WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Strength & Dignity: IVF in the News, Pro-Life or Pro-Self?

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Michaela discusses the recent Congress bills on IVF and the various perspectives on the infertility debate. She cites Katy Faust, founding of Them Before Us--a child's rights and advocacy organization. 

Hello and welcome to strength and dignity. This is Michaela Estruth and you're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So today's topic is a rather hard and heavy one. I wanted to address the recent discussion in the news and especially among Congress and Senate policies and the blocking of bills on IVF. So I went to Ms. Magazine and sure enough there was an article on it and they were reporting the news, but also offering their commentary.

And it's a really hard topic to discuss. Lots of people aren't aware of all the details or the specifics around IVF. And so they kind of have a general opinion about it, but haven't done much research. And so I've done a little bit of research. I haven't done a ton, but I wanted to share what I found and just share what the Ms. Magazine article had to say. And then my perspective and also a perspective, someone named Katie Fassert. She is a founder of a children's advocacy organization.

It's called Them Before Us. And I had the privilege of meeting her last summer. She's a wonderful Christian woman and mama four. And she's done incredible work. So a lot of my citation and data is coming from her. Okay, so let's dive in. So in this article, they cited two bills in the Senate that involved IVF. The first, the author blamed Republicans for blocking a bill called the

right to IVF. On June 13th, they blocked this bill in the Senate, and that bill was going to expand access to IVF facilities and decrease regulations. So Republicans turned that bill down. And then next in the article, she cited that the day before on June 12th, Congress also turned down an IVF Protection Act, but this act was actually created by Republicans. But the reason why the IVF Protection Act was blocked was because this bill refused Medicaid funding to states who outlawed IVF. So they're independent of Medicaid funding if they're going to outlaw IVF. So states have the authority to outlaw IVF, but then it comes at the risk of losing Medicaid funding. But the Democrats who blocked this bill feared it would allow states to tighten their regulations

on IVF because that's how a republic works where you have a nation. and were divided into states. And so different states have different laws from state to state on different things. That's why abortion varies from state to state now after the overturn of Roe in Dobbs decision two years ago. And so the same way is with IVF. And so these Democrats who blocked this bill were afraid that it wasn't enough that it didn't protect IVF because it allowed states to block it. So those were the two bills that the article discussed.

And then this author, Piper Duncan, her main point, it comes at the very end of the article. It's actually her closing sentences. And she says, quote, women have a right to make reproductive choices for themselves, whether it be abortion or IVF. Reduced access to abortions is forcing women to have unwanted pregnancies. Yet reduced access to IVF is preventing women from achieving wanted pregnancies. Okay, so here's the main issue of this whole discussion is they are trying to paint it as a women's right, right? In Under Row, they said that women had a constitutional right to abortion. And so they're using this right language saying that women are entitled to basically do whatever they

want when it comes to reproduction, when it comes to children, whether that means to kill the child in an abortion or to demand a child no matter the cost of what that brings. And many people on the pro-abortion side, try to take IVF onto their side, but also say, look, we're not anti-life. Because, of course, they say we're pro-abortion, we're not anti-life. And we support IVF. We support life. And we just support women who want to have life. And those who don't shouldn't be forced to have this pregnancy. But that's an on-demand view of reproduction. And it's inserting ourselves to control and manipulate reproduction for our benefit and for our desires, putting our needs above anyone else.

And Katie Faust goes into that and explains it way better than I can. So I'm going to leave it to her. But let's dive into what Piper Duncan says. She first cites that there have been two famous examples recently that fertility treatments are becoming more and more controversial. So she says, in two famous examples, the Alabama Supreme Court and the recent Southern Baptist Convention, Conservatives have condemned the use of IVF due to the belief that life begins at conception.

This creates an ethical issue since many embryos created during IVF go unused. This increasingly popular belief has made many lawmakers wary of voting in favor of bills, expanding access to usually uncontroversial fertility treatments. Okay, so she dims down the language by just saying that it's an ethical issue and that some of the embryos are unused. as we see from Katie Fowse, she will cite statistics and she will explain just how heart-wrenching and horrible this actually is. But Piper Duncan is right on a few aspects. First of all, IVF is a very new technology. And so lots of people aren't really aware of all that it entails. And so that's why

she calls it usually uncontroversial fertility treatments because it falls under fertility treatments. And so that sounds pro-pregnancy, pro-child, we are just helping a couple have a child who are struggling with infertility. But research and data is revealing more and more just how backwards that actually is, that it's not pro-child, that it's not pro-life, that it actually is killing hundreds of thousands of children in the process and is elevating any couple's needs above the needs of a child. So here are some stats that she quotes. She says that 15% of women ages 25 to 40 have infertility issues. So she gets that stat from the National Health Statistics Report just recently in April of 2024, and it's on infertility and impaired fecundity in women and men in the United States, 2015 to 2019.

And she uses this stat to argue that men and women have the right to fertility treatments, whatever that may entail. And then she cites data that I honestly believe kind of opposes or contradicts her point. She says there are other factors around infertility more than just that might be causing infertility or might be moving these numbers up or down. And so then she says, for example, quote, the average age of first-time mothers has increased recently as many women pursue careers or financial stability before choosing to have children.

The increased average age of others also means and increased infertility rate among those taking pregnancy, leading many women to pursue fertility treatments. Okay, so quite honestly, I think she hits the nail right on the head, is that this whole idea of rights and entitlement is a you-do-you movement, you put yourself first in all areas of life. And so therefore, I mentioned this on a different episode, but the idea of go live your life, go have fun, go be free, go make a career, make money, or travel, or do any of those reasons. And postpone marriage and children is a great message until you're 35 and unmarried.

Or you are trying to have children in your mid to late 30s and you're past your prime fertility window. And so her saying, well, the age of mothers is increasing, which probably means the infertility is increasing is actually very spot on. But the point shouldn't be, therefore, continue doing whatever you want. And then when you want a kid, just throw all the money that you've saved up at an infertility treatment center or at an IVF organization to give yourself exactly what you want. Okay, so now she also goes into the cost. And she says, while costs vary, a single cycle of IVF in the U.S.

can range between 15,000 and 20,000. American women can spend more than $40,000 trying to get pregnant from IVF, which most insurance providers don't cover. So she's citing this statistic. She doesn't say this outwardly, but it's basically to indicate that IVF should be included in healthcare or should be included as some sort of subsidy of the government, that this should not be an out-of-pocket payment for women or for men to use because if you want a kid, that should be your right.

You should have a right to that, and therefore the government should come in and help supply that. Okay, but now let's turn and cite some data from the other side, and it's the same data. It's just what data is being cited, right? Because typically data is unbiased. It's just numbers. And yet now more and more increasingly,

what's being reported shows you exactly what the angle is. So these are some of this. stats that she didn't cite, that I'm gathering all of this from the Them Before Us website, and it says only 7% of lab-created children will be born alive. Most will perish in forgotten freezers, won't survive thawing, fail to implant, be discarded for being non-viable, or the wrong sex, be aborted or selectively reduced, or be donated to research. Okay, so what I really appreciate about this the way that this is presented on the website is that it either in quotes or crossed out language it presents what the other side uses in its language and what I would

like to call a euphemism because for example on the website it reads be aborted and then she crosses that out and put selectively reduced in quotation marks and so that is the language around IVF and that's what's so heart-wrenching is that lots of people go through this process don't even realize what they're doing. They don't realize that only 7% of the children created actually survive and that the rest will some way or another die. Either they'll go through testing or they will quite literally be disposed of. So one really sad quote on the website then before us. It comes from a child of surrogacy and he says, I don't care why my parents did this. It looks to me. me like I was bought and sold. You can dress it up with as many pretty words as you want, but the fact is that someone has contracted you to make a child. Give up your parental rights and hand over your flesh and blood child. When you exchange something for money, it is called a commodity.

Babies are not commodities. Babies are human beings. So when I read that, it just cut me right to the core and these are the stories that are not being told them before us is doing a great job finding these people and giving them a voice to share their struggles and yet no one tells the story about how like a child is told well you were donated or no you weren't actually ever in mommy's belly instead we made you and then chose you but you have a lot of brothers and sisters and they're not here. You know, of course, it's not presented like that to children, but eventually once children become adults, they figure it out. And then they go through this struggle of, okay, where does that place me? Who am I? What am I doing? Why didn't my parents want me? Either they gave me to someone else

to a different couple or they, why did they pick me above other people? There are stories of people going through like a guilt complex for being the survivor, almost like PTSD in like war zone. for like a guilty complex of being the only survivor after a battle. Well, in the same way, like I was the only survivor. I was the one picked above all of these other children. And can you just imagine the grief and the pain and the suffering that kids are going through? So here's my main point. IVF is of the same vein as the sexual revolution, such as birth control and abortion.

Even though IVF is painted as a pro-life and a very dangerous. different alternative than birth control and abortion, it still is based upon the same ideas. It separates sex from reproduction. It makes sex an on-demand pleasure for adults instead of the most sacred love between a husband and a wife. It elevates the adults and their wants and their desires above everything else. If you want a baby, you make a baby. If you don't want a baby, you get rid of the baby. It's the exact same philosophy either way. And it inserts man into God's design of creation. It puts man in God's place and says,

actually, I know better. You don't know and let me do this. And so this is where you get genetic engineering. This is where you get programming. IVF pulls man in to program a child instead of leaving that design of reproduction in the hands of the Lord. Okay, so now I want to turn and actually let you hear some from what Katie Faust had to say. This is her discussing the process of IVF in a speech at a recent Turning Point USA conference.

Okay. So how does Big Fertility victimize children's right to life? Why does it violate their right to life? Well, I don't know if you heard, but there's a lot of celebrity IVF going on, right? I mean, constantly looking at the stories of celebrities using IVF, certainly celebrities using surrogacy. Did any of you guys hear how many little boys? embryos that Paris Hilton created. Anybody know? 20. She had 20 little boy embryos and she kept trying until she got a girl. You know what's going to happen to those 20 boys? They're

either going to be discarded, donated to research. I doubt Paris Hilton is going to donate her embryos to somebody else to raise her own biological children. They're going to be destroyed. Okay. And that's actually emblematic of how IVF and fertility works. They routinely create many, many more embryos than they would ever be willing to implant and then subject those embryos to genetic screening. And then beyond genetic screening, they're going to test to see is it the right sex, the right hair color, the right eye color. The truth is that IVF, even though it's promoted as some kind of miracle technology, is not about babies. The way the industry functions, it is about on-demand designer babies shipped worldwide. And I will

tell you this, by the numbers, big fertility destroys more little lives every year than planned parenthood. Wow. She's also just an extremely emphatic speaker and obviously very committed to what she does and how she presents herself. And so when I had the opportunity to meet her and talk with her over several days, I was just amazed at the work that she's doing and her passion for it and the way that she so clearly presents it to people, and especially this conversation that most people are unfamiliar with, and they've never even given it a second thought or know where to start. Okay, so one thing I do want to clear up before ending is something that is often confusing around the IVF discussion is, well, what about adoption?

Because a lot of people will say, well, lump IVF in with adoption as pro-life. and child first industries. And so from them before us, the website that I was citing earlier from Katie Faust, it says adoption is an institution centered around the needs of children. Big fertility is a marketplace centered around the desires of adults. Unlike adoption agencies, Big Fertility conducts no screenings of intended parents, placing children in unstable, risky, unmonitored households. Okay, so adoption is beautiful. It's a biblical example, right? We have the term and the language of adoption

from Christ himself, from the Apostle Paul in Romans when he's talking about us being adopted as children of God. And so it is a demonstration of what God does for us, and it's the act of parents bringing a child who has no parents, an orphan child, into their home and providing for them and loving them. as their own. And I know many families who have adopted in the way that they love all of their children equally and present this hard discussion to their children in a positive way of, no, we love you and we care for you and we provide for you in our home as our own child. You are ours. God gave you to us. And all of that is such a beautiful ministry and opportunity for parents. and so it is completely starkly different from what IVF is.

And IVF is, again, putting the needs of the parents first and disregarding all the other children that it will impact instead of putting this child's needs first, especially bringing a child into a home adoption is an extremely hard process on the entire family. And so Katie Fowse actually talked about that with Lila Rose, the founder of live action. And I wanted to conclude with that video to give you a more understanding of the complete difference between adoption and IVF. So here we go. Tell us again, and we've mentioned it

multiple times already, but just to close the loop on it for folks who may be listening who are still like, wait a minute, what about adoption? Because adoptive kids do have some struggles. I mean, I think that is an issue, even in the pro-life world, when we celebrate adoption without acknowledging. the toughness of it because it is tough for kids. It can be, you know, every kid's different. It's varying degrees, but there are wounds there. There can certainly be wounds there. And so can you explain for us again or share with us how this is different and how the children's

rights application works in the context of adoption? Good. We talk in chapter nine. We just, we talk about four different ways that adoption supports children's rights, well, reproductive technologies violate children's rights. So I'll give you a couple of them. Number one, you know, when I worked at the adoption agency, we were there to give parents to every child that did not have one.

Okay, so the adults paid us and the adults applied, but they were not our client. The child was the client. If we were successful, every child that needed a home would find loving parents, but not every adult that wanted a kid would get one. Okay, that is what good adoption looks like. In the world of big fertility, it's exactly the opposite. The adult is the client.

The goal is to get them a baby no matter the cost, no matter the cost of the child that they're taking home or the dozens of kids that don't make it through the process, right? The goal is to make sure the adults are happy, not that the child has a biological relationship with both parents or even that their right to life is protected. The goal is to give the adults what they want.

Okay, so she continues on in that video to talk about the hard things. that parents and families do for the adoption process and for their child who they adopt. And she also tells her story of her husband and her going through the adoption process. So for more on that, you can find that video on YouTube or on liveaction.org. But for now, that's all I have. Thanks for listening as I tackle this extremely challenging topic. This is Michaela Estruth, and you're listening to Strengthen

Dignity on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.