Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 254 | Birth Control, IVF & Surrogacy

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Finally: the episode you've all been waiting for! Today we examine the biblical perspective on birth control, in-vitro fertilization, and surrogacy.

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we are talking about the long awaited topic. I have probably gotten more questions about the subject that we are discussing today than any other subject ever. And that is the issue of birth control, IVF, surrogacy, technology, and advancements surrounding conception. and the prevention of conception and how we as Christians should approach these subjects. Now, the reason why I haven't talked about it until now, even though I've been asked about it for two and a half years now, isn't because I haven't wanted to talk about it or because I'm scared of talking about it,

but because it's such a big subject that I wanted to make sure that I was doing it correctly. So I've done a lot of research surrounding this topic, topic. I've asked a lot of questions. And as always, I'm not going to be able to fit in every nook and cranny of this topic in this episode. This is going to be a longer episode because it is a big topic. I even thought about breaking it up into two or three segments. But then when I was preparing it, I was like, you know what? People are always asking me to make my podcast episodes longer. So I'll just make this one long episode. And for those of you who like the short podcast, you can

break it up and listen to it throughout the week. We're first going to talk about birth control, then we'll talk about IVF, and then we'll talk about surrogacy. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to give you the most thorough overview of this that I can, but there are so many resources out there, so many awesome, wonderful, biblical resources out there about this subject, about these topics, and I'm not going to be able to, like I said, cover every perspective on it. So I encourage you, do your research, go out there and read more. And if you feel like I really missed the mark and that I wasn't sensitive or loving enough, which of course I hope to be as sensitive and as loving as possible,

as possible about this subject in particular. But if you feel like I just missed the mark, always feel free to tell me MLMs. That was a very controversial topic that we tackled on Friday. But I got a lot of good feedback from you guys. And I'm very thankful for that. And I hope that this podcast lands the same way, although I would say this is probably an even more sensitive topic. Because I know for a lot of you, this hits very close to home. You are someone who has used a surrogate.

You are someone who has used IVF. Maybe you were conceived from IVF. You are someone who has used birth control or who is on birth control. And you're a little bit nervous going into this podcast episode because you don't know what I'm going to say. and you don't want to be offended, which is normal. No one wants to be offended. My intention is never to offend you. It is never to offend people.

That's never my intention. If that happens, I'm really sorry for that. My goal, as ever, is to speak the truth in love. And I hope that we can have a conversation about it afterwards. First, why are we talking about this? Why are we talking about these subjects besides the fact that a lot of you ask me to talk about these topics. Why is it important for us as Christians, especially as Christian women, to think about these things? Well, over the past few decades, these issues have become a more

mainstream in our conversations about biblical worldview, about morals, about ethics in general. I will say that the Catholic Church has done a much better job of publicly analyzing and discussing the ethical question surrounding birth control specifically than the Protestant Church has. But I would say that across the board in general, most Christian women haven't really considered whether or not birth control or IVF or surrogacy aligned with a biblical worldview. I think that we have thought about them traditionally as more neutral topics. Again, I'm not speaking for every Christian woman. I know a lot of you have been very thoughtful about this for a long time. but I think a lot of people, especially my age, haven't really thought about these topics critically.

We've thought about them as not necessarily morally good, but not necessarily morally bad either. Now, before I go on, I will say that I would not listen to this episode, if you didn't pick up on this by the subject matter and the title, I would not listen to this episode with young children. Unless you are willing to have these kinds of conversations with your kids, I would not allow them to listen to this episode. This is also an episode. I mean, as are most, if not all of my episodes,

but especially this episode, it is targeted for women. This is a female-centric podcast, but particularly this episode, and my dad has already vowed that he would not be listening to this episode, which I appreciate because we will get into some things that I think a lot of guys will consider TMI. So it wasn't until the last few years that the conversation about the potential abortifacient effects of birth control pills became

very mainstream, which we will get into today in just a little bit. There were people talking about it, of course, but only relatively recently have churches started to publicly grapple with the question of whether or not Christian women should be taking birth control. Again, probably a lot of organizations and churches that have been tackling that for a long time, but a lot of churches that just have been mostly silent on it until the last few years. And the same thing is true with IVF. I think at first, most people simply saw and still see IVF as an amazing scientific development that allowed for couples who struggle with infertility

to be able to have children of their own. But as we have learned more about the process, there are ethical and biblical questions that we have to take a look at. And the same goes for surrogacy. Technology is going to continue to develop when it comes to conception, when it comes to pregnancy, when it comes to childbearing and the formation of families. One of the reasons is because that is just the nature of technology. If something can be developed, it will eventually be developed without a question of whether or not it is ethically sound or even good for society. Most people who develop technology are not necessarily bound, at least in their work, by a biblical ethic. And they don't have a biblical worldview of humanity, at least in their professional life.

So that means that innovation and progress are not going to be the same. Just because something is new does not mean that it is going to be good or helpful. And unfortunately, the world of science and technology right now, at least a portion of it, have an addiction to novelty, and often that novelty comes at the expense of compassion and decency. And that can and will be true when it comes to the science surrounding artificial ways of controlling the means of having children. Now, of course, as Christians, we love science. We think science is good. We think medical advancement is good, but we have to be willing to ask tough questions every time there is a new medical innovation that claims to be able to improve upon or completely

change any kind of natural process. We just have to be able to take a look at it and to critically think about it from a biblical perspective. Now, the second reason we know that this technology will continue to develop is because it both drives and responds to social changes, which have occurred extremely rapidly, especially over the past 10 to 15 years. What I mean by that is that the redefining of the family has shifted the focus of many in science in the science surrounding conception for all of history. So millennia, human beings and every living being for that matter have procreated via male and female coming together, doing their thing, and making offspring. that very simple biological fact becomes problematic for people or a society who decides that we don't

have to fit that criteria for baby making or starting a family. So today two men want a baby, two women want a baby, a single woman or a single man wants a baby. They don't want to adopt. They want a baby that shares one of their DNA. So biology dictates that there must be some means, even an artificial means to make that happen absent actual sex between a male and a female. And we as a society today, 2020 in the United States, have accepted this and we applaud that. We think that it's wonderful that science allows for two men or two women to have a baby with one of their DNA. Of course, we don't bother to ask at all whether or not altering the family makeup that has existed for all of human history will have any kind of negative impact on children or society.

We don't bother to ask whether or not it's ethical or moral to purposely ensure that a child doesn't have their biological mom or dad or whether or not it affects their psychological well-being. We don't ask those questions because, as with so many things today, we have largely, as a society, decided that science must succumb to our social, cultural, and political changes. The same is of course true for abortion, transgenderism, climate change,

and it certainly is true when it comes to artificial conception. And I understand the artificial conception is used for other reasons outside of the restructuring of the traditional family and we will get to that. But the point I am making is that the reason we can expect the prevalence of new technology surrounding baby making to grow is because of one, the nature of technology

in scientific advancement and two, the social changes that have occurred and continue to occur in society that make these kinds of innovation so popular. And also there is the reason of profit. There's a lot of profit to be had when it comes to surrogacy and IVF and things like that. So Christians, for these reasons, need to know where we stand on all of this, not just when it comes to IVF and surrogacy, but also on birth control and children. general. So let us lay some groundwork here for the Christian to make sure that we are approaching this topic in the right way. We will start with the basics of what we know about reproduction in the family as Christians from the Bible. Genesis 127 through 28 can't get any more basic

than this. So God created man in his own image and the image of God he created him. male and female he created them and god blessed them and god said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth now you've got a lot of self-identified christians who need to see a chiropractor because of how much they have bent over backwards to complicate and manipulate and get around these very simple Straightforward verses. We read, it's very basic, very simple, very straightforward that God made man in his image. Only thing in all creation that gets that distinction. So what does that mean? In Genesis 2.7,

we read that God gave life to Adam using his very breath. So we have an eternal soul, unlike any other creature in the universe, we have a moral capacity. We can communicate with God. We have been given dominion over the rest of the earth. We have the ability. to create societies and establish governments, etc. Human beings, all human beings, no matter our physical capabilities, no matter our strength, our intellectual capacities, are made in God's image and are therefore valuable, more valuable than any plant or animal.

We also read that he created them male and female. A fact that Jesus reiterates in Matthew 194, this binary, the physical distinctions of male and female that are present not just in our anatomy, but in our DNA, and in how our brains work, and how our muscles developed, in our hormones. We read in this passage was purposefully made by God as a reflection of his image. So this complementary distinction between men and women

is a spiritual and eternal reality, not just a physical and temporal one. These two things that we read in these verses, that God made us in his image and made us male and female, mean that we as Christians honor human life above all other life forms and that we honor his creation of male and female both as gender distinctions and as a marriage partnership. We read that God blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply.

So these people made in God's image male and female are to be together and have children to inhabit and fill the earth. And these humans are to subdue the earth, to cultivate it, to have dominion over it. This was God's design, his good design, his good intention. And since the fall, when sin entered the world, human beings have been trying to subvert this very good and purposeful design. Now, as an aside, anyone who says that the traditional family structure is somehow a modern concept of Western imperialism, has it studied history or read the Bible, even if you don't believe in the Bible, it was still written thousands of years ago in the East.

It's not a Western or modern book, and we see the establishment of the so-called traditional family in the book of Genesis. But for those of us who do believe in the Bible, we look to the Bible not just as an ancient text, but as the inherent word of God, sufficient for our instruction and a source of wisdom and truth. We look to the creation of human beings and its reiteration throughout the biblical canon to show us the inherent value of human life, the definition of marriage, and the definition of marriage, the family and the role of human beings that we are supposed to play in creation as responsible stewards of animals and resources and as fillers of the earth with our offspring. Now, that said, we also know as Christians that not everyone will get married and not everyone will have children. Single people are no less valuable or any less part of God's good design for the earth. In fact, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 728, those who marry will have worldly trouble.

and I would spare you that. So people who marry will necessarily have their energies and focus directed toward their families and single people will have the blessed opportunity to pour out all of their energy into ministry. Obviously we know that Jesus himself wasn't married, so certainly we do not believe that marriage or even childbearing is the pinnacle

or the point of the Christian life. These things, however, are blessings. The Bible starts, starts with the marriage and ends with the marriage. Marriage is an earthly reflection of the marriage between Christ and the church. As Ephesians 5 tells us, children are a heritage from the Lord, as Psalm 127 3 through 5 says.

Having children also gives us a very strong sense of what God our father means when he says he loves us. It's not exactly the same, obviously, because we're finite beings and he's infinite and he is love. And so his love for us is so much stronger than the love that we have for our children, but we at least get a glimpse into that when we have children. Adopting children shows us a picture of what God means when he says in Ephesians 1-5 and Galatians 4-5 that he has adopted us into his family through Christ. So marriage, having children,

adoption, all good parts of God's design that also reflect parts of the gospel. So Christians see marriage as good. children and having children as good. We see adoption as good. We don't see these things as sacrifices that get in the way of our goals because for the Christian, sacrificial love is the goal. We are joyful about and grateful for marriage and children and adoption, even if you are not taking part in these things. They are good because God says they are and has graciously allowed them to reflect spiritual realities that show us more. more of who God is and his redemptive plan for us. The reason it's important to set up this episode in this way,

to provide a basic biblical baseline, is because that perspective shapes how we view some of the relatively new technology surrounding conception and childbearing, how Christians view the value of life and the intentional structure of the family affect how we see things like birth control, IVF and surrogacy. So let's start with birth control. And before we get into birth control pills, we have to talk about the general concept of birth control and ask, is it okay for Christians to use

any form of birth control or what could be better called conception protection? Let's set aside hormonal birth control options like the pill or IUDs for a second since we haven't gotten to that. is it okay for Christians to use things like condoms, natural family planning, or other non-hormonal methods to prevent conception? My answer to this, based on what I have read and researched, and I'm just a fallible person with subjective opinions, but based on what I've read and researched, is that it depends. The Bible doesn't have much explicitly to say about birth control. We know that the story of Onan in Genesis tells us that the Lord put him to death because he withdrew while having sex with Tamar, but we don't know if it was actually the act that made God angry or if it was the deception behind the act since Oen withdrew so he wouldn't have to split his inheritance. It's probably the latter.

But we also know that the Bible always talks about children positively as blessings. It always talks about not being able to bear children as a sad thing and being with child as a happy thing. The Bible makes clear that ultimately God is the opener and the closer of the womb. So, knowing that, why do I think the rightness of the use of birth control depends? Depends on what? Like some things in the Christian life that the Bible doesn't speak specifically to, it depends on the heart. Now, many things in scripture are very explicit and there are some things that are easily implied or deduced by explicit parts of scripture. But some things depend on

your heart. I mean, everything has to do with your heart, but some things it is important to discern what our heart is behind it because we don't see an explicit directive in scripture. I believe from what I can see that forms of birth control is one of those things that we have to look at the heart behind it. Here's what I've said before about this and I'll say it again. If your reasons for not having children, if you are married, is that kids would be inconvenient to you or you want to travel first or you don't think that you're mature enough even though you're almost 30 years old. These are all worldly reasons. It's not wrong to want to enjoy time with your husband. It's not wrong to want to travel, but to put these things in front of exclusively to have these as your reasons for not

having kids. These are worldly reasons. These are not biblical reasons. This is no different than a non-Christian philosophy about having kids. They are impediments to your goals and your dreams and your wants. You may want them someday, but because you think that you should do other things first, you're going to put them off. So you kind of see them as these bothersome burdens, at least right now, instead of what the Bible says that they are, which is beneficial blessings. For the Christian, these are not reasons not to have kids. To put off kids because you want to do what you want to do and you're afraid that kids will get in the way is a very ironically childish mentality. It is a self-centered mentality and my advice would be to pray about this to talk with your husband to examine your heart

maybe get godly counsel if you don't want to take it for me that's totally fine i want you to pray about this and to go into the word of god and to talk about this as a couple but from what i can see from the bible self-serving and selfish reasons aren't good reasons not to have children i thought this way at one point i did most of us do and we don't even realize it before we we have kids. But at some point, we've all got to ask God to help us come to terms with our own selfishness and immaturity. That's just true for all of us. I will also add that not having kids because you think that the world is bad and scary, while I can completely relate to that fear and have had that fear before, that is also a worldly reason not to have children because

it disregards God's sovereignty and his amazing ability and willingness to use every generation for his glory and it fails to realize how much more God loves your child than you do. Now, if those are not your reasons as a married person to put off having kids, if say you are a missionary, if you have been put in charge of taking care of a very sick relative full time or caring for a special need sibling, if you just had a baby or one of you is in school, you're depending on one small salary, you're living in a one bedroom apartment and there's just no way that you would be able to take care of a baby well now or you are completely focused on ministry and that is where you feel God is directing your energy and your focus and

your finances for now. I do think that there is freedom to exercise discernment here and to put off having children until there is stability or until a new season comes. The heart behind reasoning like this is that you would be viewing children not as a burden but as a serious responsibility that while you would love to have you're unable to steward it the way that you know that you need to again in any of these situations if you do get pregnant the lord of course will provide for you and that would still be a joyous blessing you will be okay but i do believe that in certain situations it is okay to use wisdom and to use a form of birth control. Now again, pray about this, seek godly counsel, read your Bible, come to your own conclusions

through the wisdom of God, but I can't find biblical evidence that these motivations for deferring childbearing are simple. Now, let us get into the types of birth control, specifically hormonal birth control because that's where a lot of the controversy surrounding birth control is. So a birth control pill, has synthetic estrogen and progesterone. I think the synthetic form of progesterone is actually progestin. These hormones work together with your natural hormones to do these three things. To stop the body from ovulating,

which means that you cannot get pregnant, to thicken the mucus so the sperm can't get to an egg and or to change the lining of the uterus so that if an egg does get fertilized, it can't implant into the urine. uterus. So just to back up, for those who don't know, no shame if you don't know how the process works, when a woman gets pregnant, sperm meets egg, a fertilized egg burrows itself in the, in the uterine wall that's called implantation, and that's where the fertilized egg gets its nourishment to

grow. And this is where the dilemma lies. If birth control pills only stopped ovulation or prevented the sperm from meeting the egg, it wouldn't be quite as controversial. but because there is always a possibility that the pill isn't stopping ovulation or isn't preventing the sperm from meeting the egg and could be just preventing a fertilized egg from attaching itself to the uterus, there arises an ethical or a biblical dilemma. And within that dilemma is the question of when life begins. Do you believe that life begins when the egg is fertilized or when the fertilized egg implants into the uterus? Well, from the best of our knowledge, as Christians, life begins at fertilization.

That is when the genetic makeup that determines gender, for example, occurs. That's when unique human DNA is present. Implantation just nurtures or just allows for the nurturing of that unique human being so he can grow. It doesn't add DNA to him or anything like that. So the creation of a unique human being happens at fertilization, not implantation, which means that a birth control pill, all birth control pills that I know of, have abortifacient capabilities since it can stop a fertilized egg from implanting into the uterus. Now, that does not mean that if you have used the pill that you have had an abortion,

Typically, birth control pills effectively stop ovulation or stop the sperm from meeting the egg, which means conception never happened if those two things are the case. But it may not. It may allow for fertilization and not implantation, and from the best of my knowledge, you would never actually know what really happened. This is also true of the patch. It's true of an IUD. It is true of a vaginal ring and plan B, which is just like a really strong birth control pill. They are different tools that all essentially work the same way. They can prevent fertilization. They can prevent ovulation. They can also make the womb inhospitable for a fertilized egg,

which according to the biblical perspective of life beginning at fertilization would mean that they are potentially abortive. Again, not always and probably not usually, but the potential is there. You may not have known that. I didn't know that until probably last year. I didn't know how all of that worked. I didn't even know the difference between fertilization and implantation until probably a couple years ago. Never thought about it. Never thought about it. I just didn't know. And that's probably true of a lot of you out there too. And I certainly don't, I can't look down on you. or condemn you at all if you didn't know any of that coming into the podcast. I didn't. We are all told growing up, or at least as teenage girls, that birth control pills only prevent pregnancy

were very rarely fully educated on the subject by our doctors. They're promoted as not just effective at stopping conception, but also as a fix-all for our hormonal problems. And I'll just tell you a little bit of my personal history with birth control pills. So when I was in high school, like so many other girls that I knew, I was prescribed birth control by my doctor because I was irregular. I wasn't having sex. I was seriously irregular for like two months. It you put me on Yaz, which looking back was so stupid, but I didn't know. I was just naive. All my friends, by the way, most of whom had the same doctor were also put on some kind of birth control for generally the same reason. I'm not saying theirs wasn't necessary, but it was just kind of fishy. My theory is that this doctor assumed

that we were all sexually active, which none of us were, and that she thought that she was actually doing us a favor by finding a reason to put us on birth control. But I think looking back that it was a very naive and stupid decision on my part. So what happened is that this created a sort of hormonal dependency for me on birth control, even because every time, I tried to get off birth control. My hormones would freak out. I'd either be super emotional or my skin would break out. So I would just get back on or change pills or something like that. Probably every year for, I don't know, six years. I would just change pills to figure out, you know, what would be best for my skin and my hormones and all of that. And then I got diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

So I was taking two pills a day. And I was like, you know what? I'm not doing this. This is stupid. I don't need a birth control pill. So I'm just going to get off of it. And it's, and it's just going to endure the pimples and the hormones, I'll just figure it out. I think that was probably my senior year of college, and I haven't been back on since. I know this is probably all TMI for some of you out there, but when I got married, I was like, you know what, we're just going to have to figure out something else because I am never getting back on birth control. And so we're just going to either have to have babies right away, or we're going to have to figure out a different option. And this brings up another problem with birth control that I know is really prevalent with other women too. It's secondary to its

potentially abortive effects, but it's that it is the fact that taking synthetic hormones can have a very negative effect on our bodies. So if you are on these forms of birth control, you are not actually having a period. When you bleed on birth control, that's not a period if the pill is doing its job of stopping ovulation. Your period happens when you're not on birth control when an egg is released in ovulation and it doesn't get fertilized. But if you're not ovulating, an egg is not released. So your, quote, period on the pill is actually just your body reacting to the withdrawal of hormones that happens when you start taking those sugar pills at the end of the month.

It's basically the same result as a period, but the same process is not happening. And the female body was made to go through the natural cycle of ovulation, of releasing an egg, having a period, then there are going to be, if you get out of that natural cycle, there are going to be usually some kind of consequences to synthetically altering that. Now for some people, I totally understand, birth control pills are used to treat other problems

like endometriosis or PCOS and they work great for you. Like you wouldn't know what to do without these birth control pills. And I don't see any ethical or biblical dilemma with that at all. if you are not using them while you are having sex, all medicine has side effects. But if you're using it to treat some kind of disorder and it's working, then have that. I don't see any biblical problem with that at all.

So if you have examined your heart and you feel like it is not wise for you to, if you are married, you are having sex and you feel like it's not wise for you to have kids right now. You truly feel like you are being called to a season where God wants you to focus. on something else or it's just not financially feasible at all. And you need to prevent conception, natural family planning, condoms, whatever options exist that don't mess with your uterus and your hormones are probably going to be safest as far as ensuring biblical integrity goes. Again, please don't take it solely for me.

Please do your own research and your own reading and praying and counseling about this. Okay, let us move on to IVF, which is a little bit simple. blur a little bit, believe it or not, but possibly more sensitive and just, no, I know there's a lot of you out there who have used IVF. I am just going to give you the facts and the ethical dilemmas as they are and I am not condemning you. I am not here to try to make you feel bad or delegitimize the process that you went through or the longing that you have gone through to have a child. I'm not at all. I am just attempting, again, from a Christian perspective to try to understand these ever increasingly, these increasingly prevalent issues that we are going

to have to grapple with. So in vitro fertilization happens when a couple cannot conceive on their own typically. It's a pretty extensive process, but in short, a sperm and an egg are extracted from a man and a woman, respectively, and brought together and fertilized in a lab in a little dish. Then a few days later, they are placed into the woman where if it is effective, the fertilized egg will implant into the uterine wall and the woman will be pregnant. There is, of course, a dilemma that arises with this. Typically, there are multiple eggs that are fertilized to make sure that at least one takes. And often there are multiple fertilized eggs implanted into the woman to make sure one takes. Sometimes multiple fertilized eggs implant, and

and the woman ends up with multiples, but the problem is there could be lots of fertilized eggs that are never implanted and instead are left frozen. And if we believe, as Christians, that life begins at fertilization, as we've already established, those are offspring. We believe that they are people. We believe that they are image bears. They are children. And if you bear those children, if those are your fertilized eggs, then you have a responsibility to them. So to the Christian, destroying the embryos would be abortion and just leaving the behind or paying for them to be frozen and definitely would be abandonment. There is another problem that exists here, and hopefully not among Christian couples, but just

in general, and that is the way the IVF makes easier eugenics. Doctors look for the healthiest fertilized eggs, which is why some couples actually choose IVF specifically for fear of passing on a genetic disease. this will likely get more common as pre-implantation diagnoses get easier. There is also the issue of long-term effects for the mother. A woman is injected with hormones before the eggs are extracted to make sure that the eggs are ready for the taking. Medical anthropologist Diane Tober said to the Washington Post, there are, quote, no known risks to fertility treatments because no one has looked,

because there's a lot of money in this industry. and so a lot of the research and the science is either not going to come out because it's not going to be researched or because it is going to be suppressed. Any time sex and procreation are separated, any time the natural hormonal or sexual process is interrupted, there will be some sort of consequence. And at the very least ethical and biblical questions to ask, we will see IVF being used to stray further from God's natural design. For example, artificial fertilization is being discussed as a method to create a child out of three parents rather than just two. We have no idea the consequences of that.

But again, because society at large doesn't believe human beings have intrinsic God-given value as image-bearers of God, especially babies in the womb, and because technology has no moral endpoint, the so-called advancements will keep progressing as long as society dictates. I can guarantee there will be dire consequences to this. It is simply true that as a rule, staying as close as we can, to God's natural design, mitigates the risk of creating unintended consequences by using modern reproductive technology to conceive or not conceive. Now, for the Christian couple who is considering IVF, if it is possible to only fertilize as many eggs as the number of children,

you plan to have and care for, then that does eliminate the dilemma of having all of these frozen embryos that are either going to be destroyed or adopted. And as for the personal health risks it may cause, as for the question of whether it is biblical to separate sex and procreation, I would again encourage you to seek godly wisdom from people who know a lot more about the subject than I do to pray about this and to seek the truth in God's word. Now, Moving on to surrogacy. Surrogacy carries many of the same issues and questions. There may, there are two ways to be a surrogate.

Either a couple hires a surrogate to take the dad's sperm through artificial insemination in the hopes that she gets pregnant, then she gives baby to the couple. So the surrogate is the biological mother. Or the couple does IVF and implants the fertilized egg into the surrogate in the hope that it implants into the uterate. uterus. So the baby is biologically the couples, but is carried by the surrogate. We do see the first kind of surrogacy in the Bible. It was pretty prevalent during that time, but it wasn't ordained as righteous and good. It caused problems between Hagar and Sarah, and that can still be true today. There is an instinctive bond between a mother and their child that is hard to explain

if you have not experienced it. But there are literally hormones and instincts at work during pregnancy and birth that create this attachment and a fierce protectiveness from a mother toward her baby. You've probably heard before. Like don't mess with the mom bears cubs. Yes, that is true across species, but it's more than just a protective instinct for human beings. It is the most gut-wrenching, heartbreaking love that you have ever felt in your life. And all of a sudden, when they give you that baby, when they lay that baby on your chest, you know that you would give your life for her a thousand times and you have never felt that kind of protectiveness and love before. God made us this way. So to take a child away from her biological mother at birth. And I'm not talking

about cases of adoption where women voluntarily give their babies up for adoption, which I'm so thankful to those moms and so thankful to adopted parents. I'm talking about purposely planning to take a baby away from her biological mom. It is to completely disresolved. It is to completely disresolved. regard the natural bond between a mom and baby and the physical and psychological need that a baby has for her mom when she's born and when she's a baby. Babies instinctively reach for their moms. They instinctively long for their moms. They look to their moms for food, whether you believe in evolution or creation. Don't you think the fact that babies come from their moms points to the fact that they need their moms and that purposely taking them away from their moms isn't the

best thing for them. Again, I'm not talking about situations of adoption. I'm talking about situations of surrogacy. Now, it may be different in cases in which the surrogate is not the biological mom. The bond between the baby and the mom won't be the exact same. But it'll still be there. That woman has still spent nine to 10 months feeling that baby grow in her belly sacrificing a lot in those months to nurture that baby, still has all the hormones needed to deliver the child and nurse. the child after birth, which means the instincts and the love and protectiveness is still going to be there at least to a degree. And in both cases, it is still a detour away from or even a defiance of the natural order. It is still a separation of sex and procreation. It is still engaging

in something with disregard to the short and long-term effects on both the mom or surrogate and the baby. Remember, there is a powerful force that exists that desperately wants to break up the family. We have talked about a book on this podcast before called Full Surrogacy Now by self-proclaimed communist Sophie Lewis. It's a popular book in leftist circles who believes that if you want to have a child, you should be forced to use a paid surrogate so that all gestation is actually paid work in order that that a child could not be claimed to one couple or by one couple but rather belongs to the community or as she argues to themselves. So in her words, she believed that the cohesion of the traditional family is what holds capitalism together. That's part of why

she believes this is so important. Now it shouldn't surprise you that Sophie Lewis does not have any children of her own. So the more she believes we distort the so-called traditional family, the more we can make the family look less like the mom and a dad and their two and a half kids, the more easy it will be to topple capitalism and Western society. Sorry, got stuck for a second. And she's right. The family is a foundational stone on which Western civilization rests. The more people rely on their families the less they rely on the state. And in order for communism to work, people must fully rely on the state. That's why every communist regime that you've ever read about makes it a priority to A, outlaw religion, and B, recruit children to break up the family. Read about

Soviet Russia, about Nazi Germany, about Pulputz, Cambodia, North Korea, China. The breakdown of the family for the indoctrination of children and reliance on the government is always a key part of It is very hard for kids to be indoctrinated if they are under the care and authority of their parents. This is a leftist goal. It's why Planned Parenthood says that parents are a, quote, barrier to service. It's why Harvard is pushing to ban homeschooling. It's why MSNBC host Melissa Harris Perry said in a segment that we have to break through our private ideas that kids belong to their parents. And instead realize that kids belong to whole communities.

It's like what Hillary Clinton said that it takes a village to raise a child. Newsflash, if you didn't already know this, the state doesn't care about your kids. The state doesn't care what happens to your baby. It never will. The state doesn't carry your baby, didn't carry your baby for 10 months. The state didn't pay $40,000 for you to adopt your baby. The state doesn't know that fears, unconditional, undying love that you feel for your kids. You would do anything for your kids.

The state or the so-called community will not shed a tear for your kid when they deal with heartbreak or bullying or sickness or death. So we have an obligation to keep the family intact and keep the family close as close to the natural order as we can get it. I don't think that there is any biblical or ethical dilemma with many fertility treatments, of course, and I don't condemn all cases of IVF if it is done in a way to present. all life. Here is my simple take on what I now know. Number one, Christians should avoid any birth control that has the ability to make their womb inhospitable for a fertilized egg. So that would include probably all hormonal birth control. And I say probably because I like to leave a window open for the possibility of something I just don't know about. Number two, Christians should be very careful and prayerful about IVF. I don't know that that means.

that it's completely ruled out. I know a lot of people that have so many wonderful kids from IVF, I would just say that Christians should be very careful and prayerful about IVF. Christian should probably, this is number three, Christians should probably avoid surrogacy. Again, I say probably because maybe there are extenuating circumstances that I don't know about, that I haven't thought about, and I'm willing to hear the other side of that. I understand the longing for having a baby. It is the most natural and maybe the most painful thing in the world. And there are, like I said, fertility treatments that are safe and carry with them little, if any, ethical or biblical consequences. There is also adoption, either embryo

adoption, which I do believe is biblical, since there are so many frozen embryos that will be destroyed if they're not adopted or regular adoption. There are hundreds of thousands of orphans around the world who are looking for a family and love. And I understand that that's expensive, but so are these, so is IVF, so is surrogacy. I do want to say, of course, that all babies made via IVF or surrogacy are valuable people made in the image of God just like everyone else. They're just as valuable as any other human being. And if you have used either of these options as a Christian, your family, of course,

is just as legitimate now as any other family. And your relationship with your children is just as well. wonderful and real and I pray God blesses your family. I am not condemning you if you don't agree with me or if you have made a decision that didn't align with this. Maybe you didn't know, maybe you did know and you came to a different conclusion. I am not here to condemn you. I am here to bring you the best analysis that I possibly can from a biblical worldview. And I would love to hear from you if you land on this differently than I do. What I know is that God's order is good. God's creation is good. Marriage is good. Sex is good. Kids are good. A modern medicine and science can both be really good.

I don't think Christians by any means should be wholesale opposed to medical advancements. I think science is incredible and I'm so thankful for the developments that we get to enjoy today. But with every development, especially when it comes to the creation or prevention of life, we have to be thoughtful and consult our biblical worldview before jumping in. That's all I've got for us today. I'm sure that I will have plenty of feedback and questions from you guys. And I look forward to that. I will see you guys here on Wednesday.