybe up to 50% of the new life that you've just created. And then maybe they'll implant a few. But the rest of them, because you make batches, right, of embryos to be used in these fertility exploits. Right. Right. And so maybe you'll implant two, but then you've got seven others. We're going to freeze those seven, right? And so right now we've got about one million frozen embryos on ice in this country. One million. About a million. And 20 to 40 percent of them have been functionally abandoned. They can't find their parents. People have stopped paying the storage fee. And so when a child goes into the freezer, there's a very good chance they're never coming out again. Oh, right? That's kind of, that's really creepy when you think about it.

Yeah. There was a great story about two months ago about a woman. who was chronologically the same age as her biological siblings, but she was born four years later. Whoa. Right. And so that's very common, right, to have an entire batch that's frozen and then to bring them out one by one or two by two to be implanted. But the reality is that there are so many surplus embryos created through this process. And those are the ones that were deemed viable enough to freeze. But all said and done, once you get past all of the genetic grading, the screening for sex selection,

the ones that don't survive the thaw out of the freezer, the one that don't survive the implantation, and then the ones that are not selectively reduced. So abortion is a really big part of especially surrogacy contracts, right? Because what you're talking about with surrogacy is almost always a six-figure product. Yeah. Right? And so when you are paying six figures for a baby, abortion is written into almost all surrogacy contracts because abortion functions as both quality control and quantity control.

And so you have, in essence, like for children made in laboratories, you have this gauntlet that you have to go through in terms of like, are you the right sex? Are you the right grade of baby? Can you make it into the freezer, out of the freezer? Can you survive the implant? Can you survive the abortion, you know, if you're not the desirable child or the one that has, you know, maybe you were the surplus child within the womb, whatever it is. when you get to the other side of it, only about 7 to 8% of babies made in laboratories are going to be born alive.

So about 92, 93% of babies created in a laboratory are going to be destroyed or are not going to survive the process. So we have this fiction in our mind that IVF is about babies, that IVF is about a way for infertile couples to have kids. But the reality is this is not pro-life technology. This is not pro-child technology. And even the kids that are born through IVF, the little data that we have shows that they are at higher risk for cognitive problems, developmental problems, physical harms. And so it looks like we're just not supposed to make babies in laboratories, right? Even the ones that do go home with their genetic parents. So this is what I wanted to push back on because the IVF moms listening are probably ready to strangle us both.

Okay, so I have to ask on behalf of them. So my thing with IVF is I full. I'm on board with, I think there's a lot of, to me, I see gray area in that if it's the biological mom, the biological dad, their egg, their sperm, and it's their baby, and they agree to use all of the embryos. They're not going to purposely destroy any, you know, if that means they have 20 kids, they have 20 kids. In that case, do you support IVF or do you still say no? So here's the requirement. You cannot make a child sacrifice for you. And that actually is the big idea of everything at them before us.

Adults, don't make kids sacrifice for you. You're the adult. You're supposed to sacrifice for them. So can you use these technologies in a way that don't violate any child's right to life? Don't violate any child's right to their mother and father? Don't violate any child's right to be born free and not bought and sold and not commodified, which many of these kids that are born through sperm, especially third-party reproduction, about 50% of them will say it bothered me that money changed hands over my conception.

Right. So children have a right to not be commodified, to not be a designer product. So of the IVF moms out there that are listening to that, you know that this industry works against your pro-life convictions, don't you? Because you probably tried to go in with your pro-life convictions intact. And you, if you were able to do so successfully, you had to fight the industry to do it because they wanted to discard your embryos. And the IVF moms that I've talked to actually found out retroactively that some of them were. that the industry actually had an interest in bolstering their own numbers. They don't want to implant a subpar embryo because it's going to be bad for their numbers, right? They boast about their implantation and success rate and live birth rate. And if you're implanting embryos that are poor quality because you have pro-life convictions, that's not going to be good for them. So I've talked to IVF moms who have said, I went in to it saying, don't you destroy any of my embryos? And they did anyway. But now what are they supposed to think? Like, okay, so, for example, my best friend has IVF twins. And I know she's already, I already braced her for this episode. And I know that

she's probably already feeling, you know, very emotional listening. And so it's like for those moms, though, who have had babies from IVF, it's like, okay, so is it possible to change your mind on IVF, even if you have IVF children? Like, I feel like a lot of parents, and I feel like this is the same way when you're talking about trying to get somebody who's had an abortion to become pro-life. they think, well, I can't, I don't want to say that I disagree with this now because then what does this say about me or what does this tell my children how I feel about them? Well, let me say your twins are a gift. I'm so grateful they're alive. I'm so great that they're grateful they're connected to their own mother and father.

Right. All children are a gift, you know, no matter how they come to be. Right. The challenge is when you're talking about the 2% of babies in this country that are born through reproductive technologies every year, right? That those 2% are the very few that made it out alive. I'm grateful for the ones that are alive, especially the ones who's right to their mother. and father weren't violated in the process. But the reality is, and the IVF moms that I know know this well, too,

that a lot of them are trying to figure out what to do with their babies that are still in storage because now they're in debt from IVF, and they're overwhelmed because they have twins. But they have five other babies in the freezer that are genetically related, and nobody told them what was going to happen, you know, how they were going to feel on this side of things, because they're like, I don't know if I can raise seven kids. Right? We would have to get a new house. We'd have to get a new car. We're already in debt. I'm already overwhelmed. I'm exhausted. Right. And so now we've got, I mean, of the IVF moms that I know, many of them are struggling with that aspect of the industry as well. Now, you believe that IVF could be more harmful to the nuclear family than helpful, correct? I think that you have to respect children's right to life and right to their mother and father and that all adults, single, married, gay, and straight have to bend to that reality. I love how good. Like, you are so on it talking about this. Like, if you're not watching this on YouTube, you don't flinch. Like, you know and you stand so strong in this. And I, I mean, it has to be tough sometimes working for this organization where the whole purpose of them before us could be seen is so problematic for people. Oh, it is. How many friends have you lost?

Yes. Yes. And here's the deal. I don't like conflict. I got into this battle to. late because I got into this when we were talking about gay marriage and I love my gay family and friends. Like, I pray that my mom and her partner put me on the list of top two people that love them, right? I grew up in the lesbian community, honestly, you know, like after my parents divorced, like I was in that lesbian world whenever I lived at my mom's house. And so, like, I have a heart, right, for them.

And so it was really hard for me to get in on this because I don't want to lose friends and I like to be liked and I hate to be hated. until I realized that you are buying and selling children and making mothers and fathers optional in the life of kids. And then I'm like, you know what? Get behind me, Satan. That's enough. It's don't make kids sacrifice for you. And so that's the thing.

Yes, my organization will trigger everybody, everybody. Because that's the thing. I'm not just battling marriage and I'm not just talking about IVF. I am talking about every single adult who at some point in their life is going to have to figure out, is it me or is it the kid? Yeah. Is it me or is it? And this is, this children's rights message that children have a right to their mother and father, it is going to infringe on you and me at some point. A couple days ago, I don't know if you saw this. I was like so excited because this happened. And then I was like, oh, Katie Faust is coming and I'm going to ask her about this. Did you see that Mindy Kaling said in an interview that she believes parents as a gift to their 19 year old young college age daughters? Hey, instead of jewelry, instead of vacations, you should be offering to pay. to freeze their eggs so that they can spend their 20s and their 30s pursuing their careers,

doing what they want to do. And you know what? If they don't end up getting married, that's fine. Then they still get to be a mother. And I'm 29. And everyone in my audience knows that it's my, I would give up all this in a second if it meant that I could be a mother, like a wife and a mother. That's what I want. But it just hasn't happened for me. It wasn't that I intentionally have put my career first in my 20s. It's just what's happened. And so I have had to come to terms with this idea of, man, I could afford to freeze my eggs if I wanted to right now, if I'm scared, that I'm still not going to be married in the next five years. But is it just because I want to have kids? Is it my right to have kids?

You know, is that the right thing? And so I really came out hard against Mindy Kaling saying that. And I wanted to know what you thought when you heard that. I thought you were right. You are right. And, yeah, when it comes to women, you can have it all, but you can't. have it all at once. And if you can choose motherhood or career in your 20, you need to choose motherhood. Your career will be there later. Yeah. Sometimes your kids won't. And in this modern age,

especially with the massively dysfunctional way that we are raising men and women, it's hard to find a husband or wife, especially if you are on the track of wanting a devoted family. Yes. And you're not in the hookup culture. And you're not going to do the tender world and all of that. It's hard. It's hard. But just because something is hard for adults, we don't make things hard on kids. That's the line. The line is, actually, adults are made for hardship. We're made to do difficult things. The problem is then when we offload our hardship onto the shoulders of small kids.

So they bear the burden that we don't have to bear. That's an injustice. Well, you know, the saying is the people that came out against me were upset about what I said in regards to Mindy is they said, you know, if she's choosing to be a mom, obviously she has two kids. She loves them. All children need is a safe and loving home, right? This whole safe and loving home, safe and loving home. If it's two men, who cares if it's a safe and loving home, two women, same thing, purposeful, single parent. And what do you say to that? Yeah. I also want children to be safe and loved. I think it's critical. We don't have to guess at what ingredients need to be present for children to statistically be safe and loved. Statistically, and obviously there are

There are exceptions to this, but they are exceptions, right? I know incredible step-parents who are filling the gap of a negligent biological parent. They exist. They deserve validation. They deserve recognition. But statistically, any two will not do. Statistically, children are most likely to be safe and loved when they are raised by their married biological mother and father. And no statistical case can be made to the opposite.

You might find outliers. You might find anecdotes, but you will not find research. You won't find data. And you won't even find common sense on your side when it comes to this argument. And the narrative is, right, any two will do. Yes. Right. And that as long as they're safe in love, right?

And if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy. And so let me just ask your listeners right now. If that's true, then mother with her living boyfriend should be no problem because she's happy. He's happy. There's two adults. They're sexually fulfilled. their romantic needs are being met, the kids should be just fine, right? So I want your listeners to pause.

Pause this, and I want you to Google something. Google the words mother's boyfriend. Okay? Google it, pause this video, and then come back. So how'd that go? What did you see? When you Googled Mother's Boyfriend, what you saw was endless pages. How many hits?

A million hits on things like child dies at the hands of mother's boyfriend. Child tortured by mother's boyfriend. Mother's boyfriend arrested because he shoved urine-filled rags in child's mouth. You are going to find the worst cases of child abuse and neglect at the hands of an unrelated man living with children. And so don't talk to me about wanting kids to be safe and loved. If you are not on the them before us train, if you really believe children deserve to be safe and loved, then you are advocating for every child whenever possible being raised by their married biological mother and father because statistically every other variation of household is only going to exponentially increase the likelihood kids are going to be abused and neglected.

So shut up. You don't actually care if they're going to be safe and loved. If you are not recognizing the fundamental child reality that the two people responsible for their existence are most likely to make sure they're safe and loved. What do you think is more problematic donating sperm or eggs or a couple who has a designer baby? Like, is any of those more problematic than the other? Children aren't items to be cut and pasted into any and every adult relationship. They're not commodities to be designed according to our liking. They are fundamental human beings whose rights deserve to be respected and protected by the only people that have the power to do so when that's adults.

So are they humans that have fundamental rights? And if we are in the pro-life world, we already know that the answer is yes. But somehow we stumble a little bit when it comes to these adults that desperately want children, right? And we understand because we know these adults. And we know that they would be incredible mothers or fathers. And we want them to be mothers and fathers. And I pray for them that they will be mothers and fathers. But you cannot commodify design and cut children off from their own genetic parents to get it.

So what about these parents that are what you're talking about, their hearts breaking because they're having fertility issues, they're not getting pregnant. Is it your belief that those people just are not meant to have biological children? And like if they're meant to have children, God will make it happen. And they should not use any other reproductive means to get there. So first of all, I would say when you struggle with fertility, very quickly, you are going to get a referral to a fertility clinic. Right. Because this is the most lucrative arm of the medical industry because it's almost all elective.

And they're working with desperate people. people that will pay anything, people that will pay anything to have a baby, right? They are so, especially women, right, in their, women in their 30s who want a baby, they can't think about anything else, right? It is what one of my infertile friends called, like the worst breakup she's ever experienced month after month after month after month, right? These are some of the biggest burdens that adults deal with. But I would encourage you, instead of going to the fertility world, there are technologies out there, things like Napro technology that will seek to diagnose and resolve underlying issues of infertility. That's like a root cause, doctor. Yes, that's right,

because IVF world does not want your body to heal. They need repeat customers. But a lot of the Napro technology out there, depending on the issue they're seeking to resolve, have a 30 to 75% success rate. IVF may be around 30%. Right. And often after multiple rounds of IVF, after multiple children are discarded or graded or sent to the freezer or whatever it is. So I think, that we have to get better at addressing the underlying causes of infertility rather than immediately funneling people into the reproductive technology pipeline. Yeah. Do you believe that donating sperm and egg is basically the same thing as an abortion, or are those different? Well, a child's not losing their life, but a child is losing a

relationship with someone they have a natural right to. And so one of the things we do at them before us is we catalog the stories of kids who have lost a relationship with their mother or father, either through divorce and abandonment. because they have LGBT parents or because they were created through big fertility. And these kids who are created through sperm and egg donation, they are not faring well. They disproportionately struggle with identity issues. They struggle because they don't have complete medical records. A lot of them worry that they are accidentally dating their half-siblings, right?

That's a very common fear. I know you probably watch that docu-series about the Indianapolis doctor on Netflix, right? So there's actually been several doctors that have done that. And you have men, right, that will go, there's this, I don't know, there's this guy in Australia. He, you know, he'll be the natural sperm donor. You've got men that run around different countries who will, I'll have sex with you and be your sperm donor, right? Because I'm so charitable. And so you've got these kids who maybe they know from birth, maybe they find out through a 23 and me test, that their father that raised them is not actually their father.

And, hey, I have 50 half siblings that are spread across the world and maybe some across tamas. But maybe they don't know that their donor conceived because I didn't know I was donor conceived. Did I date one of them? And I did read the story of somebody that discovered that they were donor conceived. And then they realized that they had been having sex with their half sister. I mean, like, we are like babies are not supposed to be made in laboratories. And then what do you, how do you come back from that? That's the thing.

How do you come back from that? Yeah. We're messing with the foundations of what it means to be human. So sperm and egg donation, okay, maybe those, some of those kids are not going to die. But you're messing with somebody's entire life. You're messing with somebody's entire life. Okay. Now, this is juicy. I'm very excited to ask you about this. Why is it not a coincidence that the parents who want to transition a child are usually not biologically related to them? I don't know. I haven't seen the research on that. But I will say, you know, there was a situation.

I think a lot of us know about Jeffrey Younger and his kids, right, in Texas. where he was dueling for custody over his two boys. And his wife was a gender therapist, right? And she was insisting that their son James was actually Luna. And then when that boy was with his dad, he was just a regular boy. But when that boy was at his mom's, he understood very early that the way to get mom's affection was to be a girl. Right. And so he performed accordingly, right?

So I don't think that it was an accident that that child was created through egg donation. I think that's what I meant. Yeah. And to me, I'm like, well, if you believe that that child exists for you, if you believe that you have a right to a child, so much so that you can separate them from their genetic mother so that you can have the child that you want probably a designer child, why wouldn't you then think that that child should then accommodate your needs as well to increase your own social acceptance, right, by saying that you have a non-binary kid? So it really is a question of do you respect the fundamental natural rights of your children to their body, to their right to life, to their right to their mother and father, to their right to an intact unmedicalized self? So do kids exist for you or do you exist for them, I think is the fundamental question. Now, embryos that are being adopted out, is that always just a man and a woman who had extra that are giving those up? Or are random men and women's like eggs and sperm being mated and then those are being sold for adoption?

Yeah, that's a great question. So first of all, let's talk about what happens with excess embryos, right? Ones where you are no longer going to then use them for future pregnancy attempts. So the American Society of Reproductive Medicine gives us three options on what to do with those excess embryos. The first one is thaw and discard, right? Which, like, first of all, like, you're thawing and discarding humans, right? These are babies. The second one is donate to research, right? So they'll take those tiny humans. and experiment on them. And very often it's in the name of improving fertility techniques. Right. So you're destroying new life in the name of helping to make new life. And then the third option is to donate them to another couple. And so in those...

But couples don't really want to adopt those embryos of other people do that. Well, it's interesting because people tend to want their own biological children or they want a biological connection to their children. And so you think about things like Dave Rubin. and his husband, David Janet, you know, in that long form interview that he did with Jordan Peterson, they talked about, oh, we just really wanted a genetic connection. Like there was something really special about being able to see ourselves in our children. And yet all of these people have no problem cutting off a child's genetic connection to their

mother. It's like biology matters for me, but not for thee, right? And so there are some people that say, I don't want somebody else's embryo because I want a genetic connection to my own children, right? because we recognize that there's something special about that relationship until it's the child that wants it, and then we tell them, shut up, just be grateful to be alive, right? That's the message that those kids hear. So there are people who say, I want to rescue these children who are in a freezer or who can no longer be implanted into their biological mother or whatever. Or sometimes it is unknown. Like we don't know where the parents are. They've been functionally abandoned. And in those cases, when there really is no other recourse, when there's no other way for these children, right to life to be preserved when there's no chance of maintaining their relationship with their mother and father. In those cases, you need to talk about embryo adoption, not embryo donation,

not treating these children as products, you know, not going to the highest bidder, not treating them as items to be transferred under property law, but as a traditional adoption needs to be done, where you are vetting and screening the adults that are going to then take possession of this batch of embryos. They need to. go through all of the rigors that traditional adoptive parents like myself need to go through. But people are going to say, Katie, okay, I understand what you're saying, like, children are not commodities you bought and sold, but you still have to pay for adoption. Yeah, you're not paying for the child. So that's the big difference, right? We have an entire

chapter on adoption in our book, Chapter 9, where like my husband and I went through an adoption, we paid close to $25,000. At no point were we paying a birth mother. It's actually prohibited in international adoption law to pay the birth. mother or the birth family for the child because you know what we call that? Trafficking. And so what you pay for in adoption is we paid about three different organizations to screen us, to examine us, to make sure that if we were going to be given parental authority over an unrelated child that we weren't going to neglect or abuse our son. We paid the orphanage that cared for him. We paid to go to China so that we could see his birth culture and have as much contact with the place

where he was born as possible. We paid for federal background checks. We paid for the Chinese government to scrutinize us. Right. We're not paying for a baby. We are paying, in essence, to ensure that we are going to be a safe placement for a baby. So that is not what goes on in the fertility world. There is no screening. There's no background checks. None of these adults who leave the hospital with very often unrelated children go through any kind of screening or background checks. The only check that has to clear is the check at the bank. This is the buying and selling of children, and it violates almost all of the best practices that we've developed in adoption over the last couple decades.

Now, you brought up Dave Rubin and his husband, and I know both of them. I love them. But I was just thinking, as you brought them up, was like, man, how crazy would that Rubin report, episode B, of you sitting and talking to both of them? And so my question is, so let's say parents don't have the baby yet. Like, their baby, they have a surrogate, right, who is pregnant, I believe. and then, you know, other mothers who maybe are in the middle of IVF process or they also have a surrogate or whatever. Like, what do you say to the people that are in the middle of it?

Yeah. Then what? So I say to any adult because it's not just you, right? It's the adult who is 10 years on the other side of their divorce who is now watching their kids go through all kinds of like struggles, right? Struggles because they don't get to see their father. Yeah, but what if they hear what you're saying, though, and they're like, oh my gosh, I agree now. maybe I made a mistake, but you still have embryos left or like, you know, in Dave and David's circumstance, they've got a baby in a womb.

Yeah. So then, like, how do you walk back from that? Like, now they have to have the baby, right? The same way that any adult who has, in essence, violated a child's right to their mother or father deals with it, and that is to validate their loss, right? You need to be able to say, hey, you know what? 10 years ago, I left your dad and I forced you to carry a burden that you should not have carried. And I'm sorry.

I saw how that affected you. I know that I should have been there. I know that you wanted me to be there. And I was unavailable. I wronged you. I'm sorry. Right. This is actually what it means to be an adult is we recognize how we have harmed our kids.

And so what do Dave and Dave say to their children who they already are going into this with the mindset of we can't replace their mother. And yet they are desperately trying. I mean, they have used the eggs of they've shopped for. I mean, he's talked about it like a Tinder-like experience, right, where you're shopping for your child's genetic mother. You know, they are renting the womb of another woman with whom those babies are bonding and they will intentionally cut those babies off from the only woman, the only person those babies know on the day that they're born so that these two men can have an intentionally motherless child. They are, like he says, have a couple refrigerators of breast milk because they need the milk. They need the bodies of women to create these motherless children, at least three so far. You know, they have night nurses.

They have grandmothers coming. And they do recognize, hey, you know, we can't be a mother. But I hope that when their kids say, does my mother know that I exist? Do I look like her? I wonder if my great, I wonder if her parents know that, have I passed her on the street today? Does she play the piano like I play the piano? Because those are the questions that children ask. Not because they are created through sperm and egg donation, but because they are human children.

And these are questions that human children have when they are not growing up with their mother or father, whether they're adopted, whether their father abandoned them, whether their mother's a druggie on the street somewhere. Kids naturally long for the love of the two people that made them. And so I pray that the message that those two children here is, you're right. you do deserve to know her. Our desire to have a genetic connection with a child outweighed your need to have a connection with your genetic mother. And that was wrong. And you suffered loss because of it. And we'll do what we can to see if we can find out her identity with you because it matters to you, right? Because we see in surveys of kids created through sperm and egg donation that it matters greatly to them. A majority of them would say, my sperm donor is half of who I am. Right? Many of them don't consider them a donor. They're like, that's my father because it is their father. So I think that we have done kids a great disservice. You know, we spend some time in our book talking about kids with same-sex parents and how hard it is for them to grow up in a world where they're told you don't need a father. You should be so grateful to have two moms that love you. The problem is those kids want a dad. Yeah. And so it's sort of this form of gaslighting because they're going to need a father. You should be so grateful to have two moms that love you. The problem. The problem is, you know, naturally want a dad, whether the world says that they should or not. And so then they start to

feel guilty for wanting what all children have wanted throughout human history. But this world says, no, moms and dads, they're interchangeable. But in the lives of kids, in the minds of kids, in the hearts of kids, they're not. So if IVF can sometimes be unethical, do you believe that it should be illegal? I think that children's right to life and right to their mother and father and right to be born free and not bought and sold shouldn't be violated. And so if you can use reproductive technologies in a way that doesn't violate any child's right to life. Now, what you're talking about that is the gametes only of the genetic mother and father, only creating the number of embryos you intend to immediately implant, no sex selection, no selective reduction, which is abortion,

no grading of embryos. You're going to implant every baby that you create. There's no kid going to a freezer. I hope that goes well for you. You still are going to deal with the increased psychological risks, physical risks that go along with artificial reproductive technologies. That's something we're still learning about. But that scenario that I just put out there for you, that pro-life scenario where no child's right to life or right to their mother is being father is being violated, that virtually doesn't exist. It is too cost prohibitive. You will very rarely find somebody that does not freeze excess embryos because they will be counseled not to because it's too, expensive to have to recreate embryos every time you want to do a transfer attempt.

So if a mother and father doing IVF use every embryo but some of them don't take, is it your opinion that those parents are responsible for the death of that child? No, I think every child, well, I do think that it's harmful to create babies and laboratories. You don't get to decide whether or not they take. But in my opinion, you are responsible for implanting every single one of them. They are your children. What about a married mother and father using IUI, which is just like a mechanism for helping with fertility? Is that problematic?

So I think that that is less problematic. Okay. You still are extracting sperm from the man's body. But at minimum, you are not doing the baby in a petri dish. So to me, that's why I'm saying, like, there's actually like dozens of ways that you can use reproductive technologies. My line as a children's rights advocate is don't violate a child's right to life. don't violate their right to a mother and father, don't violate their right to be born free, not fought and sold. And if you can figure out how to use these technologies in ways that don't violate children's rights, God bless you.

I hope it works out. In the case of divorce or separation, who becomes the greatest threat to a child? Well, children, there's three staples of a child's social emotional diet, okay? Three things that they need to feast on if they are going to have the best shot at thriving. mother's love, father's love, and stability. So a married mother and father is the only household where a child is going to have their staples, their social emotional staples, met. Once a divorce takes place, you lose 50% of mother's love, 50% of father's love, and very often instability characterizes that child's life, right? Mom is repartnering over here,

dad's repartnering over here. Maybe mom has a new baby, but maybe two years later, that relationship breaks up and now she's moving, right? That instability characterizes a child's life post-divorce. And so very often they don't get stability. And that is why you see children of divorce having drastic problems with school, with their own physical and emotional and relational health, right? You really, it's very hard to form a stable identity without stability. And unfortunately, divorce brings instability.

So when you're talking about what the greatest threat is, the greatest threat is that they are emotionally malnoury. Right? There are simply no way for a child of divorce to have their social emotional needs met. Will they make it through? Are they going to be able to figure it out? A lot of them do. But to normalize it and to say they're going to be just fine statistically. They may not. It's just culture lying to parents and families. Yeah. Okay. So I know how you feel about like seeing, we talked about with the Mindy Kaling situation, a single woman, you know, freezing her eggs and then using a sperm donor to have kids later. We disagree with that. Morally should see. single people be able to adopt or foster care, in your opinion? Good question. So here's the rule. And you can take this rule. You can apply to any merit and family situation.

And that is, are you doing hard things for kids? Or are you forcing kids to do hard things for you? If you are doing hard things for kids, yay. If you're forcing kids to do hard things for you, boo. Like it's very, very simple. And so sometimes people will say, well, are you dissing on single mom? moms? Well, you know, sometimes single moms are single moms because they were the only parent that was willing to do hard things. Yeah. Right? And that is that is the metric for success

in our them before us world is and boo to the guy who wasn't willing to do hard things. Absolutely. Right. So what about single mothers by choice? Spirmed? Boo. Yeah, because you're making them do hard things for you. That's right. You're making they do hard things for you. Yes. If you're doing hard things for them, then it's okay. Like a single woman who's, who's financially capable. safe house, whatever, adopting a child, then you would say that's okay. So let's talk about adoption. Okay. Let's really spend some time here.

So here's the problem with what we're doing with adoption right now is both for like in federal heterosexual couples, but then also for like LGBT adults, right? They see this as a way to get kids, right? And we've even heard this framed in some state by state battles like LGBT people have a right to adopt. Yes. Do they have a right to adopt, Katie? No.

Hell no. Because nobody has a right to adopt. Adults do not have a right to a child that is not theirs. Adoption does not exist for adults. Adoption exists for kids. Children who have lost their parents have a right to be adopted. Children are the client in adoption. Not adults.

Even if they're adults who are paying the adoption fees and the agency fees, they are not the client. If adoption is done well, every child that needs. needs, a loving home is going to find one, but not every adult that wants a kid is going to get one, right? It's very, very important that we understand this major, major difference. Adoption is an institution centered around the rights and well-being of children. Reproductive technologies is an industry centered around the desires and the checkbooks of adults. Okay. So they are two totally different things. So let's talk about a single or even same-sex couple adopting. Okay. So the child is the client. The goal is to say, what can we do to get this child into the home that is going to maximize

their thriving? So in my world, the children's rights world, that means whenever possible, placing child with a genetic relative so they can still have some kind of connection to their kinship network. If not, or in addition, they should be placed in the home of a mother and father so they can benefit from the maternal love and paternal love that maximizes child development. In addition, they should be placed in a married home because marriage brings stability to children that no other household configuration really does. Here's what freaks me out, though, is married couples who adopt and then they decide a little bit later to get divorced.

Yes. And it has happened, and it's devastating, right? I'm friends with some of these adults. And the trauma upon trauma is not awesome for kids. But I will say, too, that when you are talking about white drug-free infants, there are plenty of heterosexual married couples that are in years-long lines for those kids. When you are talking about older kids, foster kids, sibling groups. The kids about to age out of foster care.

Yeah. Or kids that have disabilities in orphanages overseas. For example, the kids that are undesirable, there aren't enough married heterosexual couples that want to adopt those kids. And so social workers need to make the best placement for those kids. And maybe it's a single mom who has, you know, I know a family that adopted married family whose the father has a cleft lip and cleft palate. And so they adopted a child that had been passed over with cleft lip and cleft palate, right?

I love that. So they were distinctly poised to know exactly how to parent and treat that child, right? And then I've got another mom that was a single mom and she had worked in sort of the behavioral therapy. And so she adopted, there wasn't a married mom and dad available or the agency decided to place it with this specific single mom because she had a behavioral therapy background and this child really needed somebody with that kind of a background. So the goal is to evaluate who is the best parent for this child, not which adult wants a kid and how do we get it for them. So that is the difference. Sometimes a single or even a same sex couple might be the

best placement for a child. And like, people will ask me, oh, I see, like, you want a kid to languish in an orphanage rather than be adopted by two moms or two dads. And I'm like, well, hold my beer, because I've actually lived through that situation. Like, I used to be the largest, I used to be the assistant director at the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world. Oh, wow. Before I had kids. So I've got a history with adoption. I'm also an adoptive mom. Like, adoption's very close to my heart when it's properly understood as a mechanism to defend and uphold the rights of children. But I was in a situation where a partner agency had a child with significant special needs in an overseas orphanage. And I know for a fact that that child was passed over by about eight heterosexual couples because her medical condition was too serious.

And I had some lesbian friends that said, we could go get her. Will you go with us, Katie? And I'm like, let me check. Yep. And we went. And it was a very hard couple weeks, probably the hardest two weeks of our lives. Yeah, explain this. She had very serious medical conditions. But those two women were the only adults that were willing to take on this hard case in the adoption agency made the right placement. Because that girl, who's now about 22, had to have yearly surgeries for her medical condition. And she probably would have died if these two women had not stepped up and done the hard. thing on her behalf. So the metric when it comes to adoption is not what adult wants kids. It's who is the best placement for this child. And whenever possible, that should be a mom and dad. But sometimes that's not available. But for some people that may be gay or have close family members that are gay listening to that are going to be like, are you kidding me? So she's saying

no gay people should be allowed to adopt a healthy child. They have to get the rejects. I feel like, what if they take what you're saying is that? Yeah. You don't have a right to a child. My husband and I didn't have a right to a child either, right? And when it comes to that healthy, drug-free infant, that is the birth mother's decision. That's not your decision to make, right? And a good agency won't make it their decision either. That's the birth mother. It's her baby. And she is evaluating what she think is best for her child. And some women do choose to place their children with two men or two women. But that's not your kid. So in none of these situations is, do you have a claim to any of these kids. You don't have a right to a child. You don't have a right to somebody else's child. Let me put

it that way. You have a right to your own biological child. You don't have a right to somebody else's biological child. And that means some sperm donor or egg donor's child. You don't. Okay. So to also play devil's advocate, because some might argue that we're dealing with, okay, we have 50 different states. And, you know, something like IVF cannot be addressed with blanket policies or regulation. So when it comes to freezing eggs for a later date and IVF in general, do you think that total regulation is the answer or that the power should lie within the state so single women and couples can do what they want when it comes to their fertility journey? I don't care what you do with your body. I mean, I do because I think it's harmful to you. But if you want to freeze your own eggs, if you want to go through the perils of injecting yourself with that many hormones so that what should be one egg released a month releases 15 eggs instead so you can heart.

your eggs and literally put your future fertility at risk so that you can focus on your career for 20 years, that is your business. I don't think sperm and eggs are sacred. Babies are sacred. And once you mix sperm and egg together, that is now a human being that has human rights that deserve to be protected. So what I think needs to be regulated is what we do with human beings. Right. So if you want to, if you, I don't think that you should be jacking off and selling your sperm. But I don't think sperm is sacred. It's babies that deserve to be protected. So what do you think the future looks like? Do you like see this world where this form of procreation is more and more the norm, even for heterosexual couples and individuals? Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately it is. Why? Because women are being lied to about their reproductive bodies, right? They're made to believe that they can easily get pregnant in their 30s or early 40s, and that's just not the case. Like, once you're over 35, it's much harder to have kids. And a lot of that's happening because we're getting married later, right? So part of it is the lie that, now your body can do this at any age. It can't. Part of it is the fact that people are marrying later. Part of that is because we can't even form healthy friendships or how are we going to

form healthy dating relationships. We can't even have healthy dating relationships. How are we going have healthy marriages? Right? And like all of this has to do with human relationships and learning to do human relationships just even on a friendship level. A lot of these people don't come from healthy homes where they had intact mothers and fathers showing them how to love one another to death to us part. And so of course they're going to go into all of these situations a little more wary, a little more skeptical, having to go through therapy right before they even get to the point where they're ready to have a kid because they're so worried about repeating the sins of their mother or father. And so it's just, yeah, unfortunately, this is going to be a bigger

part of our world. And that is why we need to think about it more carefully because some of these ideas are lies and some of them are dangerous. And when it comes to marriage and parenthood and family and reproductive technologies, when we get these questions wrong, we are going to victimize children. And that's what's unacceptable. Man, this episode is going to burn down the internet. Like, I already know it's going to break the internet. Well, here's the good news. Here's the good and the bad news. This is not an episode about the gays. This is not an episode about the Christians. This is an episode about every adult out there who is going to, at some point, probably have to die to themselves so that children's rights are going to be respected and protected. And that's why them before us is

actually kind of this amazing coalition of misfits, right? Because we have gay and lesbian supporters. We have people who have children of divorce, adults who have been through divorce, all of us who are like, look, we may have all kinds of stuff going on with us. Like, we might have this kind of rag tag. We don't fit in with the Christian right. And I don't fit in with the LGBT lobby or whatever. But you fit in with us. If you're an adult who's saying, I'm not going to victimize kids. I'm going to advocate for their rights. Then you belong with us. You are one of us. So what do you do? Like are you guys going to Capitol Hill and like advocating for certain bills or something? Like what does them before us do? And, you know, so people that may want to donate to you guys or get involved know what they're getting into. So in summary, we are seeking to change hearts and change laws. Right. So a lot of what we're doing is talking, like talking to you, speaking out conferences, because a lot of people, once you see it from the child-centric perspective, it's like this simple template that you can then.

lay over the top of any trending news story about somebody that's storing her eggs and becoming a single mother by choice or listening to a Dave Rubin episode about two very good men who are both going to be good fathers, but go, wait a second, but you're cutting a kid's mother out. Or you're in a situation where your friends thinking about divorce because they've kind of fallen out of love. And suddenly you're not going to be able to unsee that all of these scenarios insist that children sacrifice for adults. Yeah. Right. And so the cultural work that we do and the conversations flips a switch and helps people understand, actually, all of these conversations about marriage and family and parenthood and reproductive technologies, they're not different issues. They're one issue. And the issue is, are you respecting or are you violating the rights of children? And so we seek to change hearts through conversations like this. And we seek to change hearts through our story bank, which tells the stories of kids that have lived through modern families, like all the ones we've been talking about so that you can see that modern families. is really just code for child loss. Really, that's all it is.

Just bomb after bomb. It's so good, though. Man. So then we also want to change laws because back before I was doing this, I would see these bills being proposed and nobody was challenging them, right? There was nobody speaking up on behalf of the child. And so we do seek to have a legislative presence, testifying at committees or writing letters to legislatures or submitting amicus briefs or whatever it is.

but we need to do more, right? I mean, we need to be the dominant voice. The children need to have a dominant voice in all these conversations. Because if we get it wrong, they're the ones that have to live with the lifelong consequences. How do you think conservative specifically, and we're about to wrap up here, but I am curious, how have conservative specifically failed American children and even the American nuclear family, in your opinion? We got a lot of things wrong, especially in the mainstream. marriage debate. Number one, we fell into the same trap as the other side of being totally adult-centric, right? So the other side said, if we don't get gay marriage, gay adults will be victimized. Well, and we can't get gay voters. Yeah. And then the right said, oh, but if we get gay marriage, it's going to be a problem for religious adults, right? So we made the whole thing about adults. And that was such a big problem, right? Because what the other side heard is, oh, I see. If gay marriage is legalized, you're going to have to bake a cake you don't want to bake. Oh, poor you.

But the reality is, if you legalize gay marriage, mothers and fathers become legally optional. And that's exactly what has happened. And so we have failed to understand that at the heart of all of these issues are children and defend and protect them. And a lot of that is because we're going to alienate some of the people that support us. We're going to alienate people that have gone through a no-fault divorce or who have used IVF. And so that has scared away some organizations from taking an unflinching position on this. But I'll tell you, that loses you with younger voters because they've got a very strong BS meter. And they know when you're being hypocritical.

They know when you're like, oh, so it sounds like you're against these technologies only when the gays are doing it. So screw you. Right. But when you take a position unflinchingly on the rights of children and you insist that everybody, single, married, gay and straight, conform to these rights, that's when you actually can start to build a credible movement, in my opinion. I think that we missed the ball on divorce, right? I mean, a lot of us that were talking about the harms of redefining marriage, they said, oh, you think kids should have a mom and her dad? Oh, is that why you're railing against no fault divorce?

And we weren't. And we weren't, right? And so there was some hypocrisy there on our part, and that needs to change because children of divorce deserve to be advocated for as well. So I think the other big problem is we have majored on the research. We have majored on common sense. Like when it comes to things like marriage, we have the five major religions on our side. But the other side is continually one because they've done a better job of humanizing their arguments because they tell a better story.

So that's one thing that then before us is trying to do is catalog the stories of kids who have experienced mother or father loss. Because I guarantee you, if you read my book, which is filled with like about 120 stories of kids that have been intentionally denied their mother or father. Well, and who are, they feel like, of course, they, you know, they love their two moms or they love their two dads. And so they felt like, you know, before as a child, well, I can't dare come home from school and say, mom, I'm sad that I have, you know, I can't make a father's day card or whatever. They felt like that was disrespectful and, you know, horrible to say to their two parents of the same sex. And so they just held it in, held it in, held it in. And then you talk about in your book, which I highly recommend everyone read because she obviously can talk about a hundred more things that we didn't get to in this episode. and I was highlighting like crazy and putting sticky notes and everything.

But like you talk about how those kids, then they become adults, and that's when they say this did screw me up as a child, having two moms or two dads. But a lot of times they don't talk about it as kids. So when the research says, oh, kids are fine being raised by two parents at the same sex. It's because they're not talking about it when they're kids. You've like, you know, you're not going to speak out against your parents. Or they're not even asking the kids.

Like most of those studies that say that there's no difference. It's really just going to the parents who have. kids in their home saying, hey, does your kid like having two moms? They do? Great. It looks like there's no difference. Right. So these studies that show the outcomes for kids that say that there's no difference, very poor methodologically conducted. But yes, what you're saying is absolutely right. What I have found in the kids that want to speak up and want to kind of articulate some of the harms, most of the time, they can't do that until about 10 years out of the home, until they start having their own children. Then they suddenly go, oh my gosh, this is what it's like to be a dad.

And this is what I missed out on as a kid. Oh, my gosh. And so it does take a little bit of time and distance to be able to sort of process and reflect on a lot of that. That happens a lot, too, with women who get abortions and say that they're pro-choice. They say, this abortion didn't affect me. I didn't experience any, you know, emotional downfalls or whatever. I'm fine with, I'm happy with my decision. I love it.

And then years later, decades later, then something happens like that where the switch flips and they think, oh, my gosh, I regret my abortion. Yeah. Yeah, and that's how it works with a lot of like harms, especially in childhood. Sometimes it takes a little while before you're like, and that's how I was impacted by it. What is the name of your book again for people who are now like, okay, I got to get this? Yeah, it's called Them Before Us, Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement. And it addresses everything we've talked about today. But this is the place like we have distilled the best research, the best studies.

It's cited. You have sources for statistics and stuff. And it's great. It's very solid. It's been reviewed by top sociologists and consulted and all of that. Like, you can bank on what's in there. But what's really going to light a fire in you is reading about the kids who are impacted. And those are the stories that are very hard to find because they're very expensive to tell. I mean, if a kid's going to come out and say, I loved my two moms, but I desperately wish I had a father, do you think that's going to like increase the warmth at the Thanksgiving dinner or not? I mean, these kids come out. you know, as traditionalists, really, at the cost of their most precious relationships. And so we have painstakingly compiled them so that you can see what that looks like in real life. Well, I know that there's going to be people who are going to say, Alex, you didn't ask this. And, you know, you have to understand to remember, as I'm not a mom yet. So I tried my best, especially talk to my friends who were moms who would be able to have devil's advocate questions for you, Katie, and stuff.

But there's going to be people that are like, I wish you would have asked this. didn't. So do you have a preferred method of social media if they do have a follow-up question? Yeah. And actually, we are hoping to start a podcast. Yes. And we want to have these hardest questions. You know, we've been doing this for a while. So there's not a lot that we don't feel like we have sources for or stories for. Like, we should be able to get you good answers. They might not be answers that sit well with you because it's probably going to make demands of you. Yeah. But we're going to be able to have good answers for you. And maybe we'll be able to put some of this on a podcast, so we've got some kind of a library. So send me your questions. You can find us at them

before us.com. There's a place at the bottom where you can subscribe to our newsletter. You can ask us questions in that portal and we'll do what we can to get you answers. Are you on Twitter, Instagram or anything? I'm on Twitter too much. But I'm not great on Twitter. Like, I see people that are great on Twitter. I'm not great on Twitter. I'm so good at Twitter. I'm too serious. Like, I don't talk about what I'm baking enough, I guess. I don't know. Do people know? Do they need to know, like, that I just went for a walk? I don't know. But I'm on Twitter. there. It's Advocate. Advo underscore K-D-K-A-T-Y. We're on Instagram. Thanks, Jen. My Instagram girl runs my Instagram because I hate Instagram. Dude, if I could get off everything I would,

but it literally, that would crush my career. Like, I have to be on there. Yeah, we're on most of the social media platforms, but we'll respond to you, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We'll get to you. Perfect. Katie, thank you for breaking the internet with me today. Yes, yes. I hope that your guests are not too triggered. I feel like I've got whiplash from this episode in a good way. Some of the things Katie said are things I need to really sit with for a minute so I can think about how I feel about them. And you might be feeling the same way.

Maybe you're going to do some reading up on big fertility and learn a little more before taking any hard stances. Or maybe you just heard all of this for the first time and you are fired up with enough hot takes to last you a lifetime and you can't win. to drop this episode in your mom group chat and just burn it all to the ground. I just want to say a year ago, I saw nothing wrong with a lot of this stuff. And only recently have I changed my mind. I think I was wrong.

And it's okay to change your opinion on things as we learn more and get older. I'm going to replay this episode and listen to her answers again. And I'm the one who did the dang interview. If the mind-blown emoji was an episode of The Spillover, I think it would be this one. Yeah, I do. Speaking of mothers, next week, I am talking to a conservative mom who has been in the fight of her life. Her unbelievable story will have you questioning how something of this nature could even happen in America. Look for new episodes every Thursday night at 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight, midnight Eastern on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Watch the episodes on the Poplittics YouTube channel or by subscribing to The Spillover on Rumble. I'm Alex Clark, and this is The Spillow. Love you, mean it, bye.