Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 659 | How the Fertility & Gender Industries Exploit Girls for Profit | Guest: Jennifer Lahl

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Today we're joined by one of your favorite guests, Jennifer Lahl, president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture and documentary filmmaker, to discuss the surrogacy industry, why it's in the news, and how women are being targeted to sell their eggs. The rates of single men buying surrogate children have grown significantly in the past few years – Jennifer breaks down why this raises some red flags. We also discuss how this crosses over into gender theory and the exploitation of young people. Jennifer's upcoming documentary, "The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters," dives into stories of de-transitioning and the medical industry's harm on young people and women's fertility, and you can support it here! --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers — change the way you shop for meat today by visiting GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE & use promo code 'ALLIE' to save $30 off your order, get free express shipping, and donate life-changing food to kids in need! Annie's Kit Clubs — all subscriptions are month-to-month, & you can cancel anytime! Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & get your first month 75% off! HealthyCell — get 20% off your first order at HealthyCell.com/ALLIE, use promo code 'ALLIE'! Patriot Mobile — go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT & use promo code 'ALLIE' to get free activation! Blaze Socks — get your Blaze patriotic socks at BlazeSocks.com, use promo code 'ALLIESOCKS'! --- Today's Links: NY Post: “I just Gave Birth to a Baby for Strangers I Met On Instagram” https://nypost.com/2022/08/03/influencer-has-a-baby-for-strangers-she-met-on-instagram/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter Forbes: “Elon Musks’s babies were conceived via IVF and Surrogacy - Is it the future of reproduction?” https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexzhavoronkov/2022/07/27/elon-musk-and-other-billionaires-make-their-babies-via-ivf-and-surrogatesis-it-a-future-of-reproduction/?sh=652c75b91cf0 Cosmopolitan: “Social Media is encouraging young women to become egg donors - but is it actually a good idea?” https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/health/a40703647/egg-donor-uk/ Daily Mail: "Two-thirds of applications from single people to become the parent of a surrogate child are done by men, figures show" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10631893/Two-thirds-applications-single-people-parent-surrogate-child-men.html Today: "Ricky Martin on having more kids: 'I have a couple of embryos waiting for me'" https://www.today.com/parents/ricky-martin-having-more-kids-i-have-couple-embryos-waiting-t199932 --- Previous Episodes Mentioned: Ep 552 | "Big Fertility" & the Truth Behind The Surrogacy Industry | Guest: Jennifer Lahl https://apple.co/3BXAzZs Ep 554 | IVF, Embryo Adoption, & Surrogacy: Answering the Hard Questions | Guest: Jennifer Lahl https://apple.co/3dsq1aR --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. We've got a treat for you. And that is Jennifer Lull.

She is one of my most popular guests. We are going to be talking again about the surrogacy industry, why this is in the news, how women are being targeted to sell their eggs and what this all means. We're also going to be talking about her new documentary, which is about detransitioning and how this whole medical industry is pushing all of these things that are hurting young people and specifically women's fertility. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com slash alley. That's good ranchers.com slash Allie. Okay, you guys are absolutely going to love this conversation as much as, if not more than you loved the conversations that I had with Jennifer at the beginning of this year when we talked

about the truth and the corruption of the surrogacy industry and some of the ethical questions that we have about IVF and other kinds of reproductive technology. Now, if you have not listened to those episodes or watched them on YouTube, I really encourage you to do that because we don't get into all of the details of the issues with these things in today's episode. So as I can imagine it will be, if it is sensitive to those of you who have either been a surrogate or you've gone through IVF, please go back and listen to those episodes. So you can get a full understanding in a full context of what we are talking about. If you have questions of like, what about this scenario when it comes to surrogacy? What about this scenario when it comes to IVF for embryo adoption and all those

things? We talk about all of that on those previous episodes. Today we are going to talk more about why these things are in the news, why they are becoming more popular, why it is, for example, single men that are the largest buyers of surrogates. And, you know, and, you know, it is, for example, for example, and of eggs that are being sold by women. What does all of this mean for our country? So that's really what we're getting into today, as well as the detransitioning piece and how it's all connected. But before we get into that conversation,

let me just give a quick plug for the socks that Blaze TV is selling. They're really cute. I don't know if cute is the right word, but they're patriotic. They're fun. So there's three different kinds of socks that Blaze Media is selling. One of them is Ron DeSantis. He's riding on the back of an alligator because why not?

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All made in America. So that's awesome. Go to blazsox.com. Get them before they're gone. Blaze TV subscribers get an extra discount of 20% on. if you use the promo code Blaze sub that's only available to Blaze TV subscribers. Plus, you should be subscribing to Blaze TV anyway. It might just be a matter of time before we get kicked off YouTube and all the free places

where you can find us. So go ahead, subscribe to Blaze TV, support conservative media. Plus, you get that 20% off your socks. Go to blazessocks.com. That's blazedsocks.com. All right. Without further ado, here is our good. friend Jennifer Law. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us again. Just as a recap, could you tell us

who you are and what you do? Sure. I'm Jennifer Law and I'm the president of a nonprofit organization in the San Francisco Bay Area called the Center for Bioethics and Culture. And we're an educational nonprofit that really does a lot of work in the space of new novel technologies and spend a lot of our time in the area of medical ethics as it relates to fertility and infertility. And we've talked a lot about a lot of the ethical problems and questions surrounding IVF and surrogacy. And we're going to talk more about that today and how it has become so mainstream and almost this untouchable topic for people. But before we get into that, I want to talk to you about your new documentary that's coming out, the detransition diaries, saving our sisters. So this doesn't

have to do directly with the reproductive industry. So why is this something that you are investing your time into? Yeah, well, a couple of reasons. In case your audience doesn't know, in a previous life, I was a pediatric critical care nurse for many, many years. I worked at UC San Francisco, UCLA, Children's Hospital in Oakland. So I was always concerned around the area of transgender children. So last year, we released a film called Transmission. What's the rush to reassign gender, which focused on the medical, ethical issues around rushing children to change sex as if they could actually do that. And what we saw in the audience reaction to that film was how much the audience connected with the two people on camera that we interviewed who had detransitioned, people who thought that transitioning to the opposite sex would help their problems, solve their problems, and only didn't. And, you know, there is what's called a social contagion.

So we're seeing this space of people who think their gender confused is much more impacting young women, young girls. And so we decided to quickly release the D transition diaries, which focuses solely on women who thought that they were men and only to find out that they made terribly wrong decisions that had irreversible harm. And it does relate to fertility in that children before they transition or young adults before they transition are offered what we call fertility preservation. So little boys or young men are offered to freeze and bank their sperm. Girls are offered to freeze and bank their eggs. So when they transition, if and when they want to have children, because we know that medical and surgical transitioning ruins your fertility. And so they've anticipated children down the road. and they want to preserve fertility in some warped way.

So not only does transition medicine, medical care, and I say that very loosely because this is not medicine, it creates these patients for life. They'll forever have to be interfacing with the medical establishment to maintain their facade of pretending to be the opposite sex. And then if and when they want to have children, they will need the medical industrial complex again in order to have children. So the issue does relate to fertility, but in a very obscure and bizarre and horrific way. Yes.

And I wish I had thought to pull this video before our conversation because I would play it. But I saw circulating on Twitter a video from Boston Children's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital of the so-called gender specialist who said that she performs what she called. I mean, there's just nothing more dystopian and more wicked than this phrase. gender affirming hysterectomies. Gender affirming hysterectomy. So we're talking about a children's hospital performing this on minors. I don't know every single side effect or consequence of a hysterectomy, but I do know that even an older woman who get hysterectomies, there are side effects.

There are hormonal issues that they then deal with. Of course, the physical trauma of dealing with that big of a surgery. I have had two C-sections, not a hysterectomy, but that in itself was traumatic in some ways, very painful that comes with its own long-term consequences. I imagine something much more invasive, like taking out, not just your uterus, but I believe your fallopian tubes, sometimes your ovaries as well. I cannot imagine the physical effect that that has on a child, of course, ruining their fertility, but ruining everything else as well. What do you make of that? Oh, well, I think it's criminal.

And then I just, I mean, I can't even imagine. I sometimes wonder if I hadn't left nursing and I was because many of the hospitals that I practice nursing in are doing this kind of treatment. And it's not treatment. And I'm sure I would have been fired because I would have been the one with a big mal saying over my dead body. Right. But it's how, when you look at how fast that mediation, has shifted because when I look back to when I was working in clinical nursing and we had these children in the hospital that were gender confused or born with what we called ambiguous genitalia meaning they had an extra X or an extra Y. The obviously standard of care was prudence.

You know, don't rush these kids to do anything. A lot of these problems will sort themselves out. We do not need to intervene. we need to do some kind of counseling or therapy, but no medical, surgical intervention at all. And I look at how fast that this is unraveled. But then I'm also optimistic when I look at how fast it's collapsing in the United Kingdom with all these recent news articles about all the lawsuits that are being filed with people who bought into this lie that this treatment was going to help them, only to find, like you

said, it's destroyed their body. I mean, our bodies are designed a perfect, a particular way because there's a reason. There's a reason why we need estrogen as women. There's a reason why men need testosterone. It has all to do with the development of our bones and our brains and our whole entire body. And when we think that we, you know, we're crazy out here in California where I live about the environment. You know, we don't want to put anything in the soil or the water that might harm crops or plants. But then in the human body, we think, oh, we can just turn this off and chop that off and put this hormone in the wrong sex person and nothing bad is going to happen. It's kind of silly. You don't have to be a scientist to know that that's got to be risky.

Yeah, you know, I've never thought about it particularly like this. Of course, we understand that this is the mutilation of a person's body. But especially when it comes to minors, I do think it is a form of abuse because they are not, they don't have the capacity to consent. We understand. understand that in other ways, but for some reason, when it comes to gender affirming care, aka, you know, chopping up your body, we think that magically that they do have the understanding to be able to consent. But I've never really thought about that these kinds of surgeries and these kinds of procedures for the fantasy, the delusion of gender switching views parts of your body as superfluous that we understand, like, actually have a function. Like, oh, we can just chop off healthy breasts or we can just like castrate a healthy male or we can take the uterus and the fallopian tubes and the ovaries out of like a healthy young woman.

And oh, you don't really need those things to survive. It's fine. I mean, that's like taking off a part of your healthy liver and just saying, okay, you're probably going to be okay. Sure, you might be okay. But maybe, maybe these parts of our bodies were given to. to us for, as you said, a particular reason. Maybe we actually do need them to function and to flourish. And I also think about, like you said, the cross-sex hormones, not allowing someone to go through proper

puberty. Is it puberty necessary, not just for physical maturation, but for mental maturation as well? Absolutely. When you look at, you know, this whole area is called human development. And we start when we're an embryo. And then we develop into a fetus and then a baby and then a toddler and then a preteen and a teenager. And it's all part of a normal process that you can't interrupt and think that there's not going to be any kind of damage or harm. You can't shut off. You know, that's sort of the whole transhumanist, you know, futuristic pipe dream of, you know, being able to turn ourselves into whatever we want, which I don't think, I think there's a lot of hubris. you know, think Tower of Babel. Yeah.

And then God looks down at our folly. But yeah, it's just, you know, we are fearfully and wonderfully made and everything fits together and works as it's supposed to according to our natural human development. Yes. And I think we talked about this last time when you go, when technology takes you, especially when it comes to the human body, but really when it comes to anything, when technology takes you from what's natural to what's possible, whether you're talking about the attempt to sex switch or whether you're talking about commercial surrogacy and IVF and things like that, there are always at the very least questions about the consequences of going from what's natural to what's possible. That doesn't mean all technology and medical advancements are bad, of course, but there are are at the very least ethical questions and we're told when it comes to this gender stuff that we can't even ask questions at all. Tell us some of the commonalities that you saw in

interviewing these detransitioners for your documentary. Were all of them kind of like rushed into this process? Yeah, absolutely. I would say that they were never offered any other alternatives. You know, all what the theme is, and I follow a lot of the detransition people on social media that aren't in the film too. So I can say overwhelmingly, these are themes. You know, these are people that had early childhood trauma. They had struggled with depression, with panic attack anxieties. These are young women, often more so young women that had eating disorders or histories of self-harming. Suicidal ideation, suicidal attempts.

even in some cases in the women that I've spoken to and interviewed. So, you know, in my mind, these women had real mental health issues that needed to be addressed through psychologists, through psychiatrists, through social workers, through family therapists, on and on and on. But what these children were bombarded with was counselors, educators, school counselors, school teachers, peer groups. Another theme is that these people are spending,

these young people are spending way too much time on social media. So they have these friends in online communities that they haven't even ever met who are affirming them and saying, yes, you'll feel so much better if you do this. Well, the reason you feel this way is because you're born in the wrong body. That's what the problem is. And once you transition, you know, this will all go away. So there's so many themes here.

And again, back to, you know, many years ago, when I was working in in hospital nursing, we would have caught all that. Those would be red flags before you rush somebody off to the gender affirming clinic for treatment and therapies. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers

wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. There are still so many questions as much as I talk about this, and I know that you've looked into it so much as well. I've talked to people of all different angles. I've talked to Christians. I've talked to non-Christians. I've talked to conservatives. I've talked to left-wing feminists. And we have a lot of mutuals. These are kind of people that we all interact with and are fans of

and follow. And so I think that I see a lot of what is behind this, whether it is just kind of like powerful men in some cases like playing out. Honestly, their sexual fantasies. That's something that Genevieve Gluck has kind of unveiled through her research or whether it's seemingly well-meaning people who actually think that they are just helping young people, but they're entirely misguided, whether it's people who are making money from these pharmaceutical companies, whether it's people who are scared because of the political backlash. But I still find myself asking, even knowing all those things exist. Why? Why? Like, what is really behind this? We know that. We know that. the harm. It's just common sense, but also we see it through documentaries like yours. Why? Why are people pushing this? Why is there such a powerful industry behind it? Why does the Biden administration push this completely uncritically? So when you wrestle with that question, as I'm sure

you do, what do you kind of come up with? Yeah. I mean, I can't, I have my, my hypothesis or hypotheses and I can't prove, prove why I think it's happening. When I look at what's happening with, with the trans movement and then the men having babies movement. I mean, I think there's an absolute, maybe it's too strong of a word, but I want to say hate to sort of traditional families. You know, we have men having babies now, which is, you know, we throw that phrase out there like men having babies, whether they're trans women or gay men or, you know,

we have this absurdity, but there is this sort of undermining of the nuclear family and you know and and and this sort of releasing giving away or culture stealing our children so now parents no wonder have authority um you know teachers have authority parents are afraid to not affirm their children because they might lose their children yeah social services might come in and take your children away from you i mean can you imagine living with that i mean i live in the backyard of a father out here who's in a really hard nasty custody battle with his son and and his ex-wife who says that their son is really a girl. And this poor father has not seen his son for, I think, several years now.

He has no ability to even see his son. I mean, that's a terrifying thing that's happened in our society where parents can't, you know, are worried about losing their own children and their children being destroyed. You know, the media is of no help. I mean, you're a godsend to people like me because the media. is only singing the narrative that the pro-trans community want them to sing. You know, we're fighting Senator Wiener out here in California because our state's just like minutes away from becoming a sanctuary state for young minors who can come here for their

gender affirmation therapies and surgeries when states like, you know, Texas have said, this is child abuse. And I agree it's child abuse. But we're now going to become a sanctuary state where these children will be, you know, able to come here and get their, you know, body mutilation surgeries. Yep. And it's also this, the corruption of medicine, which has been corrupted by money. Yes.

That's always part of it. And it was Jesus who said the love of money, not money itself, but the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And, man, I've thought about that phrase a lot, especially over the past few years, especially as it pertains to what you referred to. and I agree with this phrase, the medical industrial complex. The love of money in that world, in all different spheres of society, but in that world is the root of all kinds of evil.

There might be lots of different groups with different nefarious or political motivations, but at the end of the day, if chopping off the breasts of young girls and castrating males and putting them on opposite sex hormones, and as you said, creating lifelong patience, if that was not lucrative, it would not be mainstream. Even the political push behind it would fail. If it did not make money for people,

then it wouldn't be where it is. And I just wonder, like, are there any Republicans, they would have to be Republicans, with the courage to go after that structure, with the courage to do something that would make it not lucrative, and actually make it riskier to perform genital mutilation on kids than it is to actually perform it? Well, I've certainly seen politicians that have been willing to do that

in the area of transing children. And, you know, Ron DeSantis, Governor DeSantis in Florida, has been very outspoken. You know, I know South Dakota has several times tried to advance push legislation that would prohibit kids under 16 from doing it. any of this. They haven't been successful. I could talk a little bit about my dissatisfaction with the governor there on that. But on the other issue around this, you know, the surrogacy issue and,

you know, poaching eggs from young women to make babies, that's been really hard to get politicians on the left or the right because the right loves babies. They love helping people have babies. and the left loves women's right to choose to do whatever she wants with her body. Yeah, right. And so we'll talk more about the ethics of that in just one second. But first, I want to play because I saw this circulating on Twitter too. I want to play this video. It's from NBC News.

And it's all of this mother. I'm talking to her son who she says is becoming a girl. And there's an interview for those who are listening, you're not going to be able to see this. There's an interview with the child and the mother. The child is being asked questions by this reporter. And the mother, you can actually see her mouthing the words that her child is saying because it is, it's rehearsed. So let me play that. Nine-year-old Kieran Klausen collects crystals.

She dabbles in face paint and she loves sports. What do you play? I did play volleyball, soccer, and I want to play basketball. To Kieran, who's transgender, it's not about racking up victories. I don't want to win any trophies for it, though. I feel like that's the most unfair way to compete because it's not about winning. What's it about? Having fun with your friends.

I feel like that's the most unfair way to compete because it's not about winning. She seems undeterred with a message now about her journey. Never stop being you. That's it. Never stop being you. There's so many kids that don't even have the opportunity to express who they really are. We are acknowledging more people as who they are than taking something away from somebody else. So you saw that mother, Maline, what her child is supposed to say, that's a young boy, pretending to be a girl. The mother also, I think, is pretending to cry about it. What's your,

what's your take on that? Yeah, I mean, earlier I said parents are rightly concerned about having their children removed from them for not allowing their children to change sex. I think this is a case where this mother needs therapy and that this might be a case where this child needs to be removed from her care because I see all kinds of red flags. Of course. That sort of hint of mental illness or projection or mung childs and by proxy. Exactly. You know, a lot of these, these, you know, mothers in particular are just trying to seek attention.

Yes. I think, yeah, I saw someone say, maybe I think it was Lauren Chin on Twitter that this kind of like makes white mothers feel like they're a part of in a press class, you know, tired of getting berated as not being enough of an ally when it comes to anti-racism or something. and this is a way for them to kind of like take on an oppressed identity through their child, which is kind of Munchausen by proxy. Yeah. And we see that just in the pronouns.

You know, the easiest way to all of a sudden seem like your hip and on the right side of this, it just slap some pronouns in your email signature or introduce yourself as I'm Jennifer. My pronouns are you're an idiot. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's, oh my gosh. That's as soon as I see pronouns in someone's bio. That's when I know.

I'm like, okay. It's a red flag. Yes, total red flag. All right, let's talk about how this all connects. You mentioned at the beginning of this, how this all connects to the fertility industry by making these lifelong patients. But can you kind of connect us ideologically or philosophically? What connects the mentality of someone who is pro-transition, pro-transition for children to advocacy for all the different kinds of reproductive technology that we are. kind of take over the birthing pregnancy industry?

Well, part of it is, I think, embracing, you know, this dualism of mind and body and that we can do whatever we want to the body because it's not us. Yes. And, you know, you hear these embracing my true self, finding my true identity. Yes. I really am, you know, a legless man, so please chop off my healthy limbs. Right. So I can find my true self.

you know, this whole transhumanist that just sort of, whether it be Gnostic or Gnosticism, but just, you know, the human body is nothing. It's just, you know, malleable. We can make it, make it whatever we want. And, you know, why else would we have this technology if we're not supposed to use it? You know, technology is great and wonderful. And let's, you know, just run with this. Right, right. Yeah, I do think that that is the mentality that whether people know it or not, that connects them, that dualism. Nancy Pearson and her book Love Thy Body talks about that a lot. That was very enlightening to me, just the philosophical foundations of this idea that the body is arbitrary and nothing and who we really are is a feeling deep down inside, which run counter, of course, to science

and logic. But as a Christian, it also runs counter to Christian theology. We are told that our body matters, that it actually has a purpose, that our physical body, our gender, tells us a lot about who we are and what we're for. And so to me, the denial of that is not just a denial of the body and science and common sense, but also a denial of the idea of a creator, that there is an authority higher than us that tells us what we are and who we are. Ultimately, I think that's what it comes down to, whether people recognize it or not. Let's transition then into the world that you really focus on a lot, which is reproductive, technology and surrogacy. I want to get your reaction to a few stories that I've seen come out in the

news. And as soon as I saw them, I was like, I want to know what Jennifer Law would think about this. So New York Post, headline, I just gave birth to a baby for strangers I met on Instagram. Lifestyle influencer and mom of two, Samantha and Matthews, decided to be a gestational surrogate for a Manhattan couple after they reached out to her on Instagram. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy on July 27th. She was paid $40,000. So she thought that this was awesome, a great way to make money. And maybe some people read the story and say, more power to you, girl. Well, it's funny because so many of the surrogates I know found the intended parents.

We call them the intended parents on social media, either through Facebook or, you know, because there's plenty of surrogacy groups, people that are looking for surrogates, surrogates that are looking to be matched. It's kind of like online dating. So it's not uncommon for surrogates to match up, if you will, with intended parents on social media. And it's not uncommon for literally these women to get birth to strangers, you know, because we have so much international surrogacy. So so many, you know, people from China hiring surrogates in California. And, you know, of course, you never meet these people.

So it is so bizarre. But it gets back to the fact that we don't have any sense of reverence for the body. any sense of dignity of the body, that we're literally parceling it out, you know, to strangers, creating children with no respect or dignity of them, you know, using eggs from somebody, you know, some beautiful Stanford Ivy League school, using, you know, sperm from some handsome Danish guy from Denmark, you know, hiring a womb in, you know, the middle of America in Idaho or something, You know, it's just, you know, if you have money and you have technology and you've got a society and medical establishment that embraces all this, it's like, what could be wrong? Right. If you can do it, then you should do it basically is kind of the mentality. And it's also what you talk about, what Katie Faust talks about a lot, this idea that people have a right to a child. By any means possible, you have a right to a child. No one ever thinks about the child's right. They think, well, you don't remember your time inside the womb. You don't remember your birth. Who cares? So what is the consequence on the child of something like this?

Well, you do remember all that. And, you know, before surrogacy took off, you know, we have tons of research in the medical literature on maternal child bonding. I mean, we even have a phrase for it. It's called maternal child. It's not child bonding or maternal bonding. It's maternal child bonding because they go together. And, you know, this notion that, you know, I always like to remind people that we don't

allow puppies to be removed from their mother when they're born. It's seen as animal cruelty and inhumane treatment to an animal, but we do it to a newborn baby. We know that even in a surrogate pregnancy, that mother is told not to bond. So she's told to dissociate from her body and uses words like, I'm on a journey. I'm helping to build a family. But that baby's not privy to any of those kind of agreements. that baby hasn't agreed to not bond to the womb that it's growing into.

You know, when a newborn baby is born, I remind people all the time, because I was a pediatric nurse, the only thing that newborn baby knows, and you don't have to teach them, they know their mother, they know their birth mother. And you will hear from surrogates often about how when they do get to visit the baby or hold the baby after they've given birth, how that baby immediately settles and quiets and calms when they hold them one surrogate in one of my films that I produced, she gave birth to a gay couple, a baby for a gay couple. And they called her basically because this baby was this crying, crying, crying, crying,

crying, crying, you know, how do we console this child? So she came over, and the minute that baby was in her arms, the baby quieted down. So we know that there's a trauma. We know there's a trauma to mother and child. In our own research, which just came out in publication two weeks ago now, when we took 97 American surrogate women through our survey, our peer-reviewed survey, they had more postpartum depression in their surrogate pregnancy than they reported when they gave birth to their own children.

And I'm sure that's because you go home with empty arms. Yes, of course, because it's unnatural. And a lot of people say, well, that's why surrogates are so selfless. They know it's going to be difficult. And yet they're doing this on behalf of a couple who can't have children. And I'm like, well, it's not necessarily selfless because you're also getting paid tens of thousands of dollars. And who is it really selfless for? On behalf of who?

Being selfless on behalf of the people who rented your womb. It's not being selfless on behalf of the child who did not ask to be created and then taken away not just from the biological mother who donated the egg, but also the gestator whose womb that they have been in. So who really is it selfless for, especially when it comes to commercial surrogacy? see. Yeah, and I see it really traumatizes the surrogate's own children, too. I mean, you're a mom, I'm a mom. You know, when little children are in the house and mommy tells them they're going to have another baby, everybody's excited, are we going to get a brother, are we going to get a sister? You know, and these little children don't get to have that kind of excitement. You know, they don't get to look forward to another sibling, you know, and they're also groomed. I'm going to get into

James Lindsay trouble here, grooming, grooming. We're grooming children that mothers keep some babies and mothers sell some babies to help other people. Do we really want those kind of messages sent to children that this is what mommy does with her body. This is what daddy agrees to let mommy do with her body so that we can help somebody else with a baby. I think there's going to be all kinds of long-term consequences that we can't even imagine on little children that have been and raised in homes where they've seen their mommies do this. And they've oftentimes seen their mommies do this several times. My partner, Callie Fell, is the host of our podcast, Venus Rising.

And she had a young woman as a guest last season. And this young woman, as a little girl, watched her mother die of pregnancy-related complications from her surrogate pregnancy. Wow. I can't imagine the long-term trauma of something. like that. The biggest, the biggest pushback that I get when I talk about this, well, there's a few. But one of them is, well, the woman is choosing. She's choosing. It's her, you know, her body, her choice kind of thing. And she knows the consequences. She's going into it.

She's deciding this. Why is it the commodit because I call it the commodification of women, the commodification of a womb and people say, well, it's not. It's not objectification. It's not commodification because the woman is consenting to it. I have my own problems with that line of reasoning, but how do you respond to that? Well, a couple ways. One is she's not choosing to do this overwhelmingly. If you take the money out of the equation, the number of women willing to do a pregnancy for nine months and give a baby away, dwindles down pretty close to zero. Then you're left with maybe a sister's willing to be the surrogate for her sister.

or you see the older women, the grandmothers carrying their grandchildren to term. Those are not commercial contracts. You won't see the abuse in third world countries of women. The women who are doing surrogacy for money are coming from impoverished countries. And if they're not being paid, they're not going to be doing this. So I think the one hand, women aren't choosing this. It's sort of like when you look at informed consent of patients, You know, when does your doctor offer you a big chunk of money to do something medically with your body?

I push back too because there are some things that medicine shouldn't allow women to do or people to do, men and women, just because they choose to. You know, I want to sell my kidney. Why can't I sell my kidney? You know, I don't want to just give it a way to help somebody. I want to get paid for it. Well, we don't let people, even though it's my body and it's my kidney. I don't think if I wanted to choose to go in and have my healthy legs chopped off because I'm a body dysmorphic person who feels like I'm a legless person.

You know, I shouldn't be allowed to choose that. So everybody just goes, we should be able to choose to do whatever we want with our bodies. And I can't. You know, I can't choose to get stinking drunk and get behind a car without a seatbelt on and text while I'm driving drunk. I can't choose to do that. Yeah. Even though it's my body, it's my choice. So, you know, you can just sort of play that out in all kinds of absurd, but, you know,

but closer to home, I can't, I can't choose to put myself up on eBay as somebody's slave. Right. And sell myself. Yeah. It's my body. To the highest bidder. You want a 24-7 slave. I'm yours.

Give me $5 million. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, people do put themselves up as a form of, like, sex slaves and prostitution. Of course, they get paid for that. But, I mean, there is still a. reason why there are limitations and restrictions on something like that. And yet there are people who advocate for that kind of thing to be legal because of what we're talking about this kind of

like reductive understanding of morality as only the presence or absence of consent. Like consent is the only thing that we should ask when trying to determine whether something is moral or not. And I think that there are many questions beyond a yes or no consent that we have to ask. Of course, we understand, and I think that's why this is all tied together. But we understand that when it comes to children and sexual interactions, that it doesn't matter how much a pedophile said, oh, this child consented. We understand that there are different dynamics and different ethical questions at play than a simple yes or no because that child doesn't have the capability of consenting. that is always true when it comes to different kinds of power dynamics. And what you're talking about is that in most cases with women who choose to be surrogates,

there is a power dynamic there. Many times they are poor, destitute women in places like Ukraine. And the only way they think that they're going to be able to get out of poverty is by taking the $30,000 to carry someone's baby. So is it really a choice? Is it really a choice? Same thing when it comes with abortion and all kinds of. things. Speaking of Ukraine, we saw the consequences of that too. Babies left without parents, without anyone to care for them because of surrogacy. Yeah. And it's, you know, when you look at who the

number one target for surrogacy is in the United States, it's our enlisted military wives. You know, husbands are enlisted Ben in the military and the big fertility surrogacy industry targets are advertising to military wives. So it's, it's a money, it's an economic, inequality issue. And, you know, what little girl grows up going, you know, I want to be a paid sex worker, all right? I want to be a paid surrogate. You know, where do I go to school? How do I study to be that? You know, women, little girls don't grow up. You know, there's situations that have presented in their life and circumstances that have come about that have led them to not choose, but because of economics, sometimes do things that they don't want to do because they need the money.

Yeah. I mean, overwhelmingly, egg donors are just trying to pay off school debt. Right. And the egg donor ads are heavily targeted to young women at universities, you know, who they know they have a lot of debt and they may be graduating in a very uncertain job market. Yeah. And I'm sorry, I know that this is like kind of intense or some people think it's intense, but I think a lot of Christians don't think about this.

But egg donation is child abandonment. Again, I think some people think that it's okay to make money that way or you're choosing to do it or you're being selfless. But especially from a Christian perspective, if we are called to care for our children, care for our family in the New Testament, we're told that not caring for your family makes you worse than an unbeliever. And people don't think of egg donation in that way or sperm donation in that way. But it actually is. It's abdicating your responsibility. It is abandoning what will be a child, what will be a future child. And again, no one seems to be asking the question, like, where do the rights of the child come in to all of this? It's just about what adults want. Yeah. I speak a lot on university campuses, and a lot of times they'll invite me to show my film

Exploitation or my other film Anonymous Anonymous Father's Day, which focuses on sperm, And I always tell the young students in the audience that you're not donating anything. You are selling your future children. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. They do, you know, I didn't think about that. They do call it donating. But it's not donating.

It's not donating. You donate your items to goodwill for no money. You don't donate your sperm or your eggs. You are actually getting paid for that. You're selling them, which is very different. You know, you talked about people being talked about people being tar. targeted on social media and Cosmo actually covered this, kind of surprisingly maybe, at the end of July. So they said social media is encouraging young women to become egg donors. There's that word

again. But is it actually a good idea? So the author of this piece said that over the past few months, the social media algorithms have been feeding her ads to donate her eggs. The donor goes through counseling, then treatment that artificially suppresses the donor's hormonal cycle, usually through a daily injection over a two-week period. Donors are then injected with hormones to boost the number of eggs produced. A few days before collection, the donor is given an injection of HCG, which matures their eggs. Then the eggs are removed while the woman is sedated. The woman may feel discomfort or pain for a few days afterward. The eggs will either be frozen or mixed with a sperm sample that day from the intended father of the child. So women are getting targeted. Instagram ads to do this to their

bodies, which is also so strange to me because I'm constantly told that there are too many children in the world and that we have an overpopulation problem and yet the same kind of people seem to be targeting women with this kind of thing. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, there's just Google world egg banks. There's one in Arizona. You know, they want to be the providers of eggs for the world. The United States owns, I want to say, over 75% of the global sperm market. egg and sperm are called gametes. And so, you know, gametes fetch a lot of money, make a lot of money. And people don't think that it's harmful because, again, they're just fixated on the end product,

which is this cute little healthy baby that somebody's going to get that really wants it. But, you know, egg donation is risky. The FDA just slapped another warning label on a drug called Lupron. And Lupron is what is used to block puberty in young children that think they're, born in the wrong body. Lupron has been used for years with egg donors. That's the first drug that they're given. And two of the women in my film exploitation suffered a massive stroke.

And the FDA warning that was just put on Lupron last week as it relates to using this as a puberty blocking drug related to pressure and the brain. And what is a stroke? It's the brain. Right. Oh, yes, we talked about that, how these puberty blockers, the FDA is saying that it's causing vision loss. It's causing brain swelling and minors. Also, just interesting, I just thought about this, apparently using Lupron, which I'm pretty sure isn't, was that the medication that is also, it used to be used for pedophiles to basically chemically castrate them?

Is that the same medication or is it? Yeah, yeah. What Lupron does is it, the reason it's used to block puberty is. Because it stops the development of testicles and ovaries that produce egg and sperm, right? And so in that regard, it was used on pedophiles because it sort of medically castrates them. Gotcha. So, and that's been being used on children to block puberty. And you're saying that that is also being used for egg donors as well?

It has been for years. And what most people don't realize is, you know, the FDA gives different. ratings to drugs based on how harmful and dangerous they are, how carcinogenic they are. And Lupron has what's called a category X rating. And a category X rating means if you are taking this drug with this category X rating and you get pregnant, you will have a child born with disabilities. Not you might have, but you will have a child. And so when I think of the patient population of the egg donor, these are often young girls on college campuses who are sexually active, but they're told, don't get pregnant, don't have sexual intercourse while you're

going through your egg donation process. And how many times have you heard about people that aren't compliant and don't follow doctor's orders? So they're kind of playing with fire. And think about the egg donor or the minor child or you're blocking puberty. These are not patients. They have no medical need. There's nothing wrong with their bodies to be putting these powerful, dangerous drugs in

them. I also just think about the fact. And again, this is probably something that could get us kicked off YouTube. And so I'll try to be as cryptic as possible. We were told that a particular medication for COVID, that it was very, very dangerous to use the off-label uses of this particular drug that has been given to millions and millions of people for a very long time for different reasons. We were told that you can only use it for river blindness, that you can only use it for one thing. But you can't possibly try to use it. with COVID, that's very dangerous. But when it comes to something like Lupron, you can use it on all kinds of patients for all kinds of reasons, even knowing that it's category X. That apparently is perfectly safe, but using a drug that has been safely used for millions of people around the world for COVID is not. Isn't that interesting? It's almost like one makes money and the other one doesn't. It's this one we want to play fast and loose with the facts because they fit our narrative. You know, and many, many, many drugs are used off label.

And a lot of times it says absolutely fine. I mean, the FDA approval process of getting a drug to market is quite lengthy and very expensive. So, but once a drug is on the market and have, which is Lupron, Lupron was first FDA approved for treating men at hand stage prostate cancer. Again, because it does the menopause. It does the shrinking of the prostate. So, and then it went on later and got, I think, an FDA approval for treatment of endometriot. in women. But, you know, it's used off-label as a puberty blocking agent. It's used off-label,

you know, with women who are becoming egg donors, egg sellers. So, yeah, it's convenient to sometimes say you can't use it because it's off-label, but other times it's okay. Okay, I want to get your reaction to this story and I guess kind of just this topic. And this is the, the one that will end on. So this is according to Daily Mail, two-thirds of applications from single people to become the parent of a surrogate child are done by men. That raises a lot of red flags for me. Almost two-thirds of applications from single people to become the legal parent of a surrogate child have been from men. Single men. We're not even talking necessarily gay men. We're talking about single men. Since the law changed three years ago to provide singletons with the same

surrogacy rights as couples, this is in the UK, 82 applications were made by single-intended parents, according to the children and family court advisory and support service of those 54 were men. The experts said that the figures echo anecdotal evidence of a growing interest among single men, both gay and straight, and parenting alone. That's a little troubling to me, Jennifer. What do you think? Yeah, there's some red flags.

There's some red flags that that's a growing trend, single men, men having babies and now single men having babies. We actually, as a side, we have a history was made in California. again, my apology tour on the state of California, we have three men, the first gay polythruple that have two children through eggs selling and surrogacy. And all three of the men are listed as fathers on the birth certificate. So these children have no mothers, no women listed on their birth certificate. So we have three men having babies. We have two men having babies, and now we have single men.

You know, I smell something rotten. And, you know. Of course. Because the story of the Japanese billionaire, who many years ago now, hired 13 women and was granted custody of all these children that these surrogate women, he had like a little harem of children. I mean, I think child paedophilia, I think pornography, child pornography ring. I mean, all kinds of, nothing again I can point to with facts and evidence. But I just, I smell something untoward.

No, on that one, I am sure that there was actually reporting about that. There was actually reporting that it was, there was abuse there. It wasn't just, oh, he's, you know, Father Christmas. He likes kids. There was some, like, exploitation going on with that Japanese tycoon. And I'm sure that you saw the couple, and this is not, I don't think it's surrogacy, but it's the couple out of Georgia that was actually just arrested because they adopted two young boys and ended up filming child sex abuse material with.

those young boys. And look, I understand that can happen with any couple. That can happen with any type of people. I'm not saying that it is only exclusive to, you know, one particular demographic. But it does speak to the greater likelihood of those kinds of consequences when you are creating a child with the intention of tearing apart the biological ties that they have. Of course, adoption is one scenario. That is different. Then purpose. creating a child with the intention of taking away from taking them away from their mother, which is the egg donor, or taking them away from their father, which is the sperm donor, which is what commercial surrogacy does. There are consequences to that, not just for the child, but also for the parents. Yeah. And I'm not advocating for surrogacy. I'm a total abolitionist on the issue. I don't want to see it regulated. But, you know, at first blush, you hear these stories about all these, you know, growing trends of just single men. And unlike adoption, there's no background checks done on intended parents who are paying to buy eggs, buy sperm,

rent, wounds, you know, get children. There, you know, there's none of that that's happening to vet are these children going into wonderful homes. And when you look at the international level of it, it's really even more. I mean, you don't even know who you think you're having babies for, if in fact those are going to be the people when those babies leave America and go to a different country, who will they actually really even go to? Yeah, right. Kids have a right to a mom and a dad. And when you take that away, there will be repercussions. Ricky Martin, he recently said, now he was also recently accused by his nephew of incestual, sexual predation. So that's troubling. And he also says,

said recently, this is November 2020, I have a couple of embryos waiting for me. So I think that you've referred to frozen embryos as souls on ice that, again, I guess just don't have rights. And if you are someone who wants them, you can choose

to implant them at any time. You can choose to throw them in the garbage at any time. Or you can choose to just allow them to be frozen completely indefinitely. It's just up to the whims of the parents, right? Or you can donate them to science or research.

So that's sort of the whole human cloning embryo stem cell debate that we had under the George Bush presidency. Yeah. So, yeah. And I can't take credit for Souls on Ice because actually Lisa Monday wrote a Mother Jones article during the great stem cell debate of George Bush era. And she called them Souls on Ice. So I'll give credit for her use of that term.

I mean, it allows you to think about it. I'm not Catholic, but one of the one of the Catholic documents actually talks about the absurd fate, the absurd fate of the frozen embryo. Somebody who heard me on one of our past shows I've done with you, Ali reached out to me just yesterday and goes, what do you think about embryo adoption? And I'm like, I've written and spoken so much, you know, here, go read this stuff.

And then if you still have questions, ask me about that again. But, yeah, it is. And we've got, you know, well over a million in the United States frozen human embryos. And, you know, I just got an email from some big people in Washington, D.C. the other day because now everybody's scrambling with the Dobbs decision and what does that mean for IVF and what does that mean for frozen embryos and embryo creation and so I'm already seeing you know probably in the next year or two things will really ramp up legislatively because we've never really

had any kind of legislation around assisted reproductive technology yeah maybe because for the last 50 years everybody's you know been fighting the the Roe versus Wade debate so it's unclear to me how that all shake out because I know pro-life people love IVF. Yeah. So it'll be really interesting. They think that they do. And many haven't thought about it or they're afraid that criticizing the process of IVF and what goes into it and the possible consequences means that they don't believe that

children created by IVF are made in the image of God or they feel bad because they took part in it. And of course, that's not the point of what we're saying. but we are asking you are asking the ethical questions that should have been asked a long time ago people can go listen to our previous two episodes if they have more questions about IVF. I do want to play this video just so people kind of understand the process, the seemingly beautiful, perfect process of surrogacy and egg donation. This is a couple that I guess was on TikTok adopted. I believe it's a baby girl, or not adopted, sorry, bought this little baby girl through

egg selling and surrogacy. Here's how this brave new world looks today. So this is how we chose our beautiful egg donor. So we wanted her to have lovely big eyes. I wanted her to have really thick hair because I've had two hair transplants. I wanted her to have a really wide, nice smile and just look like a kind person. Yeah. And we wanted her to be creative because we love the So how it works is you join up with an egg donor agency and you literally go through thousands That's what's true. That's what I did. I went through thousand thousand thousand thousand I shortlist them sent them to Francis and let him decide and then we had three or four in front of me and then we have a few zoom calls with the ones that we liked and then The first egg donor let us down fuming and then by the third we literally found her and I was like oh

She's incredible and when we got on the zoom call we were like be calm Play it down. Don't be too keen. And luckily, she said yes. And this is the result. Yes. Tell me what you think. Disgusting.

I mean, there are, you know, literally catalogs. And, you know, heterosexual couples do this too. Because they want a particular baby that looks a particular way. They want the right sex. They don't want Down syndrome. They want eye color. They want ethnicity. You know, it's just, you know, we have a horrible case out here in California.

with a gay couple that did egg and, you know, egg buying and surrogacy. And, you know, they wanted a boy. And then they found out that they're going to get a girl. Yes. You know, they have a lawsuit. You know, we, we don't want just babies. We want the kind of babies we paid for and we ordered. And it's just, you know, it's sickening.

It is. It is. That this is like, you know, glorified or, you know, celebrated. I mean, we should be shunning people that do this kind of stuff. It's eugenics. It's eugenics. It's the very same stuff that Planned Parenthood was started with. And of course, like, Planned Parenthood is all connected.

It started as a eugenics movement. And it also was a pioneer, especially Margaret Sanger, in the reproductive technology and birth control technology, which that's another thing that women don't get informed consent about. In addition to all the other things that we talked about, it is also then connected to the puberty. blockers and the hormones that are distributed by Planned Parenthood to minors, and then, of course, abortion. And many of these surrogates, right, sometimes they are forced to actually get abortions from the parents that originally paid them to carry a child, right? It's written into their contracts, you know, that they are agreeing in advance to either terminate the pregnancy or reduce it if they're, you know, end up with twins or triplets.

and the purchasing parents decide that they don't want two or three babies. So we've had quite a few cases where women, even though they had signed the contracts in agreement that they would do that when they were faced with being asked to do it, they had a really hard time doing that. And then, of course, it's all punitive. This, this, you know, you're in breach of your contract. You're going to have to pay all the money back. You're going to have to keep these babies and raise them because we don't want them.

It's just horrific. It's horrific. Think about that young girl. Who would want these people to be parents? Exactly. And think about that young girl who, I mean, I guess if she is not aborted and she is given to these two men, say they even, you know, grow to love her or whatever. I'm just terrified of even like the prospect of them having custody of her. But growing up realizing that they were engaged in a lawsuit because they didn't want her because of their gender.

The same people who, by the way, think gender. is arbitrary, I guess. I believe it's so important. And social media lives on. It will be just a matter of time until that child is old enough to, you know, find out online that her dad's, you know, wanted to sue because they didn't get the product that they ordered. Yeah.

Man, it all goes back. Degradation of the body and the complete ignorance of children's rights and who we are and what we're in what we're for. Thank you so much for. raising the questions that you do and for doing the work that you do, how can people support you, reach out to you, watch your documentaries? Well, our website is cbc-network.org. I'm very active on Twitter as well as Instagram, less so on Facebook. We have a huge YouTube channel, the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, where all of our films that I've mentioned while we've just

been chatting today are there to watch for free. And, you know, stay tuned and follow us. because you'll be the first to know we're going to release the detransition diary, saving our sisters on September 19th, which is just a few weeks away. Yes, yes, it is. And chip in if you want to help. We still are trying to close our budget. Yes. Hey, that's really important for, and we'll include the link, Jennifer, to that,

but anyone who is listening, even if you can just donate $5 or maybe you can donate $5,000, I don't know what your resources are, but Jennifer is funded and the work that she does to change people's minds on the things that we're talking about, have real consequences on the most vulnerable people in our society. It's funded by people like you. It's funded by generosity. And so if you are able to donate anything to Jennifer and her projects, that is you making an investment in things that really matter

and have a consequence on people's bodies and minds and lives and babies. And so thank you so much, Jennifer. Really encourage people to support you in any way that they can. Thank you. Hey, I just want to end with some. encouragement, some reminders for you guys. I know that the things that we talk about, we talked about this a little bit yesterday at the end of yesterday's episode, they can make us feel like the world is going to hell in a hand basket, that there's no hope. We're scared of our federal government.

We're scared of the powers that be. It seems that things are getting crazier and less moral, less sane by the minute. But the fact of the matter is, and I always remind you guys of this, because I don't think that I can remind you enough that God is completely and totally 100% sovereign over every single aspect of our lives, every second of every day, everything that goes on in the big picture and the small. He's in all of it. There is nothing that surprises him. There is nothing that throws him off. There is nothing that catches him off guard. There is nothing that shocks or shocks him or takes him aback, he is completely and totally sovereign. There is nothing that can thwart his sovereign will.

And even though that's confusing to us as finite, fallible human beings as we ask ourselves, how could God allow evil to occur? How could God allow all of these injustices to be perpetrated? How can he allow bad to go on? on, he is not doing nothing. He is not sitting back on his hands, wondering what's going to happen next. He is not a God who comes in and cleans up the mass later. But the fact is, is that his eternal plan of redemption is always going off without a hitch. And his anger, his wrath is kindling against injustice, even as his patience is being sustained as more people come to him.

So there will be a day when he takes care of all of the evil that we talked about today, that we've talked about on so many other episodes, all the different forms of wickedness that we see in this world will one day be put to an end. He will wipe every tear, every sickness will be healed, every sorrow will be completely disappeared. And we won't have to worry about the things that we are discussing. He is coming back. He will rule imperfect righteousness and peace. peace. And so what is our role until then? Our role is to care about the wickedness and injustices that are going on and to try with all of the resources and the strengths and the talents and the abilities that we have to do something about them. God is not doing nothing about the wrongs

that we see. He uses Christians to help make things right, to display his power, to display his glory to soften and change hearts and to bring other people towards him to advance his kingdom. That is what he is doing even if it doesn't make headlines, even if it doesn't trend on Twitter, even if it's not what people are talking about in your life or online. His plan is still going off without a hitch and he will one day do something about wrongs, about injustice. Psalm 37 is a wonderful reminder of how he will take care of. of evil. So until then, we trust him. We obey him. We do the next right thing in faith with excellence and for the glory of God. That's the only thing we can't do. The reason I have this

podcast is because I feel like from a very young age, God gave me the ability and desire to talk and to care about and to discuss the things that I'm passionate about, the things that I really believe matter, to try to persuade people to a certain viewpoint, to try to talk to other people that have interesting viewpoints that can enlighten me and can enlighten you. I have always wanted to do what I do now. And so I am simply using the small set of resources and abilities that I have to do to do, to do my little tiny mark on the span of eternity and to make my little small impact in the sphere that God has providentially placed me in. You're called to the same thing in a different way because you've got different talents.

You've got different connections, different resources. You're in a different place. You're in a different stage of life. You've got different things going on that God is calling you to. And it could just be changing the next dirty diaper. It could be cleaning dishes with joy or it could be something else. It could be taking the next opportunity. or that next risk that God is calling you to.

All it is for all of us is using what God has given us for His glory. And that's why we have peace in the midst of all this craziness. That's why we have joy. That's why we have hope. Because our call as Christians is the same that has been for thousands and thousands of years now. And that is to simply obey God for His glory. To be a refuge as the church of both courage and clarity, even as the culture. is just wallowing in confusion and chaos. So thank you guys for supporting the show for allowing me

to do what I do. And for all of your encouragement and your prayers in that. We truly are a community and a family raising a respectful ruckus together about the things that matter. Thank you so much for all of your feedback and your support and your encouragement and prayers over the years. If you love this podcast, feel free, leave it a five-star review, or you can message me and you can tell me what we can do better for you, what you like, what you don't like about the show. I take that step to heart. So thank you guys so much. We will be back here on Monday. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we

believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

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