Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1171 | Egg Donation Centers Are Exploiting College Girls & Military Wives | Guest: Kallie Fell

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Starting point is 00:01:15 We've got Callie Fell here today. She is the executive director for the Center of Bioethics and Culture Network. And she is here to answer some of these questions for us today. We are going to talk about this and so much more on today's episode of Relatable. It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com code Alley. That's good ranchers.com code Alley. Callie, thanks so much for taking the time to join me. For those who don't know, can you tell us who you are and what you do? Yeah. So my name is Callie Fell. I'm the executive director for the Center for Bioethics and Culture. I'm also the

Starting point is 00:01:59 program director for the Paul Ramsey Institute, which is our project within the Center for Bioethics and Culture. I'm also a perinatal nurse. Okay. So tell me about the CBC Network. Those who remembered my interviews with Jennifer Law, whom I've had on multiple times, may already know, but there are a lot of people who are new, who have no idea what CBC does. Can you tell us? So the Center for Bioethics and Culture is an educational nonprofit that was started by our founder, Jennifer Law, in 2000. We've been around for 25 years now. And we work in the space of just educating people, educating general public lawmakers on bioethical issues that most profoundly affect humanity and the vulnerable among us. We work in the area of making life and faking

Starting point is 00:02:48 life, which we can get into later. But predominantly how we educate is through filmmaking. We have several documentary films now, through podcasts, through writing, through interviews, all kinds of things. So education in the space of bioethics. Yes. And can you give us a definition of what bioethics is? Yeah. It's funny. I was sitting last night down for dinner and a gentleman next to me was like, oh, I've never even heard of bioethics and I have a biology degree. And I'm always kind of like, dumbfounded by that. But bioethics is really anything in medicine or biotechnological advancement or biomedicine that affects life. So one of the most common things when people thinks bioethics is abortion, for example. But the things that we focus on at our work in the Center for Bioethics and Culture is the space of third-party reproduction.

Starting point is 00:03:46 Yeah. And also recently entered the space, well, I say recently now it's been, gosh, five years, but on the gender debate. And so anything that's affecting how we treat people, bio-life issues and the ethics surrounding. those issues. Yeah. So it's the world of science and medicine and what is actually ethical. I always say that science or technology can tell us what is possible, but it can't tell us what is moral. And when technology takes us from what is natural to what is possible, we as people have the responsibility to ask, but is this moral? Or is this ethical? And by ethics, we just mean, like, is this right or wrong? Does this fall into a framework that matches the ethic that I think we all would have, that human life is precious, that it has dignity, and therefore we have rights. But there is a big debate about when life begins and when life actually becomes valuable and what rights that valuable person actually deserves. And as you said, that comes up in the abortion.

Starting point is 00:05:00 debate, but as CBC knows, it's far more than abortion. So y'all are looking at things like IVF and surrogacy too, right? Correct. And anything that's assisted reproduction. So that also includes egg donation. And I always put that in quotes because young women are exploited for their eggs and they're not donating their eggs. They're being bought and purchased. And so those eggs are sold. So yes, anything in that, yes, exactly, anything in that arena of third party conception. Yeah. And so tell us how you got into this. You said that you're a nurse and I know that Jennifer Law was also a nurse, but tell me, did you have the same kind of journey as her into the space? No, actually, it's kind of a long journey, but I would call it a providential journey. And my focus is always at the center been women's health and the health of the babies that she might carry. But I actually, was one of those people that didn't really know what I wanted to do. I kind of enjoyed a lot of

Starting point is 00:06:03 different things growing up. But I found myself in college in a class called reproductive physiology, and I was enamored. I loved it. I loved learning about the reproductive cycle. I love learning about men and women's bodies and their reproductive capabilities. I was absolutely fascinated. And so I went on to study reproductive physiology, and I have a master's degree in reproductive physiology and molecular biology. After graduate school, I was considering going on to become an OBGYN, something in health care. Life has a way of kind of making decisions for you sometimes. But I went on to do research in women's health, studying intemeterosis and preterm birth at a medical center in Tennessee. And while I was doing that, I found myself really wanting to be more involved in the lives

Starting point is 00:06:57 of women, not just at a lab bench, studying these things. So I decided to go back to become a nurse, specifically a perinatal nurse. And that's a nurse that takes care of a woman from, you know, when she's pregnant through labor and delivery and then in the postpartum period. Okay. So I went back to become a nurse. And during all of this, I actually went to a conference that was not even remotely on the topic of women's health. But I was thumbing through the pamphlet. kind of bummed about who is speaking and what I would be learning. And I found Jennifer's photo and a little bio of her talk and what she'd be talking about. And I was like, oh my goodness, I have been doing research on pig embryos and doing all of these techniques and animals through my graduate studies.

Starting point is 00:07:45 I'm learning about women's health through my nursing degree. And here's a woman who is actively talking about some of these struggles that I was internally, like kind of thinking about as a graduate student like should we be doing this should we be taking eggs and sperm out of the body and putting them in a dish and then putting them back should we be what is what these bioethical questions like what is right what is wrong just because we can should we but nobody could answer those you know professors were kind of progressive and well we can and I brought it to the church and a lot of pastors at the time I don't know I'm not I don't want to talk about this yeah yeah so anyway I listen to her talk, I was enamored by what the center was doing. I went home, watched the films,

Starting point is 00:08:32 and just really wanted to get involved. And I think Jennifer probably thought I was a crazy fan girl at the time. But I, again, through providential timing, moved to California, and that's where the center is based. And I started volunteering using my expertise in understanding research studies and writing and started working as a volunteer for the Center for Biothics and culture. And then all while working as a perinatal nurse in California. And then from there, came on as a staff writer. And now I'm the executive director. So it's been a really fun journey. And I'm very passionate about the work that we do. Okay. Let's go to, that's amazing. Let's go to, you said, egg selling. Let's call it egg selling. That's typically what I do because I did not realize,

Starting point is 00:09:24 maybe I learned it from Jennifer. I don't remember that it really is a misnomer. And I know you mentioned that these women are getting paid for this, but you said you didn't just say getting paid. You said they're being exploited for their eggs. So what do you mean by that? Yeah. So I think you have to start with thinking about what kinds of women are targeted to become

Starting point is 00:09:44 egg sellers, right? These are women who are young, typically between 20 and 30 because those are our fertile years. That's when we're healthiest. Our eggs are healthiest. Our egg quality and quantity are the best. And we think about if we were in the market for something, wouldn't we want a specific type of, we want the best product, and we might want a specific type of that. And so young women, where you might find these women who might need money, college campuses, for example, who might be taking on college debt or have other things going on, are advertising. too as a way of making extra money.

Starting point is 00:10:26 And these advertisements are really slick. Some of them include that I've seen in the past, probably not now, but free tanning sessions, pay for spring break. And they offer actually large amounts of money for their eggs. And then these women, often too, the advertisements will list a higher amount than what they're often given because a woman might answer an advertisement and say, oh, I saw, an advertisement for X amount, but then she might find out that she's not quite what they're looking for. Perhaps she's not an MIT grad, or perhaps she's not studying, she doesn't know a

Starting point is 00:11:04 foreign language, or she doesn't have a certain pedigree. But she's already in the clinic doors and is intrigued. And ultimately, too, these women, not just egg sellers, but women who go on to become surrogate mothers, they have a good place in their heart. They want to help a family in need. A woman thinks I don't need my eggs right now. Of course I would want to help a family have a baby. Of course. And so their altruistic intentions are exploited. And then you incentivize on top of that with funds. Funds, yeah, to get out of debt to pay for college. One woman I talked to and that I interviewed for her it was to help her mother pay rent. Wow. And so it just sounds like, I mean, it sounds like the song Fancy by Reba McIntyre. I mean, she's talking about being a young

Starting point is 00:11:56 prostitute because her mom is sending her out to like help pay their bills. This is not sex, but it is selling your body for money, sometimes for desperation. Right. And not just your body. You're not just putting your health at risk, but you are in essence, as a egg seller, sperm seller, you are giving away your future child. That is genetically, that is your genetic material that will make a future child. And I think that young women don't always think that through. Yeah. They just think, well, this is my egg. It's not my child, but it will be your child. I know people, and I'm sure this person did it from a good place because she was just like a sweet, normal girl. I don't think she was in a desperate situation. But she was very proud and would

Starting point is 00:12:41 say on social media how many eggs she sold. Or she would say donated and how many people have been able to start families because of what she did. And all the comments were applauding her. Wow, this is so amazing. You're giving this gift. Well, yes, you are. And it is amazing because you are willing to give up your own child to someone else. And you have no idea how that child will be raised. I mean, there are just so many layers there. I think it is hard for women to realize because they are so disconnected from the father of that child and who that person will be. And a word on the advertisements too. The advertisements, um, in nowhere on them, do they include the known risks or even the statement that there are, we don't know what risks there are. There's no indication that what

Starting point is 00:13:33 she's doing is risky. I just spoke with a woman who's actually trying to file a class action lawsuit in Canada who, um, sold her eggs twice and the second time, um, was, was harmed physically by it. and is now speaking out and trying to get other women who have been harmed in Canada from donating their eggs. She was, she just talks to me about how she called the clinic with pains, complaints of shortness of breath and other side effects. And instead of talking to a doctor, she was, she talked to a coordinator who just reassured her that that was normal.

Starting point is 00:14:14 She actually never saw a physician or a provider. of medical care until she was sedated on the table ready to collect her eggs. And so these advertisements, I kind of went in a circle there, but these advertisements are very flowerly. They use very cunning and slick language to get women into the doors of the clinic. And once there, they're exploited for their eggs. They're put on high doses of hormones and medications that have long-lasting side effects. We have a film called Exploitation that generally.

Starting point is 00:14:47 produced for the Center for Biothics and culture. And it just tells the story of these women who were harmed having stroke ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, losing their own fertility. And then that's not, those are just kind of immediate risks. We don't know what happens to these women long term. Their fertility long term, their risk for cancer later. Or their children, by the way. Or their children, exactly. And so they're really exploited. And it's a certain type of woman. And MIT, I have, have to say in recent years, their newspaper, the tech, has actually called out these advertisements. And I don't believe that they're allowed to advertise in their newspaper anymore because they've called them out for what they are, which is elitist and racist and eugenic. Because people who want

Starting point is 00:15:36 an egg from a woman, they want a certain type of egg. They want her to look a certain way. They want her to have a background. And I've actually seen this. It typically is, I know that gay men are not the only people. that are buying eggs from women, but very often they are. And these journeys are, I would say, especially commercialized and glorified today. I see it all over social media. And unabashedly, like Shane Dawson, I think that's the YouTuber's name.

Starting point is 00:16:04 He went through this with his partner, unabashedly talking about picking the egg seller from a catalog that they wanted her to have a certain look, a certain background. There was another couple that we highlighted on the show maybe a year ago who said, you know, we wanted her to have, we wanted the baby to have like my smile, but have his eyes. And so we had to get a woman who looked like this. I mean, you're literally picking women out of a rolodex based on these features and purchasing her DNA to create your child. And that's not even the woman that's going to be carrying the child. Right. Right. It's very much like someone had to explain to me, like the social, the apps for dating. You know, you're swiping through and finding and finding the woman that you want to be the genetic mother of your child. And you're right. It's, that's in the, in the case of gay couples or single men, they're explaining two women, the egg donor, egg seller and the surrogate mother. Mm-hmm. Who are two different people. And can you, we've talked about that before. for a bit. Can you talk about why that is? Is that a legal requirement that the egg seller and the

Starting point is 00:17:20 surrogate or gestator have to be different? It's not a legal requirement, but at the end of the last century, most people were pretty repulsed at the idea of surrogacy because what we were operating from was like traditional surrogacy, meaning that the woman who was carrying the child was also genetically related to the child. It was just the mom. Right. And that got really messy, of course, right? Because women were selling their actual biological children. And so I think it was a strategic move to help disassociate this process. And so to make it a little less messy, it's still fraught with bioethical concerns and is immoral. But now we have an egg seller who is a genetic mother to the child. And then we have the surrogate mother who, of course, is the birth mother to the child. And

Starting point is 00:18:12 And therefore, neither can really lay claim to the fact that they're the mother. It's an intentional separation. Because there's a bond that's created there. And we even know that surrogates do create that bond with the baby they're carrying even when that baby is not genetically theirs. But it's less likely for there to be that strong bond when the baby isn't genetically hers. Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor. And that is Carly Jean, Los Angeles.

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Starting point is 00:19:26 So it's just a win all around to get your clothes from CGLA. Go to Carly Jean Los Angeles.com. Use code AllieBeebee for 20% off your first order. That's Carly Jean Los Angeles.com. Code Allie B. So going back to the egg selling and the egg harvesting, just the process, you said that those women, they have to be injected with a bunch of hormones because their bodies have to be put into ovulation. If we knew anything, most people don't know anything about women's cycles, but we release one egg a month.

Starting point is 00:20:01 Sometimes, I guess women can do two eggs a month. That is very rare. But it's one egg a month. That's our body's mechanism. And if that egg is not fertilized, it disintegrates the endometrial lining. You have a period. That's how it's supposed to work. But in these situations, They're not going through their natural cycle. They are hyper-ovulating so that there are multiple eggs, sometimes dozens of eggs, ready to be retrieved. So they mature in the follicles. They're ready to be retrieved. And that is when they are harvested.

Starting point is 00:20:35 Again, we're talking about one egg a month naturally versus 12, sometimes at most. Upwards more. The woman that's doing the class action in Canada is over 40 eggs. 40 eggs at once. Because she was part of, she didn't know about this, a guaranteed program for the intended parents who was a gay couple. They were part of a guaranteed program, meaning that there would be guaranteed a baby at the end of their journey. That's the fertility's language, not my own. Oh my gosh. And so she was, she was super responsive to the hormones. They put her on an increased dose than even what the standard protocol was to extract more eggs from her. And yes, and it's dangerous. Yeah. It also, you mentioned all of the side effects that it could have. It also apparently increases the chances of having breast cancer.

Starting point is 00:21:29 And just anecdotally, I know women who have been public about their IVF journey and that it's out of nowhere, a healthy 32-year-old woman is diagnosed with breast cancer. Yeah. These women have no history of cancer. They have no, because they're selected for all of this because people want healthy eggs. But yes, we know several women, one who actually is featured in exploitation and in our film Maggie's story, we actually just were back in touch with her because she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma, which is for women over 50 who have a genetic predisposition to this. And she had none of that other than her egg donation, but her cancer has returned. And so we're just, but it absolutely has a risk for long-term health outcomes. And it's deplorable to me because we're not tracking these women.

Starting point is 00:22:24 We're not, there's no national database that tracks these women who sell their eggs long-term, which we do in the cases of organ donation. We track people who donate their organs long term to follow their health risk, to meticulously know what happens to them. We don't do that to these women. Once they donate their eggs, once the commodity has been captured from their body, they are lost in medical history. And we're doing a huge disservice to women. Yes. And why?

Starting point is 00:22:59 Like, what do you think the reason is? Oh, I think it's because we'll see these increased rates of cancer. I think that these cancers that came out of nowhere are going to, we're going to see that women who sold their eggs, who were put on high doses, healthy women who respond really well to hormones, are going to have increased incidences of cancer. We're going to see long-term health risks. And then the fertility industry is going to be held accountable, hopefully. I mean, I think that's why. I don't think fertility industry wants to be regulated. They don't want to have to track these women and make this data accessible.

Starting point is 00:23:34 Yeah. Is there any information, any data about the children that are conceived and then born via egg seller or sperm seller? Yeah. Outside of birth rates, not really. Outside of tracking live birth weights or live birth rates. Yeah. And birth weights. And birth weights. Exactly. They typically are actually smaller babies and born earlier than normal. Exactly. Absolutely. Beyond that data, there's very little tracking.

Starting point is 00:24:04 And I'm hopeful that as these children who are born from these arrangements get older, like Olivia Morel and others, they'll speak out about their experiences. We have a huge population of donor-conceived adults now who are speaking out about not having access to their donor's information. And so I'm hoping the same will happen to in the cases of children who are born from mother's, the problem there is there's no genetic link and they're often not on birth certificates. So if parents are honest about their birth story, they might not ever know they were born from a different mother.

Starting point is 00:24:43 Yes. Which is a problem in itself. You're also depriving that child not only to their right, to their genetic parents, but also their right to their medical history. At least half of their medical history, I mean, every time I make an appointment for my children, especially if it's a new patient, they ask about. parent history, you have to fill out, grandmother, grandfather. And obviously, it's one thing if this child is adopted. You try to get as much of that information from their genetic parents as possible.

Starting point is 00:25:12 But in this situation, you are purposely cut off from that person. You may never have any contact with the genetic mother of a child again if you conceive this child through excelling. Right, right. And a study came out, actually, I was just reviewing this before I came in that, I think it was 2014 that showed almost half of people who sell their gametes go on to regret it. Gametes, that would be eggs or sperm. Eggs or sperm, yeah. And I just am thinking back to that college student who's enticed by the financial gain and her altruistic motives are exploited and just to think that half of them regret that or wonder

Starting point is 00:25:50 where their children might be. Yeah, where are their kids. And you said that they're getting these advertisements. where are they typically getting advertised to? Is it on social media? Yeah. Now with the advent of social media, it's there. And I see, I don't know if these people are being paid,

Starting point is 00:26:08 but I see a lot of influencers who their mom influencers, and all of a sudden they're on this surrogacy journey. I just saw Miss Rachel, who I know a lot of people love, seems like a very sweet person and a very good mother. She just welcomed a child via surrogacy. And it just adds to this narrative that surrogacy, I don't know if they also used an egg seller or anything, but that surrogacy is this altruistic, you know, benign,

Starting point is 00:26:36 even benevolent process that goes on. But it's not. Would you say that surrogates are exploited in the same way that egg sellers are? Absolutely. I think a different population is often targeted for surrogate mother than an egg donor. They're two very different populations. Surrogate mothers. man, when they, and it seems like more and more contacting me daily with their horror stories.

Starting point is 00:27:05 But surrogate mothers tend to be women who, again, very altruistic. They want to help. They had easy pregnancies. They typically have small children at home or adolescents at home, but they've had easy pregnancies and they've had a friend or someone else they know that struggled with infertility. and they want to give the gift of life. They want to help families. And often I found, too, in our research, that military wives are another big target for for surrogacy. Right, from fertility agencies for surrogacy because they're at home with small children.

Starting point is 00:27:46 They're often hard to employ because they're moving around a lot with their partners in the military. And this is a way that they can contribute to their household. and also help another family with this idea of duty to serve. And so definitely exploitive in the same way. And they're also pumped with hormones. Surrogates have to be pumped with hormones as well in order to carry the child because you have to be in the same part of your cycle that you would be if a naturally, you know, a fertilized egg was going to implant into your uterus.

Starting point is 00:28:23 so your endometrial lining has to be just, right? You basically have to look like you just ovulated in your body, right, in order for that to work. And that's an artificial process. We don't know all the consequences of that. Yeah, exactly. We do know, studies are showing. We did our own study at the Center for Biothics and Culture,

Starting point is 00:28:42 looking at 96 American women who had their own spontaneous conceptions, their own deliveries, and a surrogate pregnancy. And we do know that surrogate pregnancies are high risk in nature. They set a mom up to have increased rates of C-sections, preterm birth, placental abruption, placental abnormalities, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, all of these things. The list goes on and on. And in the United States, you know, we really are behind in our maternal morbidity and mortality. And one of the biggest things is preeclampsia and high blood pressure and women.

Starting point is 00:29:21 And I just find it odd that we still puddle and we still promote surrogacy when we know that surrogate pregnancies are more likely to have these same adverse outcomes that we see in our records for that are causing our terrible rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. Next, just a reminder to sign up for Share the Arrows, get your tickets today if you have not already. We also have all kinds of VIP packages that include like a really cool dinner the night before, which I'm super excited about. It's going to be like really, really nice. You're going to get to meet some awesome people. And we've got some other VIP packages that you can choose from as well. Or you can buy our standard ticket. Bring your friends, bring your sisters, bring your mom.

Starting point is 00:30:12 This is for the Christian woman who wants to be edified, equipped, encouraged to worship alongside, fellowship alongside like-minded Christian women from all over the country. October 11th, Dallas, Texas, go to share the arrows.com. You said that they're two different kinds of people. If I understand, it's like the egg seller, they typically want them to be young and thin and beautiful, maybe rich. Although, like you said, that's just not always the case. But I have heard, I remember I was listening to one couple on a podcast, a gay couple say that they wanted someone who went to an Ivy League school. And so depending where you are, a bunch of Hollywood. celebrities. They've got their own clinics and special ways of doing things. They've got their own

Starting point is 00:30:59 exclusive catalogs. But they just want someone who looks good, who maybe isn't inherently unhealthy, who seems to have good genes, who's young. Whereas for the surrogate, it doesn't matter what they look like. And it's actually maybe in some cases the poorer they are, the better, because the more desperate they are. And do they have a history of, you know, full-term pregnancies and births themselves? And so, I mean, it's like the Handmaid's Tale, but the very same people that support it say that Christian conservatives are like the Handmaid's Tale because we don't believe in killing babies inside the womb. It's crazy. It's crazy how people see, they don't see that. Right. Connection. They don't. And you're, you're absolutely

Starting point is 00:31:39 right. The genetics of the surrogate mother don't play into the decision for, she just has to be approved breeder. Yeah. Which is how we treat our cattle. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's what they're It reminds me of a cow. It reminds me of just like an animal. And I know that you know, Brittany. I forget her last name, but I had her on. And she was introduced to me by Jennifer. And she was the surrogate that carried for the two men. She got diagnosed with cancer. They said, we don't want anything to do with you or this thing anymore. And she had to deliver early. The baby died. And they wanted to start over. They didn't want to honor their child. They didn't want to bury him. He was discarded like medical waste because they were. angry at her that she got diagnosed with cancer and had to deliver the preterm baby. That is how you treat cattle. And people need to know that that might not be every single case of surrogacy, but that is what happens. And I hear a lot, well, they're consenting.

Starting point is 00:32:38 So why does it matter? Why should we be talking about this? What would you say to that? Oh, that's a good question. A lot of people give me that consenting argument. Yeah. This is, even for egg sellers. Oh, what woman can do with what her body, what she wants. Well, one, we don't know what we don't know. Again, we don't know in egg selling what we're doing to these young women, short term, long term, we just don't know. So you cannot say, sure, you can say, you can say there are no known medical risks, which is often what's told to them. But that doesn't mean that there are no risks. That means that there are no known risk because nobody's looking. The same can go for surrogate mothers. As I said, studies are starting to show.

Starting point is 00:33:21 that these are inherently risky procedures, IVF, surrogacy. They're hard on a woman. That's a lot of reasons why women stop doing IVF because of the emotional toll and the physical toll. But they're not being, when I speak to these women who are harmed, they, the harms are glossed over. They're not truly, I don't think, given informed consent. There are conflicts of interest at every step. It's very interesting that the same person that's warning her of the harms or might be harms or telling her what risks there might be there have a vested interest in her signing up to do it. Yeah. They have a vested interest in her womb and her eggs. And so it's glossed over. Also, you know, a lot of surrogate mothers are offered lawyers during the contract phase of before they have the embryo transfer

Starting point is 00:34:17 and they're signing the contract. But that lawyer is typically picked for, paid for by the agency or the intended parents. So there's just a lot of messy conflicts of interest there. And the other thing is, is we don't always get to do what we want with our bodies. I cannot go on Craigslist and sell myself as a slave. I cannot sell my organs. I cannot smoke anywhere that I want to. There are limits to what we can do with our body.

Starting point is 00:34:44 So I absolutely hate that argument that just because of it's, It's her body. It's her choice. And then we could also extend that to the baby that she's carrying. These are the unconsenting subjects here. These are the unconsenting parties that are so often glossed over in these contracts. And when we talk about it, even in my interviews, I find myself talking a lot about the harms that have happened, whether it be emotional or physical harms to the surrogate mother and her family.

Starting point is 00:35:11 And then I have to pause and think, like, wait a second here. At the center of this is a baby. This is a child. who's not consenting, didn't ask to be a part of this. Exactly. Exactly. Who has a right to know and be loved by its parents. Yes.

Starting point is 00:35:24 We do not have a right to a child. We don't have a right to do with what our body is what we want to do. Those arguments break down when you really look under a magnifying glass. I hear all the time, but I had to use a surrogate. We had to use a surrogate. I had to do IVF. That's how I had to have children. Okay.

Starting point is 00:35:44 But like you said, no one has a right to have a child, but any means necessary, just because you want to have a child, that's a good desire. And like whoever is saying that, you're probably going to be an awesome parent. But you can't steal a child. There are all kinds of ways that you cannot legally or morally go obtain a child. And so if we can acknowledge that, that some methods of obtaining a child are moral and some are not, then we should apply that to how we conceive them, how we reproduce them, how they're carried. And there are, I mean, people for some reason really hate when you bring up

Starting point is 00:36:22 the reality of adoption that there are thousands of kids who are earthside who need parents. And it's just like that's so ridiculous. Everyone should have a right to their biological child. But that's just not true. Again, the any means necessary approach to fulfilling your desires is not a Christian one. That's for sure. But you can also see just from a pragmatic standpoint how it leads to really bad places. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking, and I want to back up a little bit, we talked about Ms. Rachel and we talked about influencers and talking about the groups of women who are surrogate mothers. And you're very right on that surrogate mothers who have been once or twice and have kind of aged out of the process do go on to become working for the clinics to

Starting point is 00:37:14 recruit other women to become egg or to become surrogate mothers. And I'm just thinking of the story of a woman who contacted me a few weeks ago who just had the surrogacy pregnancy from from hell and the whole thing and how she was recruited by family members who worked for the agency. And so I guess to people like that, I just want to be a mLM. want to say stop it, you know, stop glorifying this. Stop making this, um, mainstream and popular and beautiful. It's, it's not. Yeah. You know, I read something talking about like how the babies are affected by not just egg selling and all of that, but even just IVF, even if it's a husband and wife having their baby through IVF. And we've talked about this several times on the show, but this was a new

Starting point is 00:38:00 fact that I didn't know that if you go through IVF specifically for me, male infertility. So his swimmers ain't swimming. They're just not mobile for whatever reason. They're unable to get to the egg to conceive. If you do IVF for that reason, the child is something like 60% more likely to have severe autism. And that makes sense because I'm actually reading this book right now about women's cycles and how the birth control pill affects women's cycles. and there's a part in there just talking about how our bodies go through this natural selection process to make sure that the woman is releasing the strongest egg. Not every egg gets to mature every cycle.

Starting point is 00:38:46 Just one egg does, the best egg your body deems. And not every sperm is mobile enough, quick enough can endure long enough in order to fertilize that egg. It's got to be the best sperm and the best egg. and then the endometrial lining that, you know, is there after ovulation is actually supposed to be like the first endurance test for that fertilized egg. It's only the fertilized egg that can get through the endometrial lining to the uterus, get that blood source. And as you all know, I'm not educating you. Just everyone out there is fascinating to me that, okay, that's the, that's the, you know, one that's going to make it to implantation. And it's so amazing.

Starting point is 00:39:28 But when you curtail all of that, the body's natural, natural selection process. And you say this sperm that really has no business reproducing because it's not supposed to be, like it's his body's way of telling him this sperm shouldn't create offspring. When you do that, there are problems. Now, all those children are valuable, no matter what their diagnosis is. But you see, like when we try to get around the natural process, we are doing things to the people that we're creating. Right. Well, Ixie, which is one of the technologies that just introduces one sperm to the egg, rather than just putting an egg in a petri dish with sperm and the best one who gets in, who cracks the zona pellucida and all of that. But Ixie, where you actually are choosing the best of both

Starting point is 00:40:14 and doing it does have, it's supposed to be better outcomes, but studies are showing, like you said, that outcomes are actually worse, outcomes, including more rates of perinatal death and other congenital deformities and that sort of thing. Yeah. So when they're actually showing that outcomes are actually worse in those types of technologies. Yeah. Where you're just picking one sperm with the egg. Putting them together. Because that journey that the sperm is supposed to go on is actually like important for the genetic choosing that your body does. It's so fascinating. Again, when technology takes you from what's natural to what's possible, we have to ask, is this good? Like, is this moral? Is this beneficial? I want to get more into the like,

Starting point is 00:40:55 gene editing and genetic stuff in just a second. But before we leave surrogacy, you said a stat that I thought was really disturbing on Nicole Shanahan's show. And I've also seen it on X that there was a 2020 study that showed that at least 34% of intended parents, sometimes the acronym is IP for surrogates, are predominantly single Asian males in their 40s living in Asia, like in. India, China. Is that right? So there was a study done recently in fertility and sterility, one of the magazines or journals of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine that looked at

Starting point is 00:41:37 gestational surrogate pregnancies from 2014 to, I believe, 2022. And 32% of surrogate pregnancies were from intended parents outside of the United States. So international, 32%. And then of that 32%, they were predominantly, yes, single men or men, that could be, it didn't delineate single versus couple, but men, predominantly men from Asia over the age of 40. Okay. Got it. Does that make sense? Yep, it does. Like a large percentage of that about, so one third of a third of a of intended parents are from abroad. Yes. And most of those are these males from Asia.

Starting point is 00:42:31 Exactly. Which is close to behind by France and Spain where surrogacy is also illegal. Okay. Wow. My goodness. And do we know, like, are these single males? I said single males. Do we know if they're single males?

Starting point is 00:42:43 Yeah, I went back to review that. I don't think we do know that. I'd have to look back again at the article. From what I saw, it just says males. Okay. Yeah. Which is still troubling. It's still very troubling.

Starting point is 00:42:54 And so, you know, I actually spent a great deal of time in the last in early 2025. We're still in early 25, but January, trying to create, like, what would an ideal law for me be, right? Because I don't, I'm a realist. I would love to see surrogacy and the whole fertility industry just blown over and cut off. I don't see that happening. It's a growing industry. It's a billion dollar industry. projections show that it's not stopping. Now we're targeting young women to freeze their eggs,

Starting point is 00:43:28 not just give away their eggs, but now you can freeze them. We're marketing it. We're changing. I don't think it's going anywhere. So what would I like to see? Well, I would like to see us model Italy. I want to close our borders. Let's stop one third of these gestational surrogacy arrangements. Let's stop them right now. Let's close our borders. No one can come to the United States to hire a surrogate mother. And I also think the inverse should be true, that we should not leave the United States and exploit other women in other countries to be surrogate mothers either. So I would like to see laws around that, that we just close our borders. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:44:06 No more of that kind of surrogacy tourism, also birth tourism, because you have sometimes surrogates, but people coming here just to give birth, whether they are actually the mother of the child they're burying or they're a surrogate. they come here to give birth so their child has dual citizenship, Chinese American citizenship. And I've talked to a lot of people who have actually been nurses, L&D nurses, who have dealt with that. And yeah, you've dealt with that. Okay, tell us about it. No, I've had, I've taken care of patients who move over here near the end of their pregnancy

Starting point is 00:44:41 or come visit near the end of their pregnancy and deliver here in, well, not here where we are, but in California. which actually if you look at that study even further, it goes down to break down what states those surrogate women are from. And I think it was somewhere in 76% of those are from California. Why is that? Because I think the proximity to Asia. And then also we are the wild, wild west of Bigford. Like anything goes in California.

Starting point is 00:45:09 You can have a baby by any means necessary doing whatever you'd like. So I think I think that's the reason. But yeah, working in a hospital, I see that happen where women come over from predominantly Asia in my own experience to have their children here. Yeah. My goodness. And it's kind of sad. I often spend a lot of time. I don't work in a hospital that does that currently. But I used to spend a lot of time with those women because they often don't have anyone. There's no support system. They've come over by themselves. And they're in the labor room by themselves. And so I often spend a lot of time with them, very sweet women. But they're here so that they can have a baby that's, that has United States citizenship. My gosh, all that stress has an effect on her long term. Also has an effect on the baby.

Starting point is 00:46:01 Yeah. Like people just don't want to consider that how a baby is gestated, how a baby is conceived, and how a baby is born, like that all matters. It matters to all of us. It matters a great deal. And there was another study that just came out this week. And it was kind of one of those like dust studies. Like we spent time and money researching that.

Starting point is 00:46:19 Like, isn't this obvious? It just showed that the bond during pregnancy impacted the first year of life for a child and the connection between the mother and child for that first year. So if she had a positive pregnancy experience and felt really connected to the child, then that connection only strengthened in the next year. And the inverse was true that if she wasn't as connected, then it had a detrimental effect that first year of life. And I just thought in my head, okay, surrogate pregnancies.

Starting point is 00:46:46 Again, we have, it is a whole body experience. That woman is just her whole entire body. Even if they say that they don't connect with that child or they realize that it's not their own. Most women, we find in studies, do bond with that child. They do care about that child. You share cells with that child. Yeah. And now we, more than, you know, we've learned about microchimerism now.

Starting point is 00:47:15 and it's such an intricately linked relationship and process. And then that baby, of course, the sounds, the smells, the feelings it feels, all of these things. It's just, it's incredibly interconnected. And we know this. We know this. I work, again, at a hospital in California. And maybe you've had children, you've heard of the baby friendly initiative, right?

Starting point is 00:47:35 Which is an initiative put forth by the World Health Organization to promote breastfeeding and bonding. And we talk about the golden hour and how important that. is that right after birth that that baby goes to the mother it knows because because that golden hour is so important for gosh not just breastfeeding but breathing and temperature regulation and hormone just all of these things and yes but we don't care if it's a surrogate mother we don't care about baby friendly initiatives that doesn't matter right no we take that baby away and give them to strangers and people say well you don't remember your birth it doesn't matter well there are a lot of things

Starting point is 00:48:13 that affect us that we don't remember. I always tell this story of my, or maybe I've told it once before, but my oldest, she was born via C-section, and she, they didn't give her to me. They put her on the little table that, you know, measures the breath. And they said, oh, her breathing's not great. And I just said, please, can I hold her? And so they let me hold her and they wheeled us back up to the room. And then the little, the NICU guy, he comes in to wheel her away with the little,

Starting point is 00:48:43 a little clear bassinet. They take her and I say, can you just measure her breath one more time, whatever the technical term is, the medical term is for that. Respiration rate. Yes, respiration rate. And so she had been on my chest for probably five minutes. And then they laid her on there. And they were like, oh, never mind. It was perfect. And so her breath was perfect. She just, she really just needed mom at that point. She needed the home that she knew. And I know that's not the case for every child. Sometimes they do need extra support. But she needed that skin to skin. She needed the heartbeat that she knew, the smell that she knew. And even if those babies aren't genetically related to the mom that's carrying them, the woman that's carrying them, that's still the only home

Starting point is 00:49:26 they've ever known. That's what they're aching for after birth. Yeah. Yeah. And it has a really big effect that people just don't realize. Last sponsor is range leather. I've actually got my range leather purse right here by my feet. I use it all the time. I travel with it. It's really high quality. It's really easy to clean. And so I use it with everything because it also matches everything. That's a beautiful thing about leather. This is really well made. All of their items have a lifetime guarantee, whether it's their wallets, their belts, their custom hats. It's just the kind of quality of product that used to be normal in the U.S. but now is really hard to find this is another Christian family owned company that is making all of their stuff in the

Starting point is 00:50:18 U.S. This makes for a great Mother's Day gift, great father's day gift or just gift for yourself. Check them out. All of their products are amazing. Rangeleather.com slash alley. You'll get 15% off when you visit my landing page. That's rangeleather.com slash alley. You mentioned that India, France, and Italy have all outlawed commercial surrogacy. Yeah, yeah. Italy just recently closed its borders to intended parents within Italy, leaving Italy to exploit women in other countries. So it's always been the case that surrogacy is illegal in Italy. They can't hire a surrogate mother there and do these contractual arrangements in Italy. But they could leave. They could come to the United States and hire a surrogate mother, the Ukraine, Mexico, wherever. But recently, just this year, the tail end of last, Italy closed its doors both ways.

Starting point is 00:51:21 So it became a criminal offense for intended parents to leave Italy to hire a woman. Yeah, good. That's what I want to see here. In France, they view this as slavery, modern day slavery. And so they don't allow surrogacy on the grounds that it's slavery. I often say there's enough about surrogacy that. somebody can find something they don't like about it. So whether you think it is deeply regressive and exploitive,

Starting point is 00:51:52 whether you are against it because of the harms it causes on women and children, maybe you're against the financial component. But there's enough about surrogacy. You can find something not to like about it. And so I think, you know, India, for them, they closed their borders after children were being left and abandoned because they weren't wanted by the intended parents. And so they actually allow surrogacy for, it's very specific within India, with couples in India,

Starting point is 00:52:24 but they don't allow certain people to come into India to exploit their women. Yeah. And that is something that has happened. Same thing with Ukraine, poor countries. And, of course, with the war between Russia and Ukraine, there were all these babies that were abandoned over there because their parents couldn't come get them after they were born. And people just need to realize this is the moral, ethical risk that we are taking every time we engage in some kind of transactional experience. It really is human trafficking.

Starting point is 00:52:53 And yeah, there's some consent involved, just like there's consent when it comes to prostitution. But if you've got a desperate woman who is being told this is what you have to do or this is what you need to do, is it really consent? And really none of this is consent if you are never. told the adverse effects. It's not informed consent, actually. You're saying yes to something you don't realize you're saying yes to. We talked to the other day on this show about this new technology or a new company that is, of course, out of California, Silicon Valley, that claims that it is helping children win the genetic lottery every time. So it's basically just taking the best, best quote unquote from the mom and the dad

Starting point is 00:53:38 created a child making sure that none of the embryos that are created have these kinds of hereditary diseases or weaknesses. You can pick eye color. Still, you can pick gender, which is pretty normal, actually, for a lot of people who use IVF. But I guess this technology takes it to the next level. And this person actually said who owns this company

Starting point is 00:54:02 that sex is for fun. like IVF is for babies. That just is like so shocking and disturbing to me. So disturbing to me. But people don't realize that this genis eugenics is very much par for the course when it comes to so much of our reproductive technology industry. Yeah. The very start of this, the very start of assisted reproductive technologies is eugenic to

Starting point is 00:54:30 the core. So the very first donor, sperm donor on record was done by, or donation was done by Dr. Pankost. And he used a medical student. And I think the story goes that it was the best looking medical student that he had to inseminate a woman without her knowledge while she was anesthetized. Oh my gosh. She thought she was being inseminated with her own husband's sperm.

Starting point is 00:55:00 but Dr. Panko's had realized that he was shooting blanks, nothing was there. So he then used his medical student to inseminate this woman without her knowledge. And the best looking, that's an important point in aspect because it is so eugenic. The founder or developer of IVF, Dr. Edwards, was a part of a eugenic society. and I find it incredibly disturbing that I did a little digging on him when I got into this space that on Louise Brown, who was the first test tube baby in the 70s, on her 25th birthday, he gave a speech or spoke about it and said that infertility, and I'm loosely quoting here, I probably won't get every word right, but infertility or IVF was more than just about

Starting point is 00:55:56 infertility. It was about finding out who was in charge of conception. And was it God or was it scientists in the lab? And his conclusion was that it was him. It was scientists that are in charge. And that's just deeply alarming to me. And so yes, from the very beginning, this science, technology has been eugenic. And then of course we see it as we spoke at length about egg selling. certain pedigree is selected, a certain person is selected. And then now we see it in a technology that you're talking about pre-implantation genetic testing, which can be offered to couples or single people, whoever is using IVF and or surrogacy as an add-on feature to their, because it's sold and it's marketed.

Starting point is 00:56:50 And I actually, I had a very interesting conversation with a woman in England who is an embryologist and has studied this and is in this space. And she agrees that it's just market. It's a marketing. It's the new hot thing. It's the new fem tech, right? Femtech. Everyone wants the next new cutting edge technology thing. And this is it, like egg freezing.

Starting point is 00:57:14 But it's actually not improving outcomes. It's incredibly eugenic. I think I saw that on X all the buzz that that article was getting and that new technology and business. Yeah, that was getting. And we just need to call it for what it is. It's eugenic. Yep. Absolutely. And I'm so glad that CBC is talking about this because not enough people are. Although I do think that more people are. And than just a few, like just a few years ago, it's not that I think that, you know, obviously Jennifer was talking about it. Katie Fouse is talking about it. You've been working in this. But I do credit Jennifer a lot. And I'm not like, oh, is my show.

Starting point is 00:58:02 I'm not saying that. However, that conversation, I will say had a domino effect. And I can't take credit for it because it was all Jennifer's expertise in my audience who got so engaged. But that was one of the first conversations or discussions about this on any conservative podcast. And I'm not. And I'm not. at all. I think it was maybe in 2021. And after that, I've seen more and more, thank God, conservative commentators, podcasters, influencers, whatever, say, hang on, this is weird. This is weird. And there's something about this that I think is worth investigating at the very least. And we hope to get the Trump administration looped in on some of those risks. But I'm grateful for what y'all do. where can they find the movies that you've helped produce?

Starting point is 00:58:51 Because we didn't even get into how gender also, like, everything that you were saying, sorry, now I'm like, I thought about this, but you were talking about the lawyers that are hired, the doctors that are handpicked to approve these women to sell their eggs and surrogacy and all of that. It's very similar to the gender industry, which is a child can walk in, say, I want to be the opposite sex. They handpick the endocrinologist, the psychologist, everyone who they know is going to be affirming of that child so they can make thousands of dollars off of sterilizing and butchering that child's body. The parallels to this are just like uncanny. And it's a lot of the same people, right? Yeah. And not only parallel, but cyclical, because when you sterilize and

Starting point is 00:59:33 you put a child on puberty blockers and you're setting them up to have to use assisted reproductive technologies if they decide to conceive children later, if they go that route. These children, as young as eight younger are asked about fertility preservation, which is highly experimental, one, and then two, what eight-year-old knows how many children and what kinds of family they want to have? If you would have asked me that, I would have said I wanted nine children, you know? It's just, it's crazy, but you're setting this child up for yet another industry. Yeah. I remember it was Jennifer who said that they're creating lifelong slaves to the medical industrial

Starting point is 01:00:12 complex. And that's exactly what is happening. And, you know, making a lot of money off of it. Anyway, you all produced a documentary kind of about this, right? Yeah. Well, we have three, a trilogy of films on the space of gender medicine. We have a trilogy and some of assisted reproductive technologies. There's one on egg-donate, egg selling, surrogate mothers called breeders. There's one on anonymous gamete donation. All of our films are completely free. on YouTube. Our YouTube channel is at CBC Networkorg. And then I, there's a, we have so much information on our YouTube channel, slews of interviews that I've had with, those who are donor conceived, surrogate mothers, egg sellers. And, and that's what really, we need people to tell their story.

Starting point is 01:01:02 And if this has been, you, maybe people are listening and they've been an egg seller or a surrogate mother and they want to tell their story, I want to hear from them. So, yeah, we can be found at cbc dash network.org. Awesome. Thank you so much. And they can follow you too on X. It's Cal underscore fell. Callie, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Yes.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1171 | Egg Donation Centers Are Exploiting College Girls & Military Wives | Guest: Kallie Fell

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