Leila, I want to graciously ask for you to pray about and reconsider your opinion on embryo adoption. Firstly by putting the word adoption in quotations you are implying you don’t think it really is adoption of a child. Do you believe that it is only God who gives life? And do you believe life begins at conception? Do you believe all human life is valuable? If so, then adopting embryos is no different than adopting a child already born. Secondly, it is clear that you do not fully understand the process of embryo adoption. I am a Christian and am vehemently opposed to IVF for the same reasons you are. But after considering all of the options and seeking God’s guidance, my husband and I did do embryo adoption, and it has been a beautiful experience. Our children are eternally valuable, created by God in his image and worthy of being adopted. We did not choose traits, we did not pay someone to create them for us, that is not what embryo adoption is. This family chose to do IVF, which we don’t agree with, but they were left with four remaining embryos, and instead of killing them, they placed them up for adoption because they knew they were valuable. We were led by God to pursue this path and save these children from the freezer, from being killed. What a redemptive thing! We as Christians are in the business of redemption and can take what the world means for evil and make it good. Do you believe God would have these millions of human lives abandoned just because of the sinful way in which they were created? Surely not.
I gave my reasons in the podcast -- some of which you do not address, including the dangers to the mother. I understand the argument you make and I agree with the principles you state. I admire your willingness to step in. Obviously the child is an inestimable good. Someone saving a baby this way is not to be condemned.
But I believe the principles you state are insufficient *when we consider it as a broad recommendation or practice.* As a policy, I think it's problematic. I put adoption in quotation marks because I think the word implies that no money is exchanged, but if it becomes a practice, I think it will involve money as profit. I believe that cooperation with an entity that is impossible to regulate and that is based on immoral means will create more problems than it solves.
Look at it this way: do I think it can be moral to rescue slaves by buying them? Yes, and it has been done, even by popes. Do I think it's a prudent idea in a world where everything happens at lightning speed and everything is transactional? No, I don't. I think it would end up creating a larger slave market. In fact, I think the slave market would rationalize and justify its actions based on the offset this good action provides.
IF the IVF clinics agreed to shut down operations, then yes, I think women could have the embryos implanted. But I have not seen that proposed.
Do I think we should let babies die? Babies do die. They are dying every day, especially at the abortion clinic. I hate to say it this way, but I think we have all realized we cannot save all those babies. We do our best. We are not God. I don't think it's a good moral argument to take one sector of babies and somehow make it a moral imperative to save them. On one level, of course -- I want every baby saved! But what is the moral calculus I make to save this one and not that one?
You will have to separate your experience from the larger implications -- and understand that I don't condemn anyone, but am only trying to warn of a very great evil coming out of a good impulse. Imagine all the women who won't know someone but who will hear of this... and be willing to pay... imagine the market... it will simply be a market of babies.
You say: "Secondly, it is clear that you do not fully understand the process of embryo adoption. I am a Christian and am vehemently opposed to IVF for the same reasons you are. But after considering all of the options and seeking God’s guidance, my husband and I did do embryo adoption, and it has been a beautiful experience. Our children are eternally valuable, created by God in his image and worthy of being adopted. We did not choose traits, we did not pay someone to create them for us, that is not what embryo adoption is."
The experience you had was very particular. And it goes without saying the children are a gift. Please let's take that as a given so we can discuss rationally.
I don't think you can say "that's not what embryo adoption is." You can say that's not what happened with you. But the IVF world is not a place where this very aspirational thought can be made true in any practical way.
Surrogacy has already proven beyond a doubt that every possible error, malpractice, and legal entanglement can and will occur. It's culpably naive to look at this industry and think that once "adoption" becomes an established market, people will not be made to pick and choose and sign contracts in order to protect the clinic from liability, and that they won't also want to pick and choose. Try to imagine a well meaning Christian woman being told "you will die if you don't do a reduction [kill off one or more]" -- Christian women are agreeing to such procedures right now, with their own babies. The difference is the entanglement with people who are already engaged in evil actions every day -- to them it's business as usual.
I am asking you to think and pray (just as you asked me) about making your very unusual experience, an experience at the very dawn of this "brave new world," a template for going forward with it in any sort of universal way or any sort of thing you can make definitive statements about as to its nature. Unfortunately, Christians have been at the cutting edge of every seismic change to our culture, using the idea of love and compassion.
I encourage you and anyone who has gone on your path to consider that you did what you felt called to do and good came of it, but it's not something the world at large will do well with -- unless, as I say, the industry is willing to abandon its evil practices entirely. When not one more baby is put on the freezer shelf, then I will be willing to think this is a good idea in general.
Leila, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to respond and converse with me on this matter. I also appreciate you speaking about the evils of IVF, as so many are still unaware of the problems with it.
I understand and agree with the problems you state with the regulation of embryo adoption. The ideal situation would be that IVF is shut down, no more babies are created in this way, and the embryos that remain are to be either carried birthed and raised by the families who created them, or adopted by heterosexual married Christian couples. That’s what the ideal resolution would be, but I don’t foresee that happening - it could, but it isn’t likely.
As to the dangers to the mother, it once was common for the doctors to transfer multiples and then call for selective reduction - this is wrong, to be sure. Does it still happen? Yes, but it is not the norm. Today the norm is to only transfer one embryo at a time. The success rate of which is 60% success, 40% failure. You state that these transfers rarely work. Also, I do believe God is sovereign even over which embryos take and which do not. Any other risks to the mother are the same as they would be in a normal natural pregnancy. Many women have health risks in pregnancy and birth whether or not it is their own embryo or an adopted embryo. What about a woman who has had multiple c-sections and is at increased risk of rupture, should she be on birth control because having a child would be risky? I do not believe so.
In embryo adoption there is not an exchange of money in any different way than there is in traditional adoptions. There are legal/administrative fees for the adoption and then the embryo transfers themselves, but the embryos are not bought and sold. Nor would that be ok in any way, and it a large part of the problem with donor eggs/sperm and surrogacy. Human life cannot legally be sold or bought. The family who had them created does not make any money, and the clinic does not make money in the adoption. Yes the clinic gets paid for the transfers, but that isn’t a lucrative thing for them. The lucrative part is the creation of embryos. If embryos were being bought and sold I would agree that is not adoption and should not be participated in.
I never said nor believe that we should save these babies and not save abortion babies or that we should adopt embryos before adopting already born children. I don’t think it is a moral imperative per se, or that one should be saved above the other, or that we must save all babies. As you say, we are not God. He is sovereign over everything.
Again, If we are talking about women paying for babies (which we are with IVF itself) that is evil and wrong. At this point that is not what embryo adoption is. If that is what it becomes that is no longer adoption and is wrong.
Surrogacy is evil, I agree. People designing babies is evil. Homosexual couples using IVF and donors and surrogates to have children is wrong and not something I would ever support. Again I understand the problem of not being able to regulate embryo adoption. It is not likely that in our secular humanist world a law will be passed that only heterosexual married Christian couples can adopt already created embryos, and that those embryos won’t be tested, and that traits are not allowed to be cherry picked. I understand all of that and agree with you on these matters.
However, the fact remains that there are real human lives, image bearers of God, sitting in freezers. What is to be done with them if the family who created them will not or cannot for whatever reason carry, birth and raise them? The options are a) “discard” them, which quite literally means allowing them to thaw and die in a garbage can b) donate them to science - I can only imagine the evils being done or c) place them for adoption. Despite all of the problems I still believe it to be a valid and redemptive option for a straight married Christian couple to adopt them.
Thanks for this comment. You make some good points.
I have to think about it. When you outline the process, I think we have to keep in mind that we actually don't know if that's how it works in all the cases because it's not regulated and I don't know how it could be. You are giving the best-case scenario. We can look at the news every week and see another horror story with IVF clinics.
Re: normal adoption: there's no question that there are some paths that involve a lot of money. There are, to say the least, gray areas. We have to beware of covering it over with magical thinking.
I don't say you said those things about abortion etc, but my point in the podcast is that to a certain extent we as Christians accommodate ourselves to what is going on and have a narrow focus when it comes to frozen embryos. There are a lot of children in need, is my only point.
The risks of pregnancy are normal risks. I don't agree with putting a married woman's normal trajectory and risk assessment on a par with going out of that God-given process to seek known risks unrelated to it.
What happens when the original family (owner of the embryo -- see how we have to talk about it) decides they actually want those babies back, now that they are born? We can't be naive about the court wrangles and subsequent traumatization of children that will ensue. In fact, there was a recent case where the embryos got switched and when everyone realized, not even King Solomon could figure out what to do.
If we say "well it's an ideal situation to shut down IVF clinics and so in the meantime we should enter into this transactional process" we are, I am afraid, participating in embedding it into our culture, with all its dangers. The secular humanist world will take our participation as assent and come up with ever new ways to commodify human beings, which we will then worry over how to mitigate.
Yes, these are real babies. I truly don't know what to do. It's heart-breaking.
I guess this is my point: God made baby-making to be a completely hidden process. (For instance, it's telling that those amazing photos of the developing embryo in LIFE magazine back in the 60s were not taken in the womb as somehow we all assumed -- they were of babies who were newly aborted).
He made the womb to be a sanctuary. Sometimes a refugee has to enter a sanctuary. But if we turn the sanctuary into a place for refugees -- start seeing it that way and creating a norm for it -- we desecrate it. The desecration of the womb makes everything more dangerous and creates more refugees. When it's monetized -- *which will happen* -- I can't even imagine what the world will be like.
Re: "get over" the shutting down of Mass attendance during the COVID Hoax.
If getting over it means forgiving and allowing that the Judas Bishops and subordinate clergy can change, then I'd agree. But if getting over it means forgetting about it and/or pretending it wasn't a Judas move, then no, don't get over it.
I'm doing my best at forgiving the wrongs but not naively, Satanically forgetting/appeasing/endorsing the wrongs.
I wanted to chime in on the issue Phil raised about growth in the Church because I've recently been studying Jim Jones and the insane growth of communism in the early 20th century (don't ask, I have morbid tastes) and what I discovered is that they very effectively channeled two aspects of human nature into their recruitment campaigns: the energy of youthful idealism in the face of injustice and furthermore they understood very clearly the principle that you get what you ask for from people. If you tell a young idealist that "we need you, we need ALL that you have and it's going to take a tremendous effort on your part to make this movement work" you can see the astounding results in the numbers that flooded into the communist movement l. Contrast that approach with the messages that we get from all our Bishops and Priests: they constantly make excuses for us regarding our obligations and their requests for help are always couched in soft terms and language thus inviting failure.
The phenomenon you mention is really quite well established in the Church, too. The religious orders that make the most demands on their members have continued to attract you people, while the less strict orders are dying out. Similarly with lay-led movements. When leaders ask for a lot, they get a lot. Ask for just a little, and that's what you get, too.
Leila, I want to graciously ask for you to pray about and reconsider your opinion on embryo adoption. Firstly by putting the word adoption in quotations you are implying you don’t think it really is adoption of a child. Do you believe that it is only God who gives life? And do you believe life begins at conception? Do you believe all human life is valuable? If so, then adopting embryos is no different than adopting a child already born. Secondly, it is clear that you do not fully understand the process of embryo adoption. I am a Christian and am vehemently opposed to IVF for the same reasons you are. But after considering all of the options and seeking God’s guidance, my husband and I did do embryo adoption, and it has been a beautiful experience. Our children are eternally valuable, created by God in his image and worthy of being adopted. We did not choose traits, we did not pay someone to create them for us, that is not what embryo adoption is. This family chose to do IVF, which we don’t agree with, but they were left with four remaining embryos, and instead of killing them, they placed them up for adoption because they knew they were valuable. We were led by God to pursue this path and save these children from the freezer, from being killed. What a redemptive thing! We as Christians are in the business of redemption and can take what the world means for evil and make it good. Do you believe God would have these millions of human lives abandoned just because of the sinful way in which they were created? Surely not.
I gave my reasons in the podcast -- some of which you do not address, including the dangers to the mother. I understand the argument you make and I agree with the principles you state. I admire your willingness to step in. Obviously the child is an inestimable good. Someone saving a baby this way is not to be condemned.
But I believe the principles you state are insufficient *when we consider it as a broad recommendation or practice.* As a policy, I think it's problematic. I put adoption in quotation marks because I think the word implies that no money is exchanged, but if it becomes a practice, I think it will involve money as profit. I believe that cooperation with an entity that is impossible to regulate and that is based on immoral means will create more problems than it solves.
Look at it this way: do I think it can be moral to rescue slaves by buying them? Yes, and it has been done, even by popes. Do I think it's a prudent idea in a world where everything happens at lightning speed and everything is transactional? No, I don't. I think it would end up creating a larger slave market. In fact, I think the slave market would rationalize and justify its actions based on the offset this good action provides.
IF the IVF clinics agreed to shut down operations, then yes, I think women could have the embryos implanted. But I have not seen that proposed.
Do I think we should let babies die? Babies do die. They are dying every day, especially at the abortion clinic. I hate to say it this way, but I think we have all realized we cannot save all those babies. We do our best. We are not God. I don't think it's a good moral argument to take one sector of babies and somehow make it a moral imperative to save them. On one level, of course -- I want every baby saved! But what is the moral calculus I make to save this one and not that one?
You will have to separate your experience from the larger implications -- and understand that I don't condemn anyone, but am only trying to warn of a very great evil coming out of a good impulse. Imagine all the women who won't know someone but who will hear of this... and be willing to pay... imagine the market... it will simply be a market of babies.
You say: "Secondly, it is clear that you do not fully understand the process of embryo adoption. I am a Christian and am vehemently opposed to IVF for the same reasons you are. But after considering all of the options and seeking God’s guidance, my husband and I did do embryo adoption, and it has been a beautiful experience. Our children are eternally valuable, created by God in his image and worthy of being adopted. We did not choose traits, we did not pay someone to create them for us, that is not what embryo adoption is."
The experience you had was very particular. And it goes without saying the children are a gift. Please let's take that as a given so we can discuss rationally.
I don't think you can say "that's not what embryo adoption is." You can say that's not what happened with you. But the IVF world is not a place where this very aspirational thought can be made true in any practical way.
Surrogacy has already proven beyond a doubt that every possible error, malpractice, and legal entanglement can and will occur. It's culpably naive to look at this industry and think that once "adoption" becomes an established market, people will not be made to pick and choose and sign contracts in order to protect the clinic from liability, and that they won't also want to pick and choose. Try to imagine a well meaning Christian woman being told "you will die if you don't do a reduction [kill off one or more]" -- Christian women are agreeing to such procedures right now, with their own babies. The difference is the entanglement with people who are already engaged in evil actions every day -- to them it's business as usual.
I am asking you to think and pray (just as you asked me) about making your very unusual experience, an experience at the very dawn of this "brave new world," a template for going forward with it in any sort of universal way or any sort of thing you can make definitive statements about as to its nature. Unfortunately, Christians have been at the cutting edge of every seismic change to our culture, using the idea of love and compassion.
I encourage you and anyone who has gone on your path to consider that you did what you felt called to do and good came of it, but it's not something the world at large will do well with -- unless, as I say, the industry is willing to abandon its evil practices entirely. When not one more baby is put on the freezer shelf, then I will be willing to think this is a good idea in general.
Leila, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to respond and converse with me on this matter. I also appreciate you speaking about the evils of IVF, as so many are still unaware of the problems with it.
I understand and agree with the problems you state with the regulation of embryo adoption. The ideal situation would be that IVF is shut down, no more babies are created in this way, and the embryos that remain are to be either carried birthed and raised by the families who created them, or adopted by heterosexual married Christian couples. That’s what the ideal resolution would be, but I don’t foresee that happening - it could, but it isn’t likely.
As to the dangers to the mother, it once was common for the doctors to transfer multiples and then call for selective reduction - this is wrong, to be sure. Does it still happen? Yes, but it is not the norm. Today the norm is to only transfer one embryo at a time. The success rate of which is 60% success, 40% failure. You state that these transfers rarely work. Also, I do believe God is sovereign even over which embryos take and which do not. Any other risks to the mother are the same as they would be in a normal natural pregnancy. Many women have health risks in pregnancy and birth whether or not it is their own embryo or an adopted embryo. What about a woman who has had multiple c-sections and is at increased risk of rupture, should she be on birth control because having a child would be risky? I do not believe so.
In embryo adoption there is not an exchange of money in any different way than there is in traditional adoptions. There are legal/administrative fees for the adoption and then the embryo transfers themselves, but the embryos are not bought and sold. Nor would that be ok in any way, and it a large part of the problem with donor eggs/sperm and surrogacy. Human life cannot legally be sold or bought. The family who had them created does not make any money, and the clinic does not make money in the adoption. Yes the clinic gets paid for the transfers, but that isn’t a lucrative thing for them. The lucrative part is the creation of embryos. If embryos were being bought and sold I would agree that is not adoption and should not be participated in.
I never said nor believe that we should save these babies and not save abortion babies or that we should adopt embryos before adopting already born children. I don’t think it is a moral imperative per se, or that one should be saved above the other, or that we must save all babies. As you say, we are not God. He is sovereign over everything.
Again, If we are talking about women paying for babies (which we are with IVF itself) that is evil and wrong. At this point that is not what embryo adoption is. If that is what it becomes that is no longer adoption and is wrong.
Surrogacy is evil, I agree. People designing babies is evil. Homosexual couples using IVF and donors and surrogates to have children is wrong and not something I would ever support. Again I understand the problem of not being able to regulate embryo adoption. It is not likely that in our secular humanist world a law will be passed that only heterosexual married Christian couples can adopt already created embryos, and that those embryos won’t be tested, and that traits are not allowed to be cherry picked. I understand all of that and agree with you on these matters.
However, the fact remains that there are real human lives, image bearers of God, sitting in freezers. What is to be done with them if the family who created them will not or cannot for whatever reason carry, birth and raise them? The options are a) “discard” them, which quite literally means allowing them to thaw and die in a garbage can b) donate them to science - I can only imagine the evils being done or c) place them for adoption. Despite all of the problems I still believe it to be a valid and redemptive option for a straight married Christian couple to adopt them.
Thanks for this comment. You make some good points.
I have to think about it. When you outline the process, I think we have to keep in mind that we actually don't know if that's how it works in all the cases because it's not regulated and I don't know how it could be. You are giving the best-case scenario. We can look at the news every week and see another horror story with IVF clinics.
Re: normal adoption: there's no question that there are some paths that involve a lot of money. There are, to say the least, gray areas. We have to beware of covering it over with magical thinking.
I don't say you said those things about abortion etc, but my point in the podcast is that to a certain extent we as Christians accommodate ourselves to what is going on and have a narrow focus when it comes to frozen embryos. There are a lot of children in need, is my only point.
The risks of pregnancy are normal risks. I don't agree with putting a married woman's normal trajectory and risk assessment on a par with going out of that God-given process to seek known risks unrelated to it.
What happens when the original family (owner of the embryo -- see how we have to talk about it) decides they actually want those babies back, now that they are born? We can't be naive about the court wrangles and subsequent traumatization of children that will ensue. In fact, there was a recent case where the embryos got switched and when everyone realized, not even King Solomon could figure out what to do.
If we say "well it's an ideal situation to shut down IVF clinics and so in the meantime we should enter into this transactional process" we are, I am afraid, participating in embedding it into our culture, with all its dangers. The secular humanist world will take our participation as assent and come up with ever new ways to commodify human beings, which we will then worry over how to mitigate.
Yes, these are real babies. I truly don't know what to do. It's heart-breaking.
I guess this is my point: God made baby-making to be a completely hidden process. (For instance, it's telling that those amazing photos of the developing embryo in LIFE magazine back in the 60s were not taken in the womb as somehow we all assumed -- they were of babies who were newly aborted).
He made the womb to be a sanctuary. Sometimes a refugee has to enter a sanctuary. But if we turn the sanctuary into a place for refugees -- start seeing it that way and creating a norm for it -- we desecrate it. The desecration of the womb makes everything more dangerous and creates more refugees. When it's monetized -- *which will happen* -- I can't even imagine what the world will be like.
Re: "get over" the shutting down of Mass attendance during the COVID Hoax.
If getting over it means forgiving and allowing that the Judas Bishops and subordinate clergy can change, then I'd agree. But if getting over it means forgetting about it and/or pretending it wasn't a Judas move, then no, don't get over it.
I'm doing my best at forgiving the wrongs but not naively, Satanically forgetting/appeasing/endorsing the wrongs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ZUDubTbAw&ab_channel=TheWillSpencerPodcast
That's a long video. Can you summarize its points as relates to this podcast? Thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ZUDubTbAw&ab_channel=TheWillSpencerPodcast
I wanted to chime in on the issue Phil raised about growth in the Church because I've recently been studying Jim Jones and the insane growth of communism in the early 20th century (don't ask, I have morbid tastes) and what I discovered is that they very effectively channeled two aspects of human nature into their recruitment campaigns: the energy of youthful idealism in the face of injustice and furthermore they understood very clearly the principle that you get what you ask for from people. If you tell a young idealist that "we need you, we need ALL that you have and it's going to take a tremendous effort on your part to make this movement work" you can see the astounding results in the numbers that flooded into the communist movement l. Contrast that approach with the messages that we get from all our Bishops and Priests: they constantly make excuses for us regarding our obligations and their requests for help are always couched in soft terms and language thus inviting failure.
Laughed out loud during parts of this podcast! I quite enjoy hearing the Lawlers’ thoughts.
The phenomenon you mention is really quite well established in the Church, too. The religious orders that make the most demands on their members have continued to attract you people, while the less strict orders are dying out. Similarly with lay-led movements. When leaders ask for a lot, they get a lot. Ask for just a little, and that's what you get, too.
https://henrymakow.com/why_we_celebrate_communist_fes.html