Speaker 1: When I first read this article, the first thing I
Speaker 1: thought about was animal farm, where all animals are created equal,
Speaker 1: but some are more equal than others. So in this situation,
Speaker 1: though we're talking about a certain type of animal, are
Speaker 1: some humans more equal than others? Steven Well, Doctor Carl R.
Speaker 2: Truman of Grove City College wants us to consider if
Speaker 2: children born via IVF and surrogacy are actually human, which
Speaker 2: he says, yes, of course, but as certain that a
Speaker 2: society in general can not say the same. Yes. This
Speaker 2: doctor of church history feels that a society that values
Speaker 2: means of procreation, such as in vitual fertilization and surrogacy,
Speaker 2: cannot value the resulting human. After all, IVF routinely sees
Speaker 2: multiple eggs fertilized during the procedure, and those extra eggs
Speaker 2: are discarded as waste. So how can the one lucky
Speaker 2: fertilized egg be considered more than the others? How can
Speaker 2: a society that views a fertilized egg nine months later
Speaker 2: as more than a commodity which was bought and paid for.
Speaker 2: This story was published by The Christian Post on November twentieth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Thanks Steven, Now I've got to say that. Obviously, I
Speaker 1: don't come from the same position Truman does. I think
Speaker 1: IVF is an absolutely wonderful thing, and we should be
Speaker 1: encouraging people who want to be parents to be parents.
Speaker 1: But what do you think, Stephen about this idea of
Speaker 1: him equating fertilized eggs which fully developed humans.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's just like a new shade of
Speaker 2: lipstick on a very old, tired pig.
Speaker 3: The fact that a wonderful picture, Steven, you very welcome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the same old idea that you'll as soon
Speaker 2: as that egg is fertilized, it must be a human
Speaker 2: being that is, you know, equal in every regard to
Speaker 2: a fully formed, fully developed human that is outside of
Speaker 2: the bomb. Which is just this common talking point that
Speaker 2: we keep on getting bludgeoned on the head over and
Speaker 2: over again, and like it's discouraging that not only like that,
Speaker 2: people like Truman aren't content with controlling women's bodies and
Speaker 2: what goes on inside of them, but now they want
Speaker 2: to also control the means by which women can conceive
Speaker 2: or are are forced to conceive. It's just this, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's this the same circus that goes on and on
Speaker 2: and on and it's so discouraging. It's so, it's so,
Speaker 2: it's so dishonest for someone especially because he tries to
Speaker 2: like pull this gotcha in the article where he says, like,
Speaker 2: should a human that's conceived this way be considered a human? Well,
Speaker 2: of course, but those other people over there, they can't
Speaker 2: consider that, they can't think that. Like, it's so it's
Speaker 2: so dishonest to be trying to take straw Man and
Speaker 2: the opposition and just like paint their position for them,
Speaker 2: and especially when that isn't what people on the side
Speaker 2: of the issue would think at all. And it's it's
Speaker 2: deeply disturbing that this professor, that this doctor of church history,
Speaker 2: who should know that the Christian view of life beginning
Speaker 2: at conception, which is only like one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: years old, for the vast majority of the Church's history,
Speaker 2: this has not been their view, and yet now he
Speaker 2: needs to be a champion of it.
Speaker 1: You know, if there's anything the Catholic Church, our churches
Speaker 1: in general, I should say in this situation probably should
Speaker 1: avoid anything that has to do with kids. They should
Speaker 1: probably just keep silent, especially when you start talking about
Speaker 1: things like ethics. Now a j speaking ethics he'd be
Speaker 1: brought up a lot of what he called ethical concerns
Speaker 1: about artificial conception. Could you give us a little more
Speaker 1: detail on how this relates to IVS and sergusing.
Speaker 4: This specific article was written by someone who's a Christian.
Speaker 4: Clearly the website is a Christian websites, so you can
Speaker 4: see the bias on it, okay, And I think that
Speaker 4: I get the sentiment out of the core message of
Speaker 4: the article, But I found so many things that he
Speaker 4: says problematic that it was hard to focus on the
Speaker 4: main idea. So let's let's start with that so that
Speaker 4: it doesn't get lost. It seems to me that he
Speaker 4: was worried about the future ethical implications of artificial conception
Speaker 4: because he asked whether in the future parents may choose
Speaker 4: designer babies, so to speak, where they get to choose,
Speaker 4: you know, the features that they want. And I'm quoting
Speaker 4: him here. He said that what of the children who
Speaker 4: make it to term but do not meet the specifications
Speaker 4: of the parents who paid good money for a particular outcome.
Speaker 4: I think Steven mentioned that earlier. He said, are those
Speaker 4: obligations defined by legal contracts such that perhaps they can
Speaker 4: simply return them to the manufacturer on their warranty for
Speaker 4: a refund. I think I understand that concern, and I
Speaker 4: think is valid, but it's one that we have already
Speaker 4: been looking at thoroughly as far as edicts of these procedures.
Speaker 4: So they have nothing to do with IVF for surrogacy
Speaker 4: and helping people who truly want to be comparents but
Speaker 4: they're facing infertility issues. He's just trying to mix ethics
Speaker 4: with his individual religious faith, and we don't need to
Speaker 4: do that, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that there'll be plenty of time between now
Speaker 1: and if when that type of situation of designing your
Speaker 1: children is actually a scientific possibility, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of court cases in between. We've already
Speaker 1: had court cases regarding IV. One in Alabama kind of
Speaker 1: turned up set the Apple cord a while back, so
Speaker 1: we see these things. So I think it's getting ahead
Speaker 1: of himself for dishonest reasons. And I wanted to switch
Speaker 1: over to you, Scott, because I wanted to touch on that.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like this is kind of a pain
Speaker 1: switch technique where this is less about IV and maybe
Speaker 1: more about something else you feel strongly about, like abortion.
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't say it's not about IVF, but I
Speaker 3: think he's definitely trying to make a transition to I
Speaker 3: think he's trying It seemed like he was trying to
Speaker 3: set up an argument for against abortion rights. And it
Speaker 3: starts right from the get go. And I think this
Speaker 3: is very ironic. And that's a word I've been using
Speaker 3: a lot this week. It's ironic that he bemoans the
Speaker 3: fact of what he describes as and this is a
Speaker 3: quote the child in the womb is treated not as
Speaker 3: a person but as a thing, not as a subject,
Speaker 3: but as an object, not as intrinsically valuable, but as
Speaker 3: having value only as instrumental to some other end. Excuse me.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, the entire purpose of his
Speaker 3: post is to dehumanize pro choice people or people that
Speaker 3: support this IVF option. And so while he's pointing out
Speaker 3: how these people are dehumanizing what he calls human beings,
Speaker 3: his very active doing that is dehumanizing them. He wants
Speaker 3: to put them in the case of being the other.
Speaker 3: And it has to do with some of the language
Speaker 3: that he's using too, this bait and switch. The title
Speaker 3: talks about quote children born by IVF, hinting that he's
Speaker 3: talking about living independent children. You know this this first
Speaker 3: grader is that? Is that who we're talking about? Is
Speaker 3: this is this child, this first grader that was born
Speaker 3: via IVF is is this a real human being? But
Speaker 3: then he suddenly and and gradually shifts the attention over
Speaker 3: to to the unborn, to a fetus, to an embryo,
Speaker 3: to a fertilized egg and so. And in addition to
Speaker 3: that language that he used in the in the title,
Speaker 3: he specifically started out the article talking about parents of
Speaker 3: children that would come up to him after his talks
Speaker 3: and say, do you think my child is a human being?
Speaker 3: And so he's putting this context of children in our
Speaker 3: mind and then using the same terminology to talk about
Speaker 3: a fetus or an embryo or a z eegot or
Speaker 3: whatever anything post conception. Uh, you know, he's using that
Speaker 3: same terminology. So it's it's yes, it's a it's a
Speaker 3: and switch. It's a subtle switch, but it's still there.
Speaker 3: And yes, I know that he considers an embryo to
Speaker 3: be a child, and so when he sees using that
Speaker 3: word appropriate in that circumstance, But it can't be a
Speaker 3: mistake that that there's just so much that he is
Speaker 3: just clearly, clearly at the beginning of the article he's
Speaker 3: talking about born children, and clearly later in the article
Speaker 3: he's not talking about born children. So whether or not
Speaker 3: he still considers them to be children, he definitely was
Speaker 3: changing his tune throughout the throughout that article, and so
Speaker 3: I think that kind of leads into the emotional play
Speaker 3: he's playing on our emotional love for children, For our children,
Speaker 3: we want to protect our children, we want to take
Speaker 3: care of our children, we want to stand up for
Speaker 3: our children, and he's trying to kind of push those
Speaker 3: feelings onto, you know, onto a fertilized egg, and it's
Speaker 3: really underhanded. I would think that if there, if there
Speaker 3: was a good argument to be had there, he would
Speaker 3: use it. But he's not. So, you know, what does
Speaker 3: that tell you?
Speaker 4: I'm completely with you, there's Scott. I think that it's
Speaker 4: clear that Truman has no idea about biology, or maybe,
Speaker 4: as many Christians do, he gets his biology and human
Speaker 4: anatomy education straight from the Bible. Because he is either
Speaker 4: making up definitions towards that much his opinion, or mixing
Speaker 4: up abortion, reproductive girl embryos, babies, surrogacy, and ideas all
Speaker 4: in the same bag. He claims that because modern humans
Speaker 4: now have all of these options, embryos have gone from
Speaker 4: being considered humans to being considered things or items or commodities.
Speaker 4: First of all, a clump of cells who was never
Speaker 4: considered a for human being, and it's not in the
Speaker 4: same sense that we consider one who is full term
Speaker 4: or already born, as you said, So that's what we
Speaker 4: call the membryos. And secondly, he's attempting to use, as
Speaker 4: you also mentioned, the appeal to motion fallacy to defend
Speaker 4: his misinformation to and his misinformed positions. Rather but add
Speaker 4: it is it's just a bunch of anti scientific bullshit
Speaker 4: that my brain is just having a hard time processing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that both of you are very rude
Speaker 1: and noticing that switch because you weren't supposed to You're
Speaker 1: supposed to be all weepy and involved in this story.
Speaker 1: And then he just slips a Zye Goode in there,
Speaker 1: and before you know it, you know he's going to
Speaker 1: want you to pay child support on it and put
Speaker 1: it into its college fund, because that's really what he's doing.
Speaker 1: He's equating those two when come on, that's not even
Speaker 1: close to what we're talking about But Stephen, I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring you in on this. I know I've talked
Speaker 1: about the argument he made about IVF. I think you
Speaker 1: touched on the patriarchal aspect. But what does he have
Speaker 1: to say about couples who can't conceive? In what his
Speaker 1: traditional hole in the sheet wagh is? What should they do?
Speaker 2: What does he think? Like tied to your question. One
Speaker 2: one thought that went through my head when reading this
Speaker 2: article is my inn assumption because I don't I haven't
Speaker 2: I haven't gone for Thanksgiving dinner with this guy. I
Speaker 2: don't know anything about his family. What are the odds?
Speaker 2: What are the odds that this motherfucker has had any
Speaker 2: difficulty conceiving children? Does he have the slightest clue of
Speaker 2: what the pain that goes through a couple's relationship when
Speaker 2: they can't conceive, when that's something that is so desperately
Speaker 2: and especially in their frecking Christian context, where like this
Speaker 2: is the blessing of God and that if you aren't
Speaker 2: able to conceive, then oh maybe there's something wrong with
Speaker 2: you that you aren't able to receive God's blessed way.
Speaker 2: What are the odds that he has a fucking clue
Speaker 2: about what it is that he's talking about. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm going to guess zero. I imagine that he has
Speaker 2: never had issues in this department. And so it seems like,
Speaker 2: what what would his stance be if he had to
Speaker 2: go through that trauma, if he had to go through
Speaker 2: that hell, would he still be so adamant about this
Speaker 2: or is this just based out of his own entitlement
Speaker 2: and his own privilege. Yeah, so he believes that people
Speaker 2: who struggle to conceive should not conceive outside of a
Speaker 2: miracle of God. And of course the woman who is
Speaker 2: pregnant and doesn't want to be pregnant, she should remain
Speaker 2: pregnant at any cost. And it's just this entitled bullshit
Speaker 2: that we just hear constantly. I'm so I feel I
Speaker 2: feel I feel a little bit of cognitant cognitive dissidence
Speaker 2: when I say that, I'm just tired of hearing, you know,
Speaker 2: old white guy's opinions on abortion and women's bodies, like,
Speaker 2: and yet here I am, as you know, a cis
Speaker 2: white guy saying, hey, shouldn't we should stop giving so
Speaker 2: many fucks about what happens in women's bodies, And yet
Speaker 2: we have to talk out about this kind of stuff
Speaker 2: like can we just can we just put women in
Speaker 2: the center of these conversations? Why why that's so dangerous?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, number one, women should keep silent in the church.
Speaker 1: So when you have that type of mentality, of course
Speaker 1: white men should because I mean it, really it really
Speaker 1: does need to be white men. White men need to
Speaker 1: make these decisions. So does these lesser qualified women know
Speaker 1: what to do? And I say that thoroughly tongue in cheak,
Speaker 1: But when they say that, with their actions and activities,
Speaker 1: they're not being tongue in cheek at all, as you know.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately that's why people like you, Steven, and myself
Speaker 1: and Scott have to sit in time and again talk
Speaker 1: about issues that the truth is, we shouldn't need to
Speaker 1: have an opinion on, because as I talked to someone
Speaker 1: recently about actually was ray is that because they're talking
Speaker 1: about a story we did recently about how they felt
Speaker 1: abortion to be discussed at school in sex sech or
Speaker 1: education classes. And I'm like, well, really it starts out
Speaker 1: like this abortion exists, okay in a story, because you
Speaker 1: can't pretend it doesn't. But they want to pretend it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And as long as they do that. Unfortunately we're stuck
Speaker 1: doing this and sorry about that. I wasn't mad at you, Scott.
Speaker 1: I'm just annoyed too, because I mean, Steven, because it's
Speaker 1: just as annoying to me now.
Speaker 4: I said this on another show recently. I think it
Speaker 4: was actually under nonprofits that I appreciate people like you,
Speaker 4: guys men that speak up about these topics and the
Speaker 4: reason why it shouldn't be this way. But the reason
Speaker 4: why is because the type of people that are coming
Speaker 4: up with these ideologies like in the article are generally
Speaker 4: white males, and they are not going to listen to women.
Speaker 4: So the fact that there are men that are speaking
Speaker 4: of about this means that they are more likely to
Speaker 4: listen to that. So I appreciate you, guys.
Speaker 1: Scott about this comparison to IVF and commodity and the
Speaker 1: context we talked about Catholic charities and adopt to Gauge's adoption agencies.
Speaker 1: What does that say about the idea of childbearing already
Speaker 1: being a commercial endeavor. I mean, adoption is big business,
Speaker 1: So I don't know what he's talking about trying to pretend.
Speaker 2: That for sure.
Speaker 3: For sure, he kept I mean throughout the article he
Speaker 3: uses words that are specifically intended to pull to mind
Speaker 3: this sterile environment, this hospital environment. That he uses words
Speaker 3: like commodity, he uses words like transaction, he uses he
Speaker 3: talks about the money exchanging hands and so forth. And
Speaker 3: so I looked at the This is from the Catholic
Speaker 3: Charities website. Quote what is the average cost of adopting
Speaker 3: a child? The cost depends on the type of adoption.
Speaker 3: There are several variables that contribute to the cost. Typically,
Speaker 3: a private domestic adoption is between twelve thousand to forty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. However, please do not be intimidated by the cost.
Speaker 3: There are several budgeting options to financing your adoption, such
Speaker 3: as employer benefits, adoption tax credit grants, and special fundraising.
Speaker 3: That doesn't sound at all like a commercial financial exchange
Speaker 3: of money for goods and services at all, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: you couldn't get more. I mean, that's exactly the kind
Speaker 3: of thing that he's railing against. And it's not just
Speaker 3: Catholic Charities either. According to HHS, they're more than eight
Speaker 3: thousand faith based child placement agencies in the US. In
Speaker 3: addition to that, according to a BARNA group, five percent
Speaker 3: of practicing Christians in the United States have adopted children,
Speaker 3: which is more than twice the rate of all US adults.
Speaker 3: And they put that forward as a kind of a brag.
Speaker 3: You know, our people adopt more children. That's a transaction
Speaker 3: of flesh for money. You pay somebody to get this
Speaker 3: to get have this child with you, and so, you know,
Speaker 3: it seems a little bit hypocritical.
Speaker 2: I guess that.
Speaker 3: Means Christians are really the main group of flesh pedlars
Speaker 3: in the US. And you know, I'll check back on
Speaker 3: his bloglets next week because I'm sure he's going to
Speaker 3: be talking about that next week.
Speaker 1: Not well, Steve and I I something you said earlier
Speaker 1: that sort of the touch on that. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that the odds of him having to deal with infertility
Speaker 1: and anywhere in his family are maybe slightly above zero,
Speaker 1: but statistically zero. This this is somebody talking completely out
Speaker 1: of their ass. Now do you find that Truman's language
Speaker 1: reflects a larger issue of dehumanization and moral authority? Do
Speaker 1: you see that what he's trying to perpetrate here? Why
Speaker 1: and why do you think he's doing that?
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, why is he appealing using moral authority? Because
Speaker 2: it's the only it's the only rationale he can cling to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's only through through this kind of moralization of how
Speaker 2: of controlling how people get pregnant. It's like, what other,
Speaker 2: what other tactic does he have other than to appeal
Speaker 2: to his own sense of morality, as if, as if
Speaker 2: other of as of other people aren't entitled to a
Speaker 2: different perspective on the moral ethics of conceiving Like how what?
Speaker 2: What an incredibly personal and private matter for him to
Speaker 2: try to stick his orient.
Speaker 4: I think it's definitely about control, Like it's just said.
Speaker 4: You know, there was a quote in the article that
Speaker 4: I found rely ironic. He said, well, live in a
Speaker 4: time where having children is increasingly regarded as dangerous, And
Speaker 4: I thought to myself, well, who the fuck exactly is
Speaker 4: making it dangerous for women to consider pregnancy dangerous? Like
Speaker 4: people like him? Exactly, people like him Christian nationalists that
Speaker 4: want to micro manage women's bodies. They want to take
Speaker 4: away the reproductive care, They want to take away access
Speaker 4: to abortion, and at the same time that takes away
Speaker 4: or bodily autonomy. They want to choose when we're why
Speaker 4: how and went home? We get to have children? And
Speaker 4: then later he has the nerve to say that the
Speaker 4: absence of such desire to have children should sorely be
Speaker 4: a cause for concern. I mean, people like him are
Speaker 4: a major cause of our lack of desire to have children, okay,
Speaker 4: and because they just want to micro manage every single
Speaker 4: step of it. And now he also wants to manage
Speaker 4: our desires. So if we don't have specific desires, suddenly
Speaker 4: we are seeing a watch out for that cat lady,
Speaker 4: you know. So it seems like they just ultimately want
Speaker 4: to dominate and control women. They want to go back
Speaker 4: to the biblical times where women were the property of
Speaker 4: their husbands.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe we'd be more excited about having kids if
Speaker 2: there wasn't this great risk of them getting gunned down
Speaker 2: at school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you mentioned that. And also there's the
Speaker 1: fact that when we start talking about wealth disparity and
Speaker 1: the consolidation of wealth and the top percent, you know,
Speaker 1: one percent, want to know why people don't want to
Speaker 1: have kids, because one reason is they can't afford them.
Speaker 1: And so now we're talking about the ones that are
Speaker 1: trying to and it seems odd that they're trying to
Speaker 1: create a stumbling block for this. Now Scott was going
Speaker 1: to wrap things up, but I wanted to know if
Speaker 1: it's anything you wanted to cover before before I do.
Speaker 3: So I just to tag on to what AJ was
Speaker 3: talking about. There's a strong inverse correlation between the health
Speaker 3: of delivering mothers and the religiosity both worldwide. If you
Speaker 3: count country back country, the more religious country is, the
Speaker 3: lower the life expectancy and lower the health outcomes of pregnancy,
Speaker 3: and the lower the religiosity leads to safety, longer life, longer,
Speaker 3: healthier lives for the mothers and for the children. And
Speaker 3: it's not just worldwide country to country, it's also within
Speaker 3: the United States state distate, and so there's plenty of
Speaker 3: evidence to show that they are in fact harming you know,
Speaker 3: the American community and the worldwide community. And so it's
Speaker 3: that that I see. I think we see why Stephen
Speaker 3: was saying that that's all they got. You know, they
Speaker 3: have these emotional appeals and you know, that's it there.
Speaker 3: He's the man's a hammer and he sees everything as
Speaker 3: a nail.
Speaker 4: And speaking of the harm that they're doing, we just
Speaker 4: had another case of a woman dying from being refused
Speaker 4: emergency care during a miscarage here in Texas. It was
Speaker 4: a teenager, just a few days ago, eighteen years old.
Speaker 4: They are killing women trying to save these clumps of
Speaker 4: cells based on a two thousand year old sex manual,
Speaker 4: incredibly harmful teachings.
Speaker 3: And then they dare call themselves pro life, get the
Speaker 3: fuck out of here.
Speaker 4: But only it's only their life before it is born.
Speaker 1: It's pro forced birth. Because when they tell me their
Speaker 1: pro life if I'm like, oh, sports support, universal weldcare, healthcare,
Speaker 1: you're on a basic living wage? What about housing? How
Speaker 1: do you feel?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I don't know. No, I think women
Speaker 1: should have babies. Oh, okay, you're not pro life, you're
Speaker 1: something else.