Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 825 | Dystopia Update: Synthetic Embryos, Frozen Brothers & Rented Wombs | Guest: Libby Emmons

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Today we’re joined by Libby Emmons, editor in chief of the the The Post Millennial, to discuss more stories from IVF and surrogacy dystopia. First, we cover the first-ever creation of synthetic human embryos using stem cells in what scientists from the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology call a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm. This obviously raises endless ethical and existential questions about humanity and purpose, and we look at some of the many problems that could arise from such "advances." We look at a TikTok of an adult born from IVF who claims she's curious about gestating her "twin," as well as all the questions that come along with that. With the advancement of technology in reproduction, the question is no longer "can we?" but "should we?" We cover a few other horrifying stories of surrogacy and IVF, which all show the truth that the goal tends to be adult personal desire rather than the well-being of the created children. We look again at the difference between surrogacy/IVF and adoption, which are often wrongly conflated. Then we discuss a study indicating an increase in women going through IVF in hopes of purposely becoming single mothers and look at the many cases of surrogacy eliminating bodily autonomy despite abortion activists being so pro-surrogacy. --- Timecodes: (01:17) Creating synthetic human embryos (24:29) How to address these issues societally (29:30) Grown-up IVF baby wants to implant brother (43:10) Difference between surrogacy/IVF and adoption (45:09) Single mothers on purpose / sperm selling (54:25) “Maternity” surrogate photo shoot (01:00:23) Lance Bass --- Today's Sponsors: EdenPURE — when you buy one Thunderstorm you get one FREE, this week only! Go to EdenPureDeals.com, use promo code 'ALLIE'! PublicSq. — download the PublicSq app from the App Store or Google Play, create a free account, and begin your search for freedom-loving businesses! My Patriot Supply — prepare yourself for anything with long-term emergency food storage. Get $200 of survival gear when you buy a Four-Month Emergency Food Kit when you go to MyPatriotSupply.com. Brave Books — go to BraveBooks.com and get BRAVE’s newest book free when you subscribe to their Freedom Island Book Club! Use code ALLIE to get a FREE book and 20% off your subscription. --- Links: The Guardian: "Synthetic human embryos created in groundbreaking advance" https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/14/synthetic-human-embryos-created-in-groundbreaking-advance Daily Mail: "Rise of the single mother: Number seeking to get pregnant through IVF soars 44% in wake of Covid - amid boom in egg-freezing rates" https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12210919/Number-single-women-trying-pregnant-IVF-soars-44.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 756 | Dystopia Update: Brain-Dead Surrogates? | Guest: Libby Emmons https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-756-dystopia-update-brain-dead-surrogates-guest/id1359249098?i=1000600051865 Ep 554 | IVF, Embryo Adoption, & Surrogacy: Answering the Hard Questions | Guest: Jennifer Lahl https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-554-ivf-embryo-adoption-surrogacy-answering-the/id1359249098?i=1000549207733 --- 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.

Last week, scientists from the University of Cambridge and Caltech announced that they have created synthetic human embryos. What are these creatures? What are the ethical and moral implications of a creation like this? Today, Libby Emmons, my guest, the editor-in-chief for the post-millennial, will analyze the ethics behind not only a development like this, but reproductive technology in general. We've got several stories that demonstrate how dystopian we are getting when it comes to the creation, the reproduction, the gestation of human beings. These are existential, fundamental questions, issues that Christians must have an answer for and think through thoroughly and biblically. Absolutely fascinating conversation with Libby that I know you guys are really going to like. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Alley at checkout. That's good ranchers.com. Libby, thanks so much for joining us again. and loved having you last time. Everyone loved it. So I wanted to have you back to talk about all these dystopian, reproductive crazy stories.

Not just that. Also, if we have time, we'll get into this crazy ACLU story of them lamenting the plight of this rapist, murderous prisoner who apparently wasn't afforded the transition that he desperately needed. So if we have time, we'll get into that kind of stuff too. But let's start with the dystopian reproductive stuff, which you really specialize in.

I saw the story the other day. This is according to the Guardian Daily Mail, synthetic human embryos created using stem cells. So scientists from the University of Cambridge in the California Institute of Technology Caltech announced last week that they have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells and what they call groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for the need for eggs and sperm. Now, this is not happening or this is not probably going to. to lead to right now implanting these synthetic embryos into a woman's womb. It says when the researchers use mouth cells to develop synthetic mouse embryos, the synthetic embryos appeared almost identical to natural embryos. However, when they implanted the synthetic embryos, they did not develop into live animals.

So there's still a lot of research going on there. But the fact that this is even happening, that we're trying to create these, I don't even know exactly what you would call them, synthetic human beings. That in itself is disturbing to me. What's your take on the story? Well, I would say that they are not human beings in the event that a creature develops without having been made from an egg and sperm, a human egg and sperm. That is not a human being.

That is a creation made by human beings. That is human beings declaring themselves to be gods and to be able to create beings that, you know, perhaps resemble ourselves. So that's exactly what I would call that. I do wonder if we're going to get to a point where these synthetic non-human creations do develop into beings. That would be really quite an interesting thing, as it is right now when we develop embryos in a lab, which certainly can be done.

There is a 14-day rule. You're only allowed to develop them up to 14 days. And that is due to ethical concerns. I have a lot of ethical concerns, though, about the potential creation of non-human beings, creating our own replacements, perhaps, or creating a subclass of citizens. How would they be treated? What would they be used for? Would they be viewed as equal to us?

Would they be viewed as subservient? Would they be viewed as greater and better than us? These are a lot of questions that human beings as we stand right now on this earth are not even remotely prepared to answer. We're not even prepared to answer these questions when it comes to robots, when it comes to artificial intelligence. Because we've lost the definition of really anything, but certainly the definition of what it means to be human, what it means to have innate human value.

Of course, that concept in itself is widely debated, especially when it comes to abortion and to euthanasia, and we've lost the definition of male and female. So it makes sense that we would also lose the definition of what it actually means to be human and what distinguishes a human from an animal and real intelligence from artificial intelligence. You kind of already see this happening. I mean, you see this in the rise of so-called sex robots. You see this in the rise of people developing some kind of relationships with artificial intelligence, people saying that we should bring on the robots that they're going to be a part of us. So even with beings that don't look like us that aren't even remotely human, that don't

really have any human characteristics beyond just being able to regurgitate things that humans say, we're already starting to see a failure of distinction between us and them. I can't even imagine how complicated and muddy that's going to be. Say if one day one of these synthetic embryos is implaus. is implanted in a human being and it results in a life birth of something that resembles a human. Sounds like a human.

Has some, I don't even, I honestly, this is beyond my understanding, but it has some kind of emotional capacity. Has the capacity for pain? Has the capacity for communication? I mean, as someone who would know the difference between that synthetic being and a real being, it would be very difficult to not feel compassion for that person, for that baby.

Yeah. I really don't know how in the world we're going to distinguish via law, via perspective, the difference between us and them if this does continue to go on. Yeah. And I think we can also look to our science fiction and our speculative fiction to give us some indication of the potential pitfalls. We see that in Battlestar Galactica, for sure we see that. A movie Blade Runner with a, what is it, Harrison Ford, we see it in that film as well, this concept of beings that are not human that were created by humans and then live alongside

us and we don't know how to treat them. And they, in many cases, don't know how to treat us. Are they better than us? Are they subservient to us? These are huge questions. We see it in Star Trek also when they develop conscious androids. And I think that we need to address these questions finally and as a society. I don't know that we are united enough to actually do that.

But there are a lot of concerns. And yes, we would look at these beings as we would look at them with compassion because we are human beings. We look at everything with compassion. That is a huge component of how we go about our lives. lives. It's very difficult when we abandon that compassion. And that's when we start to lose meaning and hope and optimism is when we release ourselves from the consideration for our fellow human beings. But these would not be human beings. These would be creatures created by human beings. We would essentially be their gods, right? We would replace God for these creatures who have

absolutely no connection to God. They would not have been created by the gods. God. They would not have a spark of life given by God. They would have all of those things given by human beings. Are human beings ready to be gods to a subclass of creation that may or may not possess our innate qualities toward empathy and compassion and kindness? Are we prepared to make a value system for them that is cohesive? What would that look like? As it is in our society, we have so devalued human life. We see constant overdoses all over the country. No one really cares about these people. We see the destruction of youth with the lies about gender and they are being coming sterilized by doctors and a medical system that actually claims to be doing that

based on compassion. We have euthanasia where even in Canada you have people arguing that perhaps poverty is a good enough reason to seek to end your life because it's just too difficult to survive when you are broke. So what does this mean? If we are not valuing ourselves, will we value some creation that we have made? Yeah. I'm just not sure. I think that it, um, were these creatures to evolve into, grow into, um, human looking creations, human looking beings, I don't. I don't don't know that we have the capacity to, I don't think we have the capacity to handle that. 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 popular. 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. Well, we already see, as you just listed all of the ways that human beings are already trying to be God. We've already determined we collectively, of course, you and I disagree with this, but the God of self for most people has replaced the God of scripture. That is actually why people believe that you can be self-defining, that you can take all forms of reproduction into your own hands, that you can rearrange the family, you can redefine sexuality or marriage or gender to your own liking, because this is all about

what adults want or what people want. Autonomy and happiness and personal fulfillment are more important today in our society than anything else. Certainly you can put yourself and your wants before you can put the needs and the well-being or before the needs and well-being of other people. And so I think about this and this is going to sound maybe conspiratorial, but knowing what we know, I mean, it would have sounded conspiratorial a few years ago to say that something like a synthetic embryo could ever even come into existence. But if these are, if these are human-like creatures that are really just objects, they really are actually this time clumps of, clumps of cells in a way. As you said, they don't have souls. They're not

made in the image of God. And so they're going to be used. I mean, what would what would stop the powers that be from multiplying as many of these synthetic non-human creatures as possible who maybe have the same physical capacity as everyone else, what's stopping them from multiplying and then militarizing them for any purpose? They're going to be used for all sorts of objectification. They could be used for sexual gratification. They could be used for profit if you're talking about different kinds of trafficking, sex trafficking, but they could also be used to carry out whatever purpose,

whatever is the will of the people in charge. And again, this sounds crazy. This sounds like some far off dystopia novel. But this is what technology is. Technology can be very good, but it cannot, it can only answer the question of can we. It can never answer the question of should we. And because we have too few people who will ask that question,

who don't even understand the concept of should or should it anymore, because again, if you don't believe in God, if you don't believe in a transcendent moral order, what is should or should we? Really the only question you have is can or can't we? So that's what I worry about. Technology can be great, but the people that are developing it have to have a moral compass to be able to answer the question of should. And so far what we've seen is that they don't.

That's correct. Yeah, we do not see them having any real ethical concerns, even if they think they have ethical concerns, they're moving ahead with these experiments. They've convinced themselves that the benefits far outweigh the negatives. And we see that too with something like neural link, that at its, you know, sort of foundation, the idea is that it would really help disabled people. And it for sure would help disabled people. But there are so many negatives associated with it and what could be done and mind control

and all of these things. And you talk about how it looks like a far-off dystopian novel or a dystopian society, dystopian film. And we have covered this as a society. We have fully covered this. We've covered the militarization of manufactured beings in Star Wars. It's in the Clone Wars, right? We see what the imagination comes up with in those cases.

We've seen what happens. E.M. Forster wrote The Machine Stop in something like 1980. 18 that covers what happens when we turn all of our capability over to a machine, to have a machine do things for us. In that short novel, novella, you can look at it and you could replace some of the terms like machine with Siri or Alexa, and it would make perfect sense. You could replace view screen with laptop, and it still makes perfect sense. In that story, the machine comes up with romantic matches for people. You could just call it, I don't know, Tinder or match or what have you, it still would make

perfect sense if you just replaced the terminology that Forrester used with what we have today. But the real concern, too, is as we're talking about, we are in a relativist culture. Western culture is not only relativist. It has no understanding of should or shouldn't or ought or ought not, as our philosophers you know, have talked about. And instead we have this perspective that if the technology exists, it must be used. We must see it through. And I think that for a lot of people, this isn't going to have a deep impact on their lives because it's tech, the technology is expensive, it's

distant. But we've seen also that the kind of tech that we've used in the reproductive industry, which is what we really should be calling it, has disseminated down. And a lot of it is now commonplace. And these things that start off as very distant do bleed into our understanding of what it means to be a human being, what it means to live in a society with one another. And it starts to affect our value system. And it's so important, I think, for people to understand what their values are, understand the difference between right and wrong, understand how to make good decisions,

and to constantly be examining your beliefs so that you understand what you believe and why and what that means to you in terms of the value of life. A lot of this stuff that we're seeing, the reproductive technology that's coming by the scientific developments where we could then potentially experiment on these beings. let's say they do feel pain, et cetera. We're going to be running scientific experiments on them. I don't know if that is ethical either. But we really need to understand what we believe and why,

and express that and understand it. So that let's say we do end up with a bunch of creatures, we're going to need to give them a value system and we're going to need to use our values and our morality in order to understand how to treat them ethically. Because it could become a slave race. Totally. And you can see how this,

you can see how this all makes sense from a materialist perspective, that we are just all, we all developed from Star Dust. I almost said Starbucks. That'd be crazy. Well, Star Dust is just as crazy. It's just as wild of an assertion that, you know, the evolutionist claimed that we all came from Star Dust.

We are all clumsy. of cells, whether we're in the womb or out of the womb. We're just cosmic accidents. We're just balls of material and matter. Like we don't have any intrinsic value. We don't have souls. There's no God that created us that tells us who we are and gave us a purpose. And so from that perspective, you could understand both how someone would justify creating these synthetic human beings because they would justify it how we justify all kinds of technology while it could make one person happy. Think about how it could help infertile couples. Think about how great it could be if maybe these synthetic human beings were used as victims of crimes instead of real human

beings. Again, like that's a that's a problem. That's a problem there. That doesn't actually solve the issue because if you're failing to distinguish between. a synthetic human being and a real human being because you don't actually believe that we have souls or that we have intrinsic value. That's not going to stop the abuse of real human beings. It's just going to justify it further because, again, the lines are just blurred. If these people are objects, why aren't we objects too? And so it's so crazy how our disagreements today seems like, oh, our disagreements today are so much more complicated than they used to be. there's so much more complex than they used to be.

We used to have just, we used to have more, you know, more simple disagreements. But really, that's not true. Our disagreements today are much simpler and much more fundamental and much more black and white than they were, say, 20 years ago. We are disagreeing on the most fundamental existential things today that, yes, we used to all share a common view of them. But today, we're asking the basic questions that our parents did not feel. feel like they had to teach us because they were so obvious. What is male? What is female? The gametes

matter? Does your sex actually matter? Can you self-define? And now we're even going even more fundamental than that, that what is a human? What is existence? Like, what is a body? Like, what does it mean to have sentience? What does it mean to have a consciousness? Why do any of these things matter? which is why I'd say, like, to me, all these battles actually go back to Genesis 1 and why ultimately, ultimately, it is a theological conversation that we're having. Who do you think is in charge? Is it us or is it at the very least a higher power? So it's like it's big, deep stuff that we are battling here.

Yeah, I agree with you. It is big deep stuff. And this is the stuff that not only have our theologians been asking since, you know, Genesis 1 since the dawn of time, really. But our philosophers have been asking these questions as well. And we had the entire philosophical deconstructionist movement that sought to unravel the building blocks of reality. And that has now been done on a very wide scale. We ask what a woman is.

We ask what a human being is. These are things that philosophers would, you know, consider and then get made fun of on Monty Python for having done. so, but we have essentially deconstructed the building blocks of our reality, and now we don't know how to put them back together. Sometimes I think that we spent the 20th century building our own tower of Babel. We hit the, you know, late 90s. We ended up with this pinnacle of civilization where we seemed to understand everything. We had a colorblind society. There was shockingly little racism. There was an incredible amount of equality between the sexes. Women could make choices about staying home or going to work. Both of those things were understood as valuable. And then

we hit the 21st century and the whole thing came crashing down around us. And now we're running off speaking different languages. We don't know how to communicate and we don't have a shared value system anymore. We don't have a shared culture when you talk to your friends about what shows they're watching half the time I don't even have the same subscription I don't even know where to find those shows I've never heard of it before you know and so so who are we if we are not cohesive and we cannot define ourselves our existence or our culture these are sort of terrifying questions and I think that it's good that you're asking them and really digging into it but I don't know that the thing that the thing that I find the most terrifying honestly is looking at my son

and his friends and seeing what they're really up against. They're going to have to figure all of this stuff out and try and understand their own intrinsic value. And to a certain extent, they're going to have to decide that they have value. They're going to have to decide that life has meaning. They're going to have to just make it up. Even with religion, you know, the kids are learning religion. My son is.

But he has doubts and the kids all have doubts. and they look around and it's very hard to just assume that life has meaning and value when you see how wretchedly we treat each other and how little, you know, how little faith we have in humanity itself to the point where we're creating things to replace us, creating creatures. What could that even be? Yeah, I think that we really do need to consider it. I don't know how, though, like, Allie, how would you recommend that society come together and actually address questions in a cohesive way? I don't think that there is a conversation that can be had about ethics until, honestly, I know that maybe it seems like I'm simplifying this too much, but I really, because I like explaining things in the most simple. terms possible. And I like thinking about things in the simplest terms possible so that I can understand and then and then, you know, really grasp them and try to teach them to someone else. So that that brings me to always go back. Like sometimes I'll have a thought and I'll think, how did, why am I thinking about that? And then I'll have to transfer it back to, oh, yeah, that one thing happened or it goes back to that or whatever it is. And as I'm having these conversations, I'm like, okay, how did we get here? Okay, we redefined male and female. We redefined marriage. We redefined like what it means to be whatever it is.

It all goes back to some kind of redefining and postmodernism. And then it brings me all the way back to the garden where Eve was asked, okay, but did God really say, did God really say? And immediately she exchanged the God that she knew for the God of self. She decided I want to be like God. And so I'm not sure that any like ethical conversation that we have about what human beings are, like what defined. finds our value can be had without at least an acknowledgement that we are not the highest power

and authority. Even if we don't agree on the canon of Scripture, even if we don't agree on all the different theological points about creation or about scripture in general, the biblical narrative of redemption in Christ, which of course I think is central. But if we cannot at least agree that there is a transcendent power. There is a universal moral order. There is an objective reality and morality. Maybe we disagree on some of these things, but there is a standard and a standard bearer. If we cannot agree on that, then we can't agree on anything else because what is right and wrong? What is meaning? What is transcendence? What is innate human value? What is innate anything? And Nate means that it was implanted in you, not just that it was passed down by evolution because that's so malleable.

So like if we can't agree on that fundamental thing that we were created, then honestly, I don't see how we can come together. Because every time I do ask an atheist who there are a lot of atheists that I agree with. A lot of atheists. But when I ask, but why? Why do you believe that? Where does that come from? I have never ever gotten a good answer. The most that I've gotten is because it is or because it's obvious.

So, yeah, I mean, that's my answer to that. It's not an easy answer because I don't know how we get there. But if you think that you're the highest form of authority, which we know that at least everyone at the World Economic Forum does. They sure do. Yeah. Then, like, I don't even know how we proceed. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned atheists,

because I asked this question of atheists as well, and it's sort of like their entire because is the Judeo-Christian worldview, and they think they can just pull the bottom out and that it will still, it will still stand. And it doesn't actually stand without that. Okay. We can talk about just this story, just this subject the whole time. But I want to get your reaction to this TikTok video that's going around the girl she's doing her makeup. And I won't explain that. I'll just allow her to explain this very

interesting situation that she's in as an IVF baby who still has siblings that are on ice. I am an IVF baby and so is my sister. My sister is three years younger than me. But technically, we were from the same batch, if you will. My parents actually still have some embryos from the exact same batch frozen because they wanted two kids. The first two times were successful. but the doctor had extracted, I don't know how many, so I don't know how many embryos are left, but there are some of my twins, per se, still sitting in a lab, alive and frozen. Tell me why it has always been my desire ever since I knew that to, you know, grow up, get married. Didn't plan on getting divorced, but get married again, maybe eventually, and have my kids with my partner,

but eventually also go through the implant process myself and give birth to one of my twin embryos. I just would want to know, especially if it was a boy, what a little boy sibling of me was like and to bring that baby into the world. And I'm just so curious. Okay. Tell me your initial thoughts on that. She doesn't know why she was born. She was chosen by a scientist to be born. Totally random. No reason to believe that there was any sort of higher power involved,

even in her conception, perhaps in the building blocks that she came from, the sperm and the egg. But certainly her conception was at the whim of her parents and the scientists that created her. I think that that must be a really weird place to be. obviously is. She's concerned about the siblings that were never born that will never see life outside of a petri dish. And I think I wonder if she has a little bit of survivors guilt about that.

Yeah. It's crazy to think, I mean, she acknowledges they are alive. They are alive. They are my siblings. They are my twins. She says, and they are there. But she seems to also have no thought as to how this would affect her brother. And or if she, you know, if she implanted this little human being and to say, well, I'm kind of your mom because you were implanted into me. And who's going to take care of them? Is she planning on taking care of her little brother? But you are also, you're actually my sibling.

Now, all of us have this intrinsic longing to know from where we come. Like, who do we get our traits from? what is our purpose? I think there is something that affects us about how we were conceived, like how that process went down if we were wanted, you know, were we made in love between our mother and father? Like all of those things do actually form us and cause us to think about ourselves in different ways.

And so she's not even thinking how this works out ethically or how this would impact her little brother who may very well, want to be raised by his parents. He might long for a mother and father. Would she have the same bond towards her sibling that she would towards a child that she knows came from her and is actually her child?

Like, we think that all of, that humans are just endlessly malleable, that we're just products of nurture, that we have no nature, we have no innate needs, that we can just be produced and just, stated and birthed and raised, however adults want us to be processed and raised and that it has

no impact on us whatsoever. That's just not true. It's crazy. Just how much we prioritize our own wants, even our own curiosity. She's just curious. She just knows what her brother's going to look like. Yeah. We just prioritize our own curiosities and our own fleeting wants over someone else's long-term well-being. Yeah, that's weird. And it's also. weird that she would have this desire to further her parents' reproductive material in addition to her own. That seems kind of weird to me. But I do think that, yeah, yeah, it's very weird. I wouldn't want that. But at the same time, is IVF essentially manufacturing abortions? Is that what we're doing when we engage in this practice? Because

that is pretty disturbing. It is disturbing how many of these embryos are sitting in labs. What can you do with them? You can't throw it away. You can't necessarily keep it there forever. They're not all going to be implanted. It's a very confusing conundrum. Yeah.

And I think, you know, she's feeling that. This woman in this video imagining her siblings all sitting on shelves and how any of them could have been born instead of her. It was pretty random. I guess that she was even born at all. Who knows how many there are? And there are these from countless IVF. I mean, we all know people who had their children through this method.

I think it would be really disturbing. But we do always want to know where we came from and we want to know who our parents were. That would be disturbing for a child who was born to his sister more than 30 years after he was conceived. Right. And what would that person be like? Would they have the capability? If you take an embryo from at this point, I think you could probably go back 50 years, right? Could you?

Maybe 30, 35 years, depending on how long this goes on. But would a human being that was conceived in the middle of the, or in the late part of the last century have the tools to survive? Are we evolving in ways that we are not even aware of? Would it make sense to plop a person who was conceived in 1985 into, you know, 23rd gate or what have you. Right. There are so many questions.

And look there, I mean, there are just questions about IVF in general, not just this particular very bizarre case. But again, anytime technology takes us from what's natural to what's possible, we have the obligation to ask, is this moral? Is this ethical? Sometimes it totally is. Sometimes the technology takes us from what's natural to what's possible. possible. We can fly. It's totally moral to fly. That's great. You know, it can access in a variety of

ways, but not always. Again, it goes from can to should. And you mentioned, like, why was this particular embryo picked? I'm sure that a lot of IVF babies sometimes ask that question. But the fact is sometimes they're, I mean, not even sometimes. I would say very often. I heard this with Paris Hilton recently. There's a eugenics process here. There's a TikTok that I saw circulating of people who did IVF specifically, a couple who did IVF specifically for the purpose of being able to analyze each embryo. They knew, I guess, about all the different characteristics that embryos may have to determine, well, of course, whether they want a boy or a girl, that's very common, very common for couples who use IVF to say, oh, yeah, throw away the girls, throw away the boys, or we want a boy and a girl. You can throw away all the extraneous ones. but this couple wanted to see all the different characteristics that their embryo had according to their DNA,

and they would be choosing the embryos based on that. So of course they're not going to pick the one that may have Down syndrome. Of course they're not going to pick the weaker one. Maybe they're not going to pick the one that has brown eyes, whatever it is. There is a eugenics process that is very common, not in every IVF case, of course. Some people implant, you know, all the embryos that they have, although that's extremely rare. But very often there is. There was the same-sex couple.

This was reported last year ago that is still, I think they're still suing a fertilization clinic in Pasadena because they wanted a boy. And it turns out. And they got a girl, right? Yes, the female embryo was implanted. Well, they're so livid that they were going to have to raise a female that they're actually suing this fertility clinic. I see this.

I'm sorry, but with a lot of same-sex couples who are like, no, we want to. we want to raise a boy or we want to raise a girl. There's there's so many, so many questions that, again, go unanswered when it comes to IVF because the only thing that we're told is important is adults happiness. Yeah, it's this whole thing about your desire is more important than anything else. And we have seen this repeatedly throughout our recent past, the spate of divorces, right? There were so many divorces in the 70s, or at least there were in my family. And I think about this because both of my grandparents, sets of grandparents, got divorced before I was born or right around that same time in the mid-70s.

And the idea was that my grandfathers, who I loved very much, you know, but they believed that their own desire to go off and be with someone else was more important than maintaining their families and staying with the woman that they married. who had, you know, conceived and bore all of their children. So this is not a new thing, this idea that our own personal desire is more important than anything else and is paramount. And it is not paramount. Our own personal desire is not as important at all.

And in fact, happiness and joy are totally different things as well. You see, you know, people talk about how they wish they hadn't had children because it ruins their happiness and they completely discount the joy that they get from that. And there's also as a parent, there is the joy and amazement at the unexpected in your child, at having expectations for your child that are about the content of their character and not their career achievements or any of the other things. I know when I look at my son and some of the things that he comes out with and I am absolutely amazed. I could not conceive of the damage that I would do as a parent deciding that I know

what's going to be best for this individual or even knowing, you know, deciding that I know what's best to bring into the world at a certain time. We don't know that, right? I mean, I really like the idea and I love the idea that God gives us the children that are for us, that God gives us the parents that are for us. My son when he was, you know, three years old or something like that told me that he picked me and his dad before he was born. And I was like, okay, well, I appreciate it very much. You know, thank you for doing that.

But parents don't know. They don't know what they need. They don't know what the world needs. They don't know what their children need before they are born. You have to accept your child and grow with them and guide them into adulthood. I think that's really important giving them the tools that they need and not assuming that your expectations are what's paramount for them. Right. It's really disturbing, I think, that whole concept.

You know, we think about this even going back to, you know, I'm sure we all thought about China's one child policy and the abortions that have resulted from that. It's really devastating to think that as a parent, you know best the genetic makeup of your child, not just what they should have for dinner. and what they should study in school, which makes sense. But their genetic makeup, I really think we should leave that to, you know, to a higher power, to God to decide. Yeah, absolutely. There's, gosh, there are so many questions. There are so many questions that come with this. And I always get this, I always get this question.

And I just want to, I just want to distinguish it. People ask me, well, what's the difference between using, you know, a surrogate in which you buy the eggs from one moment, typically? unless you're using your own eggs. You buy the eggs from one woman. You rent the womb of another woman. You're using two women's bodies, too, and then IVF. And so you're typically choosing the embryos, and then you're creating this child. What's the difference in that?

What's the difference in IVF and adoption? And I say, well, adoption, of course, the ideal, the ideal, especially for looking at scripture, is for a child to live with their biological mother and father who are married. But we understand we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a broken world. We live in an imperfect world. And so sometimes that doesn't happen.

Sometimes the dad leaves. Sometimes the parents are just incapable. They're mentally, physically, financially, completely incapable of raising a child. Sometimes the parents die. And so sometimes that child is already created and a broken situation happens in which we need redemption. We need healing. And so the next best thing is for that child to be adopted. Adopt adoption redeems an already created child, an already broken situation and heals it and makes it better through adoption.

Whereas creating a child to purposely take them away, especially if you're talking about two moms or two dads trying to create a child artificially, you are creating a broken situation. You're creating fatherlessness. You're creating motherlessness. you're creating, in some cases, a eugenic situation. It's not a situation that already existed and then you redeemed it. You created the brokenness because you wanted to. Because it was your desire. It was your happiness that was paramount. And that's all that really mattered.

That is the difference. Yeah, that's a huge difference. I totally agree with you. I saw this other story from the Daily Mail on Twitter that said, like, the number of single mothers who are using a sperm donor. And I hate that term sperm donor. because they're selling it, sperm seller. They're using a sperm seller,

or maybe sometimes they're using a friend, who knows, and they're creating these embryos, and they're freezing them, and then they're implanting them with the expectation of being a single mom. Again, because who knows why? Maybe they didn't find the person that they wanted to marry, or maybe they just put off having kids, you know, for their career,

and then they're expecting to be able to raise these fatherless kids. Again, I think that's entirely selfish. Just because you have the desire to be a mom doesn't mean that that's the best case scenario for this helpless, vulnerable human being that you're created, who I believe actually needs a mother and a father. Yeah, this is an interesting question too. This is something that I explored when I was writing plays and making theater. I was commissioned to do a play at the Williamstown Theater Festival.

This was, I don't know, I don't even know when it was. It was a good while ago. Yeah. But I was working with a director, a woman who was older than me, was not married, was not in a relationship, wanted to be a mother and was sort of tormented with this idea. Should she engage, you know, purchase sperm and undergo that process or should she adopt or should she do nothing? And this was really weighing heavily on her mind.

So the play we discussed and decided to make was about this idea of single motherhood. by choice. And so we started exploring it. I started digging into it and I discovered that there were cases where one sperm donor or sperm seller, as you call it, had, you know, essentially sired dozens and dozens and dozens of children and that some of these kids had found themselves, found each other on ancestry sites and come together and realize that they were all from the same sperm donor. And for me, this play and these questions started raising real issues about what does it mean to be? A parent, this is before I had a child.

What does what is the meaning of life? What is humanity? Do we have responsibility for our own reproductive material? And I came to the conclusion that yes, yes, we have responsibility for our own reproductive material. That is important. That is an important part of being a human being. And when we got into the first reading for this play, the producer at Williamstown, Roger Reeves, the actor who has since passed, but he said, why are you writing about the meaning

of life? We don't want that. We want something fun. Why are you doing this? And I was like, well, you engage the wrong writer. Right, right. But it's interesting how that led you, that led you down an interesting path, though, to think about things you had it before. Yeah, it sure, It sure did. And I wonder about the, you know, the men who put out their sperm all over the place. Are they, you know, happy about it? I actually, a friend of mine I was talking to recently had sold his sperm at a sperm bag. And he met a few of the children that were fathered from that. And he was, he was happy about it. So, for your weird, man. I mean, it's child. It's child abandonment. It is because, I mean, it's not the same. is just releasing your sperm.

You're releasing the sperm, too, with the purpose of creating a human being that you have no intention of raising yourself. And it's the same way selling eggs. It's also so crazy to think about like, okay, so you basically have to go through these very invasive fertility treatments if you're a woman who's selling your eggs because they can't just take your eggs out. You have to, you know, take all these hormones and things like that, which are very risky. A guy looks at a magazine and does.

his thing. And I mean, like, that's... He does a bad thing. Yeah. And so I could see why there is an incentive to get paid, you know, by, you know, a guy abandoning his children. It's, it is crazy that we're creating this epidemic of motherlessness and mother abandonment. Yeah.

And I think that's weird as a woman. I would find that very bizarre to imagine that there were children created with my genetic material that I had absolutely no aware. out there was a surrogate mom in the UK, I believe, I believe it was the UK, who had gone through IVF. She didn't know who the purchaser or body renter or what have you, the client was. She didn't know who that person was, which was part of it, was she wasn't supposed to know. It turned out that I think three of the embryos took in her womb and began to gestate. the customer did not want them all.

He only wanted one and encouraged abortion, which she would not go along with. I believe that is entirely unethical. I'm not sure if it's legal or not to make a surrogate undergo abortion, but she would not do it. After the children were born, she figured out. She found out who the customer was, was a single man who lived with his parents. why is a single man who lives with his parents getting access to this kind of thing, being allowed to purchase children? And she had absolutely no say in it,

the woman who carried the children and had to let them all go. She was tormented by this. Yes. I have absolutely no idea. I've heard Jennifer Loll, she's talked about this, how this is a stipulation in many surrogate contracts that says, if we want you to terminate for whatever reason, we change our mind, we separate, we get a divorce, oh, it's a girl, we didn't want a girl, oh, it's twins, we didn't want twins, that in some of these

cases, these surrogates are contractually obligated. I do think it is legal, at least in some states. They're contractually obligated to go through with the abortion, which is interesting because the same people who say my body, my choice, are typically like the biggest surrogacy advocate. So it's no longer your body your choice if you sign a dotted line and are gestating, you know, a couple's baby. Then because you signed a contract, your bodily autonomy doesn't matter. You have to abort this child go through with the abortion yourself. I mean, I think that this probably happened a lot more than we realize.

Yeah, I think that you're right. It's interesting to me that while the Supreme Court was weighing the Dobbs decision, you had so many progressive women activists going out to the court wearing the, you know, handmade's costume from the, the handmade's tale that was created from the Margaret Atwood novel. And they were, you know, they talk about laws against abortion as forced pregnancy laws. Meanwhile, it is primarily the progressive. left that are pushing women into surrogacy, that are pushing for the legalization of commercial surrogacy, you know, in the country that are okay with the global sales and trafficking of pregnant women and babies. And I think that that's really disturbing. The progressive left are not the ones who should be wearing the handmaids costume. It instead should be, you know, lower middle class women across the U.S. who are wearing these handmade costumes because they're the ones who are carrying the children for the Kardashians and the Hilton's and whoever else decides that their body is just too good to carry children.

Let's look at this. Let's look at this. I think it's a TikTok. It's a video that I saw circulating. I've seen multiple videos like this. It's a maternity surrogate photo. shoots. So these are, for those listening, this is, these are so disturbing. These are so disturbing. These are two men who have, again, bought eggs from one woman, rented the womb of another woman.

And gosh, they're just so loving and amazing that they allowed the gestator of their child to be included in the maternity shoot. So if this is not the Handmaid's Tale, I don't know what is. Here's that video. Disgusting and disturbing in so many ways. What are your thoughts? There's no one there for that woman. She's pregnant. She's alone. These men are far more interested in each other than they are in her or the child that she's carrying.

And I think as they make this shoot, so we'll go their family. So we'll go their relationship with this child who is clearly secondary, clearly an afterthought, clearly just part of the photo shoot, but not really involved with. with them. They don't look at her. They touch her stomach. They don't have her involved. She's always on the outside. And I think that that's just so devastating. How would that, I would feel terrible in that situation. And also these men are manufacturing a motherless child. Yeah. And the child will never know who their mother is, whether and, you know, probably it's not this woman either. It's some other woman. There was an episode of Radio Lab. I don't know if you

know this show. It's an NPR show. that was around far before podcasts. But they had an episode years ago that I think was called Cheap White Eggs. And it was about the global trade in reproductive material that is then used to fulfill the, you know, desires of adults who want to create children. And there was a case, there was a couple from Israel, a gay couple from Israel where surrogacy is not illegal, not legal, rather. They had purchased eggs from Estonia, which is the home of cheap white eggs because there are white women there selling their eggs for cheap. So that was part of it. They purchased the eggs from Estonia.

They used their own sperm. They hired, I believe, an Indian woman who then went to a surrogacy clinic in Nepal because it's not legal for Indian women in India to be surrogates. And in Nepal, women aren't allowed to be surrogates, but surrogacy is legal. So immigrant women were going to Nepal. I think I'm getting this right. It's an old episode. But immigrant women were going from India to Nepal to be in surrogacy clinics and carry the concoctions of gay couples from all over the world.

In Nepal, there was, at the time of the birth, there was an earthquake. Everything went to ruins. The records were trashed. These men showed up in Nepal to collect their children and no one could figure out whose children they were. There was a situation, I think it was in the Midwest U.S. It was a French couple had come to the U.S. in France, surrogacy, not legal. French couple had come to the U.S. to buy the child. And the woman who was the surrogate had to sign over the child legally to the French couple.

And this process totally triggered her and made her really freaked out that she was giving away her baby that she had carried. Yeah, I think that it's, I think it's really disturbing. Yes. And we saw this with Ukraine. Yes, we saw this with Ukraine that all these babies that these surrogates birthed because they had been their rins had been, their wounds had been rented by typically like American and other European couples. Because again, surrogacy is not legal. in a lot of places. It's, and that's why also the surrogates in these very poor countries who are desperate,

they're cheaper than surrogates here. I mean, this is human trafficking. It's human trafficking. Just like prostitution is technically consensual. Typically, the women who are caught up in prostitution, they're desperate, they're exploited, they're being coerced in some way. So we saw that there. And also, just like with the whole argument, because this is what I hear, well, it's

consensual. These women are choosing to do it. It's empowering for them. First of all, I reject the idea of consent-only-based morality. That consent is only determinant of something being right or wrong. Look, sure, if Cardi B consents to objectifying herself on stage, she is choosing to do that. It's still, I believe it's still wrong to objectify yourself. Whether it's self-objectification or someone else objectifying you, it's still wrong.

We can have standards of murray. that go beyond, again, what someone wants to do. Again, it goes back to the God of self versus a higher power versus the God of Scripture. But I wanted to go back really quickly because we do have to wrap it up. We're not going to have time to talk about the transgender prisoner, at least not today, our so-called transgender. But something that you said about the couple that we saw on the photo shoe is that they were purposely created a motherless child.

I think about this all the time. People I know who are like, oh, you. yay, this couple is, you know, they're, they're creating these two children. I'm like, but they don't, like as a mom myself, you're a mom. I know how irreplaceable I am in my kids' life, not just because of my specific personality or specific skills, but simply because I'm a mom. My kids go to their dad and their mom for different things. And I saw this quote by Lance Bass the other day. You know, he's, he's gay, the guy from NSYNC. And he said, he confessed something that I thought was so tragic. He said, you know, I was so sad for the first year of their life because they wouldn't cuddle

with me, he said. And he said that they didn't want to snuggle. They didn't want to be loving. But he said when my mom would come over, they would immediately just lay on her chest and just wanted to be cuddled by her. I'm like, yes, because they want their mom. They want a mom. And you tour these kids not just away from their own mom, but any opportunity for a mom. Kids need their mom for healthy development. And again, just because adults say, well, it doesn't matter. I want it. And it's homophobic to say otherwise. You know, we are taking away in a lot of cases, the healthy development of kids for the sake on the altar of human desire, adult desire. And self-fulfillment, which is really not a.

important, which is something that you don't necessarily realize until you do become a parent, is that what you want, what your personal desires are, you know, are really not, they're really, they don't just pale in comparison to the needs of your child, but they are practically irrelevant. They don't matter even nearly half as much as what your kids made. You're responsible for these people and you're responsible to the world to raise children who are kind and consider it and understand that life matters. And if you don't do that, then we have a world full of crazy people. And that's the problem with manufacturing orphans as they're doing with these synthetic embryos or manufacturing orphans as they would do if they started breaking

that 14-day rule or manufacturing orphans through birthing pods or things like this or surrogates. It's cruel to women. It's cruel to children. It's, it's, it's. It's, you know, anathema to what I think is essential and good about humanity. But without any moral cohesion, as we were talking about before, people are just going to do these crazy things. And we're going to really suffer the result of this fall. It's going to be far greater than being kicked out of Eden, I think. Yeah.

Wow. Gosh, there's so much. We'll have to have you back on soon because there's so many other topics like this. But as always, I found this to be a very fascinating conversation. I hope the audience does to remind people where they can find you because you're writing about this stuff and talking about the stuff all over the place. So if they want to read that, listen to that. Where should they go? You can find more about these topics at the postmillennial.com. We also are running a lot of stories at human events.com about issues like this and from moms who really care. You could also

subscribe to the post millennial on Twitter at T-Postmillennial. and see more of what we're cooking up over there. And you can find me at Libby Emmons on Twitter. Thank you so much, Libby. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. Thanks so much, Allie. 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

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