Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 756 | Dystopia Update: Brain-Dead Surrogates? | Guest: Libby Emmons

Starting point is 00:00:00 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.

Starting point is 00:00:19 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. A medical journal suggests brain dead women should serve as surrogates for those who are looking to rent a womb to grow their child. This is just one of many examples of the ethical problems with the commercial surrogacy industry. And it demonstrates how grossly unjust the process already is. will be discussing this and other surrogacy-related stories today with Libby Emmons, editor-in-chief

Starting point is 00:01:03 of post-millennial and a former liberal feminist who woke up to the reality that leftism is a force for destruction. She's got a fascinating perspective that I know you are going to appreciate so much. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers, American Meat Delivered. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's good ranchers.com, code alley. Libby, thanks so much for joining us. First, before we start, can you tell us who you are and what you do? I'm Libby Emmons. I'm the editor-in-chief at the Post-Mollennial.

Starting point is 00:01:47 We are a breaking news and culture outlet, and I've been with the outlet for a couple of years. We have a great team. And it's really an exciting time to be working in media, given the amount of backlash against it, and how much people are tuning in. So that's been really interesting. My background is in theater. However, my master's degree is in playwriting. I studied at Columbia University.

Starting point is 00:02:14 Before that, I studied theater and philosophy as well. So I have a long history of making theater in downtown New York City. I was in New York City for a very long time. I'm a mother to a wonderful 12-year-old boy. And yeah, that's pretty much my whole story. And let's see, you have. not been a lifelong right-wing conservative activist. That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. What was really interesting to me, my whole life, I've been very in favor of free speech. I'm very pro our Bill of Rights.

Starting point is 00:02:52 I'm also Catholic. I'm opposed to abortion pretty much across the board. I just don't think people should do it. And that's been true, you know, since my, since before my confirmation when I was just a young woman, I'm also very anti-war. And one thing that's interesting is these positions, which used to be widely accepted on the left, are no longer particularly leftist positions. So it was very interesting to watch the ground shift. You considered yourself on the left. You considered yourself a liberal feminist, correct, even holding all of these views? Yes, that's correct. That's correct. Yeah, and that used to be okay. You used to be able to be a pro-life Democrat. At this point, I am no longer a Democrat. I changed my voter's registration so that I am actually registered a Republican at this point. I voted for Trump in the last

Starting point is 00:03:50 election, and I voted straight Republican in New York City. I voted for Lee Zeldon. I've watched the feminist movement entirely and thoroughly betray women, destroy women's rights and destroy, you know, women's ability to make their own choices in a lot of ways with regard to their thoughts and how they want to live their lives. It's so upsetting to see what happened to that, but in a lot of ways I think feminism is to blame for the current state of affairs where women are now, according to new research, meant to be called egg donors, if they are mothers. which any mother will tell you to mother is a verb. This is not a one-time thing.

Starting point is 00:04:34 It is not a bodily function to mother. That's not what that is. Yeah. So at this point, my views are squarely on the conservative side. Yeah. But I will say that I stand on my values and my principles, and I'm not particularly beholden to the ethos of any political party. Right.

Starting point is 00:04:54 But you considered yourself growing up, I guess, a liberal feminist and I guess certainly in college, it wasn't until, as you said, a few years ago when you said, wow, actually I'm looking at my views and my values and they don't align with the current feminist movement or the current left. He said you voted for Donald Trump. Was there an experience that occurred or was it just kind of a slow realization that, wow, the left is getting further to the left, especially with the gender madness and what you're talking about the erasure of women and wow, I just don't align with that anymore. Like, what did that kind of moment look like when you realized, I am no longer a Democrat and I'm voting

Starting point is 00:05:37 Republican? Well, it was really sort of a slow burn. And I would say that it started closer to 2010 or maybe even a little prior to that. But by 2013, the plays that I was writing were satirical. They were a thorough send-up of the entire idea. that men could become women. I was writing about, I had this totally crazy play that my friend and I performed where one of the characters in the play, who was our boss, decided to be trans, and was looking for a uterus transplant and then a surrogate and all of these things. So you saw this stuff coming before most of us did.

Starting point is 00:06:21 If you're talking like 2010, I mean, you must have been really in tune where that movement was headed. Yeah, well, I was there sort of where it was beginning, which was in the arts. So a lot of this emerged from the extremely leftist arts movement. And arts didn't used to be necessarily leftist. They were focused on aesthetics and beauty and honesty. Certainly that was the kind of theater that I was interested in making. And that began to change. And the idea started to emerge while I was in grad school. I watched it morph from the artist. being, you know, meant to be telling the honesty and truth of their own heart and their own vision and what they could see of the world. And it started becoming that artists needed to be activists. And the idea of art activism started to emerge. And I remember thinking and talking to colleagues and saying, isn't that actually just propaganda? That's what propaganda is, is when you take an artistic form and you warp it to do the work of a political movement. That's propaganda, not

Starting point is 00:07:26 art. And I was very frustrated by that because I didn't get into making art to do the work of a political movement. Politics was really completely outside of the realm of what I was interested in. I wanted to discuss beauty. I wanted to discuss, you know, relationships and human nature. I wanted to discuss myths and legend and tell the stories of who we are in our time. And suddenly we had to be activists. And there was no way I was going to do. down that road. So I ended up being a little bit on the outs with my artistic colleagues, even prior to my complete turn away from the entire leftist agenda. Yeah. And I specifically want to talk to you about your passion, not for, but against surrogacy and the surrogacy industry. As you know,

Starting point is 00:08:20 this is not something that a lot of people talk about or even think about. And even on the right, as you know, most people don't really have, or I wouldn't even say most people. I would say most people in the commentator realm don't seem to have a problem with it. And I have been, after I talked to Jennifer Law, whom I know you know, and my eyes were kind of opened, like, oh my gosh, I didn't even really think about the fact that this was happening. When I started talking about it, when I would post about celebrities, I'm going, you know, going through the surrogacy process. and I would criticize it, I would get messages from Christian conservatives, people on the right saying, you know, I thought you were pro life, you're attacking these people, this is so judgmental, why do you care, people go through a lot, surrogacy is fine. And what I realize is that all those

Starting point is 00:09:12 people saying, saying those things, they were like I was previously in that I just didn't know. They just don't know. They are actually ignorant. And most people don't want to be educated because it puts them in the awkward position of having to go against something that a lot of even so-called conservatives are for. So tell us about why do you care about this? And when did you start really researching this? Yeah, I care about women and I care about children and I care about children growing up with their parents. I think that that it matters. You know, we are always saddened when a child has to grow up without their mother. We know that that's painful. Of course, we've all had friends who've lost their mothers or fathers at young ages. And we know

Starting point is 00:10:02 the kind of damage that losing a mother can have on somebody for their whole life. It takes a very long time to get over that if you ever really do. I had a child in 2010, as I said, he's 12 years old and I realized the incredible strain on a body going through pregnancy. It's really quite a thing. I mean, there's good sides, there's bad sides, there's what is happening to my body sides. I mean, all of those things combined. And I learned about surrogacy. I also talked to Jen Law. I had been researching about surrogacy prior to that because I had actually been commissioned to do a play at the Williamstown Theater Festival in, I want to say, 2007, 2008, something like that, where I was working with a director who specifically wanted to do a project about single motherhood by choice.

Starting point is 00:10:57 She was getting older. She did not have a partner. She was wondering what her options were. And so we had gotten into it. I ended up doing a lot of research into sperm donation. I discovered that people are meeting each other online due to ancestry apps. and things like that, finding that they have all been the product of the same sperm donor. And I started digging into surrogacy as well as to what that looks like.

Starting point is 00:11:24 There was also a radio lab report, which was some time ago at this point. It might have been 2008. I'm not entirely sure. That talked about a gay couple from Israel who had purchased eggs from a woman in Estonia. and then those eggs were mixed with sperm from both men. Both men wanted to be fathers, if I'm remembering the details correctly, that embryo was then implanted in an Indian woman in Nepal. Nepal does not allow Nepalese women at the time to go through surrogacy,

Starting point is 00:12:01 commercial surrogacy. India did not allow surrogacy. So women from India who sought the income from being surrogates would go to Nepal and be surrogates there. There was an earthquake in Nepal. The men went to get the baby. No one could figure out whose baby it was or where the baby should go or what the nationality of the baby was. And I started wondering, who is this baby?

Starting point is 00:12:25 Where are they from? What is their nation? Who are their parents? What is this about? Are they Indian? Are they Nepalese? Are they Estonian? Are they Israeli?

Starting point is 00:12:35 Who are they? What kind of creature has just been? manufactured to be motherless. And I got to thinking about the manufacture of motherless orphans and what that means for the future of humanity, what that means about how we value motherhood, how we value our children, how we value their futures and their understanding of who they are and where they come from. All of us, when we look at our mothers, we say, you know, I have her nose, I have her eyes, I think like her about this. These are similar habits that we have. We make the same gestures here.

Starting point is 00:13:10 Or we think about where she came from and her ancestors. And we go back through our maternal line, just like we go back through our paternal line. And how is this child supposed to figure out who their mother is? Where are they from? Where do they set their ground? Where do they find a home? Everything has to be created for this child.

Starting point is 00:13:32 And that's true of so many who are manufactured through commercial surrogacy. And I do make a distinction between voluntary surrogacy and commercial surrogacy. I think they are two vastly different things. As in voluntary surrogacy versus commercial, you mean like personal, like a sister carrying a baby? Yeah, something more along those lines. Yeah, if you have a brother, for example, and their family cannot conceive. Yeah. And you want to do this for your brother.

Starting point is 00:14:06 that's something that I think is up to the people in that situation, but I don't think that we should be buying or selling babies. Yeah. I always draw the distinction too. I'm not honestly, I don't think that even that transaction is without ethical and moral questions. I will say that. Oh, I thoroughly agree. Right. Yeah, I agree.

Starting point is 00:14:28 But I totally agree that there are fewer moral and ethical questions there because of everything that you just mentioned. you're not completely detaching that person from their family history, from their biology, who they are. You are creating so many degrees of separation for that child from their origin. Because not only do you have to go back to the woman who just stated you, you also have to go back to the woman whose, you know, whose eggs you actually came from, whose body you actually came from. Now, explain to people.

Starting point is 00:14:59 I know the answer. A lot of people who have been listening to this podcast know the answer. But for those who say, okay, but how is that? different than adoption? Because adoption, you're also taking a child away from their biological parents. They may never find their biological parents. And therefore, you're also separating them from their family history. How is how is that any different? Well, I know that there have been a lot of ethical questions regarding the adoption industry. And for sure, there have been questions raised about, you know, international adoptions and whether or not the agencies facilitating those

Starting point is 00:15:34 international adoptions are doing so ethically and with the families and children in mind. And that's definitely a concern. However, I feel that with adoption, it's substantially different. And my family would not be the family that it is, you know, my extended family without adoption. And I'm very grateful for the women that gave up my family members so that they could be in my life. And I know that it's been difficult for those family members to reconcile having been, you know, internationally adopt. But I do think there's a difference in that these children already exist. They need loving homes and families. We are not creating them to fulfill our own desires and whims to be biological parents. We are instead accepting the gift of life that God has given us and that God has given these children. And we are seeking to create a family from human beings that already exist with God's love. And I think that that's, a huge difference. I feel that in a lot of ways when we undertake surrogacy, what we are doing

Starting point is 00:16:40 is we are saying, you know, our biological material is so incredibly important that we need to rent women and buy babies in order to further that line. And I don't think any of us can possibly come up with that as a, as a, as anything other than our own desire. That's what that is. It's the fulfillment of adult desires to obtain posterity and legacy. It has nothing to do with the children that are created through that process. Yep. That's the distinction. You are adopting a life that has already been created, who needs a loving home whose mother is saying, I can't take care of this child versus purposely creating a child to take them away from their mother or father or both in some cases, depending on what the circumstances.

Starting point is 00:17:36 And it's interesting what you said about, this is really about adult desires. We really are placing children, in this case, children that are part of this commercial surrogacy industry on the altar of adults' whims. Those adults are not willing to adopt, they say, and this is the kind of message that I get a lot. While, you know, you have biological children, so you have no idea what it's like to long for a biological child and to not be able to fulfill. that for whatever physical reason, whether it's a gay couple or whether they're dealing with

Starting point is 00:18:08 infertility or something like that. And it's true in the sense that I do have biological children, but that doesn't change what you just set. That doesn't change the fact that the child in this case is being created to go through a process that is not natural and may very well be harmful. And yet you see tweets like this. I'm sure you saw it from Mark Lowen, who is his name, a lot of conservatives who were commenting on this. I was commenting on this. He's the BBC Rome correspondent covering Southern Europe. That's what his Twitter bio says.

Starting point is 00:18:41 And then he tweeted with his partner after six weeks in wonderful Canada and tearful farewells to our incredible surrogate and friend. It's time to go home to Lisbon with our new family member, our most beautiful hand luggage. Canada, you are a shining light of democracy and equality. Thank you for letting us fulfill our dream. post a picture with what I'm assuming is a beautiful little baby girl. I mean, there are so many parts to every single line of that tweet that to me points to the injustice of surrogacy, the first

Starting point is 00:19:17 being, well, we keep puppies with their mothers longer than six weeks. But I mean, break this down for us. Like, how do you think this is an indication of part of the problem with commercial surrogacy? I think it's just a complete foray into narcissism. And I think that it's a shame. And I do wish the family all the best. And I hope that they have a wonderful future. And I wish their child all the best as well. I do feel, however, for the difficulty that this child will have upon realizing that they have no mother and that they intentionally were created to have no mother.

Starting point is 00:19:52 And I think that that is a crime. I think that's not a punishable crime or anything like that. But I do think that it's not in keeping with human nature to want to deprive a child of their mother. And further, this child will never know who their mother is to the extent that they know who gestated them. They may never know who they are actually biologically related to at all. And I think that that's, I think that's really a shame. It is hard once the child exists. You really just want the best for them and you want the best for the family.

Starting point is 00:20:27 of course, but it is a shame that this is how they sought to undertake this. And I do feel that it is in service to the fulfillment of desire as opposed to keeping the interests of the created child in mind. Hey, this is Steve Deast. 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:21:19 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 Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. children need a mother and a father. And sometimes that makeup isn't possible. Sometimes the mother or the father dies. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances where that's not possible. But as you mentioned, to purposely manufacture a situation in which a child does not have a mother or a father, these two men may be great dads. Maybe. They might be great dads to this child and love this child. I have no idea what kind of people they are. I'm not doubting that. But neither of them can be

Starting point is 00:22:06 be a mother. They can't be their mother. They can't even be a form of an adopted mother. They can't be a mother figure. And it's kind of wild to me how I see this on the conservative side a lot. Like the same people who reject this absurd idea that a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man. They embrace the equally absurd idea that two men or two women can just as well raise a child as a man and a woman. That is the same math, like trans woman or trans women or women. It's equally absurd to say, well, a woman can be a dad or a woman can replace a dad or a man can be a mom or replace a mom. Like, it's just as destructive of a lie, but I think a lot of people are just scared to talk about it because, I don't know, they don't want to be met with all

Starting point is 00:23:00 these different kinds of accusations and labels. Yeah, I mean, since I spoke out about it, I've written about it for years. I've been opposed to surrogacy for years. That's not new. But I recently spoke out about it on a podcast, on Timcast. And I was met with excessive vitriol after that. And I was just like, well, that's really your problem, everyone, because I'm not going to change my views based on your whims. And I think it's interesting. There are a lot of Christians who will push back against this idea that surrogacy. commercial surrogacy, the commercial surrogacy industry is an abomination against women and children. And Christians will push back against that. And it's very hard for me personally to reconcile my Christian faith with the idea that women should be rented and babies should be bought and sold. I just don't see how that's something that God and his infinite wisdom is looking for human beings to do. And you must have some sort of God complex when you undertake to. to manufacture children to satisfy your own desires for posterity and legacy.

Starting point is 00:24:08 Not every line goes forward. Not every name goes on to survive for centuries and centuries. That's just how it is. And in terms of not having a mother as a child, my parents divorced when I was very young. I grew up with my father. My father is a great dad. I saw my mom on summer breaks and winter break. on school vacations. I adored spending time with my mother and I wished that she was in my life

Starting point is 00:24:41 every day and that that pain and that difficulty that I had in trying to adjust to that has literally never gone away. I mean, it's just never gone away, you know, and no matter how much time I've spent with her. And she and I have a great relationship now. We had a good relationship when I was a kid, I just longed for her all the time. And so, you know, to see that in children who have been adopted, you understand, you know, you can see that that's very difficult and to understand what a mother means to you or what a mother means to me having had an absent mother. And I had a stepmother who was, you know, very determined to be a good mother to me.

Starting point is 00:25:23 And she tried so hard, I have to say. And she's, you know, a beautiful person. But there's really a difference. Yeah. There's a difference. And I know that, you know, children of surrogacy are going to feel that. Yeah. As they grow up, they're going to know that they have no mother.

Starting point is 00:25:43 Mm-hmm. And, I mean, that book, that classic book, Primal Wound, written a long time ago. I mean, it talks about the wound that happens in adoption. Like, I believe that adoption is beautiful and redemptive. That's not to say the adoption industry doesn't have its problems. I mean, we saw that horrible story out of Georgia where those two men adopted those special needs child from a Christian adoption agency, horrifically abused them all that. So I think that there are plenty of problems. But adoption in itself is a beautifully redemptive process where you're taking that life already created, giving them a loving home.

Starting point is 00:26:17 And I think that that is wonderful. But there's still a wound there. like we still recognize that that is not the ideal. The ideal for the child would be to be with their biological mother and father in a stable home where they are loved and taking care of. Adoption is the next best thing. And so like there is a wound there, even in wonderful situations where loving parents adopt the children. The children are still wondering very often, who am I?

Starting point is 00:26:47 Like where do I come from? Where do I get this trait from? Who am I connected to when? their parents are talking about who their ancestors are. Well, that's normal. I think God created us that way. I think that's part of why he calls himself father and why he cares so much about orphans. Like, he is our home and our refuge.

Starting point is 00:27:05 And I think that's beautiful. But he also created the family for that sense of belonging. So, I mean, that's exacerbated many, many times when you're talking about surrogacy. When you realize that your mom was picked out of the catalog, has no connection to you whatsoever does not care about you, does not feel anything for you. Doesn't even know you exist. Doesn't know that you exist. But you have her eyes. You have her laugh. You have her propensity to, you know, I don't know, to do math, whatever it is. And then the woman who carried you is also probably maybe she's still thinking about you at some point. You do form that emotional bond.

Starting point is 00:27:41 That's a whole other part of this. And you heard her heartbeat for nine months. You were, you knew her smell. You knew her voice for nine months. of your life, you've been ripped from both of those and you are constantly gaslit by people saying, no, be happy with what you have. Your parents went through so much to buy you and you shouldn't even be thinking about that. That's a really, really tough existence. I think that's really hard too. And with adoption, too, you have the potential for open adoptions where the child can still know who their parents are. And perhaps, you know, parents have children. and they're not able to care for them.

Starting point is 00:28:22 And open adoption, I think, gives at least an avenue to have an understanding of where you're, where you came from, you know, where your ancestry came from. Even as you have the opportunity to be raised in a loving home, you know, maybe you can get a little bit of both. And I think that that's very valuable too. Yeah. Okay. This kind of segue as well, what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago does.

Starting point is 00:28:48 when you were on Timcast, you mentioned that. You were going back and forth with Jeff Younger, and I'll just remind everyone who that is. That is the Texas dad who went through that horrific, horrific story where the mother of their twin boys was saying that one of the twin boys was actually a girl trying to transition the little boy at a young age. We're talking like six, seven, eight years old to be a girl. He fought this.

Starting point is 00:29:11 He said, no, this is a boy. This is my son. My wife is manipulating my son. The court sided with her, apparently they've moved to California so she can pursue this whole transition thing. I have so much sympathy for Jeff Younger and I'm so sad about the whole situation. But he made a comment on Twitter and then I guess repeated it on Timcast when you were also on Timcast basically saying, look, in order for men to preserve their progeny, they just need to use surrogates,

Starting point is 00:29:37 not mess with the wily women out there who are going to basically take our sons and castrate them. You know, I understand his pain, but I don't agree with him. I just want to play everyone y'all's interaction on Timcast and then get your commentary on it. You'll see that I was swarmed by feminists when I suggested that men may have to start using surrogacy and adoption if they want to have children. And a lot of conservatives and religious people are really mad at me right now over that. Surrogacy is an abomination and it's it's surrogacy should be entirely illegal commercial surrogacy. What about someone else hosts the baby? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:17 It's not someone else, no. It's when you rent a woman's body and check her full of drugs and then take her baby once it's born. But unfortunately, it's the only way for fathers to be secure in their posterity under the law. There's absolutely no reason. I think we should change the laws. There's absolutely no reason that women should be subjected to men's whims and have their bodies forced to force into that for money. There's absolutely. Well, it's consensual if they're getting money ideally.

Starting point is 00:30:43 I mean, I agree that no one should be forced into it. Sure. It's consensual to buy women. Yeah, you can buy women with money. You can definitely do that. You can definitely do it. But that doesn't make it right. I just loved your response to that and just even your attitude in the face of all of that.

Starting point is 00:30:59 Because I'm sure that all of the people there probably had maybe a slightly different view than you. So just like add on to that a little bit. That consent piece, I think, is so important because that is what I hear a lot. Well, they consent to it. These women in commercial surrogacy, they're consenting to the egg donation. They're consenting to be surrogates. They're making a lot of money. They like it.

Starting point is 00:31:18 They're happy. Whatever. Why is that not a good argument? It's not a good argument for a variety of reasons. And if we look back in the history of America, we can see that you're not allowed to sell yourself into slavery. You're just not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to sell yourself into indentured servitude.

Starting point is 00:31:38 We had that prior to the founding of the United States. That was extant in the 13 colonies. You're not allowed to do that now. It's just not possible. But for some reason, people think that it's perfectly fine for women to consent to sell themselves into being gestating wombs for the whims of, you know, whoever wants to buy those babies. And so, yeah, we have historical and legal precedence that you're not allowed to sell yourself into slavery or indentured servitude. Excuse me. And that's sort of something that I think is very akin to commercial surrogacy.

Starting point is 00:32:16 Also, I think that when we look at the industry itself, no one wants to consider the toll that it takes on women's bodies. And there's a couple of things that's important to consider and realize, which is that women, when they undertake surrogacy, they have to go through intensive IVF. IVF, as we know, you get pumped full of hormones. You get implanted with a bunch of embryos. But women who undertake surrogacy with the egg of another woman also have to take drugs that prevent organ rejection because it's the same process. A woman's body, a human body doesn't want somebody else's liver. And a woman's body, a woman's uterus, doesn't want somebody else's egg.

Starting point is 00:33:01 So you have to take these kinds of drugs as well. Additionally, in the surrogacy industry, the only women who are eligible to become surrogates already have gone through pregnancy. That means you already have a child. So now you are a woman who is selling her body and your children get to watch you sell your body. Further, if you are married, which a lot of American surrogates, this is a big industry in the United States, it's not just in Canada. And many European countries, it's illegal. France, it's illegal. American women are married. A lot of surrogates are married. So you're married. You have a husband in your home. You have children. They are watching you undertake this sale of your body and then the sale of what would be another child or a brother or sister. And I think that that would be incredibly detrimental to the family. Could you imagine being as emasculated as that if you're a man and your home,

Starting point is 00:34:01 and you have a family and you're meant to take care of your wife and your children and do all of that and then you watch your wife sell her body to another for another man's whim i mean could you imagine that just sounds absolutely horrifying and detrimental to the family and to that man so jeff younger thinks that for his own posterity and his want to be a biological father that means that he gets to completely emasculate another man completely interfere in the life cycle of another family and that it's his right to buy and sell women and buy and sell babies. I just don't think that that's true. And I don't think it's Christian to believe that that's okay. And I also think that like you compared it to indentured servitude or slavery. I think some people

Starting point is 00:34:59 would say, well, it's not the same because they're getting paid $40,000 or whatever. I would also compare it to prostitution. Sure. You are consenting. Sure. prostitutes say that they are consenting to sex, but how did they get to that situation? Why are they there? How desperate are they for money that they are willing to sell their bodies and to endure all of the terrible consequences that come with prostituting yourself? And really, is it truly consent when you are at the point of desperation that you are willing to do absolutely anything just to get by?

Starting point is 00:35:40 many of these women, especially the women in places like Ukraine, in Nepal, and places like that, technically they are consenting because they are signing on the dotted line. They are doing it out of powerlessness and helplessness and desperation. So is that really consent? And another thing is that I just reject entirely, though, this construct of consent-based morality. Not to say that consent in general is not important, but it is not the only thing that determines if something is moral or not. There are some things that people will consent to that I will still say, that's wrong and I don't think it should be legal. Think about it. Like, just let your mind go.

Starting point is 00:36:24 Think about all of the sick stuff that people could consent to that we still say, sorry, that's not legal, or that's immoral or whatever. Just because someone consents to something doesn't mean it's right. And even if you do obsess over this consent-based morality model, which as we're about to talk about is really, really flimsy, the child doesn't consent. The child isn't consenting to this whole process into being bought and sold. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. 100%. And I think that it's crazy also with prostitution, which I also compare it to, you know, I've said that surrogacy is like prostitution, except you're getting screwed for nine months. I think that it's also true that it's hard to say, if a woman.

Starting point is 00:37:05 is consenting to prostitution, is she really consenting to having sex with 20 men per day for money? Is there any amount of money that would make you willingly do that day after day? I can't imagine a sum that would, that I would be comfortable if I had a daughter or my sisters or myself to go through with something like that. $100 million, not really even close to, you know, what I think the lives of our our daughters and sisters and mothers are worth. Yeah, absolutely. And people also don't realize like, okay,

Starting point is 00:37:44 we're not even just talking about the baby that gets to be born, their consent and their well-being. Like you just said, the woman has to go through very intense IVF. A lot of times that means that not everything that's implanted makes it. So you're talking about multiple miscarriages in some cases, and a lot of cases that I know about. these the couple that's buying the baby from first the egg donor then you know using the surrogate's body

Starting point is 00:38:10 they want to pick out certain embryos they want a boy or they want a girl they want to make sure that they don't have any genetic anomalies and so they create all of these children put them in you know the petri dish and then the doctors the scientists say okay these are good embryos we'll implant these we'll see how many make it there are so many lives. lives lost. I guarantee there is not probably a single commercial surrogacy situation in which there was like one embryo created, one embryo implanted, and one baby born. I guarantee you at every single commercial surrogacy situation, you are looking at basically abortions, like in some cases, because you're going into it, knowing that you are going to kill those children or placing children in a situation

Starting point is 00:38:59 you know is dangerous. On top of all of that, the pregnancy itself is very dangerous for the mother and child and surrogacy for the reasons you've already mentioned. Yeah. And there was a case actually of a woman who underwent surrogacy. Didn't know who the client was. Turned out the client was a man who lived in his parents' basement and had no family other than that and who was undertaking parenthood on his own.

Starting point is 00:39:26 And when he found out that all of the emberts, that she had, you know, been implanted with survived. He asked her to abort some. He asked her to abort some after he was already buying these babies and paying to rent her body. It's just absolutely shocking. There was another case where it turned out that the person who was the man, again, a single man who was buying children from a surrogate was actually intending to use them, you know, for really nefarious purposes.

Starting point is 00:39:59 And that was, I think, in Australia. Yeah. I was following that case. And yeah, I mean, really difficult things. And what kind of single man wants to raise children all by himself without a mother ever being in the picture? It's one thing to have a divorce, you know, and then you're raising the child. But, you know, this is absolutely, this is not something that I understand why a man would want to do that, would want to take a mother out of the picture entirely.

Starting point is 00:40:30 Yeah, I know. Every single red flag that I have goes up when I hear that a single man wants to go through the surrogacy process for a child. I mean, I think commercial surrogacy should be illegal in general, as it is in many countries, by the way, a lot of people don't know that. A lot of Western European countries. Right. And that's why Europeans come to North America to buy their children here.

Starting point is 00:40:55 Right. But I especially believe, I especially believe that single men should not be able to buy these children. I mean, literally every red flag. All right. I want to talk about this story that originally kind of kicked this off. Why even wanted you on? It took us a while to get to it. But this kind of goes back to what we were talking about, about how flimsy this whole consent-based morality model is because it just so quickly leads to, well, what is really consent?

Starting point is 00:41:25 like does it really does consent really matter in all circumstances i mean we see all obviously all of that with the gender madness but we also see it when it comes to surrogacy and this is a line from redox or a headline medical journal floats concept of using brain dead women as surrogates through whole body gestational donation an entry from the journal of theoretical medicine and bioethics is prompting outrage from women on social media after theorizing that the bodies of vegetative of a brain-dead female patients could be utilized as whole-body gestational surrogates. The article originally published in November 22 is titled Whole Body Gestational Donation. It proposes that it may be viable to utilize the donated bodies of women for gestational

Starting point is 00:42:10 purposes in the same manner that donated organs are used. So, I mean, just react to this. Tell me your thoughts about how terrible this is. It's so terrible. And I think generations of science fiction writers that we have their work tell us exactly how terrible this is. We can read Brave New World and we can see that creating pods made out of women's organs in order to create a new group of human beings is not an acceptable way to go. And it actually not only is it immoral to that woman, but I think that what it spells is a very deadly and unpleasant direction for humanity when we create children. that have no past. Who do these children belong to? When we create children that have no way to figure out

Starting point is 00:43:03 who they are or where they're from, what kind of futures can we expect them to have and what kind of quality of life can we expect them to have? And how are they supposed to treat other human beings? How are we supposed to have any value of each other if we don't have any provenance of ourselves. Oh, my mother is that brain dead woman in the hospital there. That's just not acceptable. Not only is there no consent for the brain dead woman. I mean, who's supposed to consent for her? Is her family just supposed to sell her off as though she were, you know, like, I don't want to use me in language here. But she's supposed to give consent before she became brain dead. Oh, I think I'll be brain dead next one. Is this our organ donation thing? Yeah. Like you put on your driver's license.

Starting point is 00:43:48 Yeah. I think that that's unacceptable. And I think that it's acceptable. And I think that it's cruel. I think it's cruel not only to the individuals involved, but it's cruel to humanity. And I think it betrays our human nature instead of turning to our better angels, instead of seeing ourselves as children of God, we see ourselves through this method. We would be seeing ourselves as lumps of flesh as commodities. And the human being in a Christian sense is not a commodity. We are not here to be bought and sold. We are here to be children of God. We are here to seek grace. We are here to give kindness. You know, that's that's what we're here for. We're not here for just to further ourselves. This Darwinian approach is not in keeping with our best selves at all. And if anyone thinks that

Starting point is 00:44:49 consent in any way would be involved in this, even when it comes to the family, like you haven't been paying attention. Consent is manipulated. It is manufactured. It is redefined. So that that the people who want to do something and are willing to pay money to do it can do it. And by the way, I just think about how you're going to have to impregnate this woman with someone else's embryo and fill her with it. I mean, you're basically going to have to rape her in order to do that. So like, let's consider all of that. And then you consider like you've been pregnant, I've been pregnant, all the things that the

Starting point is 00:45:26 doctor tells you to do when you're pregnant. Well, you need to get exercise. You need to make sure you're talking to the baby, playing music to the baby, rating books to the baby. You need to make sure that you're eating all of these things, that you're moving around, that you're not laying on your back, you know, like all these things that a brain dead woman can't do. So not only are you not thinking about her at all from the so-called bodily autonomy crowd, but you are also not considering once again the well-being of the baby.

Starting point is 00:45:52 I mean, it's just wild. We're dealing with our depopulation crisis that we're having. It's not overpopulation, it's depopulation crisis, not by saying, hey, let's value marriage. Let's try to value love and togetherness and true healthy intimacy and childbearing. But let us instead manufacture new. And as you said, very Huxleyan ways, like brave, straight out of brave new world. Let's try to create those new, very scary ways to create children. I mean, it really is just horrors beyond our imagination when we start to play God.

Starting point is 00:46:31 Yeah. And when we go from. what's natural to what's possible via technology without ever pumping the brakes and asking any questions. And there's also certainly been cases of women obtaining the sperm of their deceased husbands and trying to use that to get pregnant. And I don't think that that's particularly better just because there's less strain, if you will, on the male body in that case.

Starting point is 00:46:59 I don't like that either. Yeah. No, I just don't think that's how it's supposed to be. again, when we go from what's natural to what's possible via technology, that's not always a bad transition. But we do have a responsibility, especially as Christians who understand human nature and that we're all made in the image of God, is this okay? Is this an okay process? And we have to, yeah, and we have to understand what it is that we want humanity to be. What are human beings? What is our purpose? What do we want our societies to look like? What do we want our culture to look

Starting point is 00:47:31 like and what kind of value do we place on each other? What kind of value do we place on life? And I think in a lot of ways of late, Western culture has become something of a death cult. We embrace abortion by saying, you know, that this is better for women to kill their babies. I just don't see how that's possible. We embrace euthanasia, murdering young people because they say that, you know, life isn't worth living for whatever variety of reasons. reasons instead of trying to talk them out of it. And we embrace the dissolution of the family. We embrace the dissolution of mothers.

Starting point is 00:48:09 We embrace the dissolution of biological sex, which is actually a remarkably beautiful thing. We don't look at ourselves as creatures who are here at God's grace or searching for God's grace. We don't consider the meaning of life anymore. We consider the meaning of our own desires. We consider how to fulfill our whims at any given moment, you know, eat all the cake, have all the sex, manufacture, all the children, you know, whatever stage of life you're in, there's a way to justify the fulfillment of your own personal desires, you know, using technology, using whatever you want. And I just don't think that it spells a good future for humanity. It spells a future for humanity where death is at the center of our culture. And that's really not life should be there.

Starting point is 00:49:05 Yeah. Yep. Man, there's so many other things that I want to talk to about. It's really all the consequence of exchanging the God of Scripture for the God of self. I mean, that has what seems like petty consequences, pursuing whatever makes you happy in the moment, even if it hurts other people, relationships and things like that. But it has big consequences. What we just talked about, when we try to replace God, we see the whole.

Starting point is 00:49:28 that can happen. We didn't have time to get into it, but as you mentioned, Canada is pushing euthanasia, and it's not just for, not that it's okay in this case either, but it's not just for the elderly who are dying of cancer, but as you mentioned, it's also young people who have a really good chance of surviving a sickness, and yet they are being told, well, you should probably just kill yourself. And then we've got a Yale professor, the New York Times reported, who suggested that mass suicide for old people in Japan could possibly be a good thing because there's so many old people, so few young people. I kind of don't understand how that solves the problem of needing more babies. But what we're seeing across the board is I'm sure you would agree is just

Starting point is 00:50:11 the denigration of life because again, we've replaced God with the self. And so we no longer believe that human beings are made in God's image. We no longer believe that human beings have souls and innate value, which is what, by the way, Western civilization was built on and why we have come to. Which is what makes democracy possible. Yeah, that's what makes democracy possible. And when you say that we've replaced God with the self, we have so thoroughly done that. And we've replaced the soul with gender. And that's where we stand now. And it's really, it's really a denigration of humanity and human beings. We don't seek to to live out our lives in God's image at this point. We seek to live them out according to our own whimsy and desire. It's just absurd. It's absurd on the

Starting point is 00:50:58 face of it. And if you read Western literature and the history of our culture, you see that this can only lead to bad things. This really isn't new. It goes all the way back to the garden where the first temptation that Satan gave Eve was, don't you want to be like God? You can be powerful. You can have all knowledge. He just doesn't want you to be like him. Bite the apple. Eve bit it, here we are and still reaping the consequences of that sin. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. And thank you for your strength on these issues.

Starting point is 00:51:33 I so appreciate it. Can you tell people where they can find and follow you? Yeah. Thanks for having me on. It's been a real joy. My name is Libby Emmons. I'm at Libby Emmons on Twitter. And you can check out what we're doing at the postmillennial.com every day.

Starting point is 00:51:49 Thank you so much. Yeah, definitely check out the post-millennial. I love going to you all for news. are always covering things that other people aren't. So thanks for that. Thank you so much. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

Starting point is 00:52:07 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.

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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 756 | Dystopia Update: Brain-Dead Surrogates? | Guest: Libby Emmons

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