Speaker 1: I despise public schools. I don't despise necessarily the teachers
Speaker 1: who teach, they're all not all of the teachers who
Speaker 1: teach there. I don't despise the parents who maybe just
Speaker 1: don't think they have much of a choice other than
Speaker 1: public schools. But I despise California's public school system. I
Speaker 1: despise the whole setup. I despise the goals towards which
Speaker 1: the whole thing is oriented. The philosophical idea that American
Speaker 1: public education should be focused on one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: everybody going to college is both idealistic, foolish, foolishly idealistic, unrealistic,
Speaker 1: and ultimately winds up being harmful. We have some of
Speaker 1: the worst prepared for the job market eighteen year olds
Speaker 1: in the world. We could imitate countries like Germany and
Speaker 1: have real serious emphasis on vocations and training and all
Speaker 1: kinds of give kids different kinds of career tracks that
Speaker 1: they can follow throughout high school, apprenticeships, things like that.
Speaker 1: But instead we vaguely prepare everybody to get a major
Speaker 1: in some mickey mouse arts and letters degree from college
Speaker 1: after accruing a bunch of debt that they can't use
Speaker 1: to do anything, you know, a bachelor's degree that is
Speaker 1: useless for anything other than flipping burgers. That is the
Speaker 1: focus of American of California public high schools, and by
Speaker 1: objective measurements, a lot of our largest public high schools
Speaker 1: are wild abject failures, with huge percentages of kids not
Speaker 1: being able to be up to grade level in math
Speaker 1: or reading. And then, of course, the powers that be
Speaker 1: within California public education look at homeschoolers with really concerning
Speaker 1: that these homeschoolers are you know, being educated without you know,
Speaker 1: oversight from educational experts. And meanwhile, the homeschoolers, by like
Speaker 1: every objective measure, are doing far better than kids in
Speaker 1: public schools. Now, given my disdain for California public schools,
Speaker 1: and on top of all of that, California public schools
Speaker 1: are suffused top to bottom with left wing ideology that
Speaker 1: is injected and infected throughout the curricula of our various
Speaker 1: public schools and various grades. Whether that's the god awful
Speaker 1: sex education that I think any Christian should pull their
Speaker 1: kids out of, given how many things it is teaching
Speaker 1: that are totally contrary to our beliefs, to stuff that
Speaker 1: beyond just the sex education that you're getting seventh grade onward,
Speaker 1: the ways in which all kinds of morality contrary to
Speaker 1: what we believe, is infected throughout the curriculum. An even
Speaker 1: bigger picture, things about history and American culture. These all
Speaker 1: these sort of sixteen nineteen project ideas of America being
Speaker 1: built on systemic racism, that the whole American project is
Speaker 1: grounded in racism and fundamentally infected by this original sin,
Speaker 1: that the country is fundamentally racist. All these kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff gets incorporated into what we teach, and various kinds
Speaker 1: of DEEI measures are infected throughout California public education. Diversity, equity,
Speaker 1: and inclusion, which I heard some liberal the other day say.
Speaker 2: Conservatives should be forced to say, what do they disagree with?
Speaker 2: Do they actually dislike diversity? Are they going to admit
Speaker 2: that they hate diversity, that they hate equity, that they
Speaker 2: hate inclusion, to which I would say one, DEI is
Speaker 2: a term of art that refers to a certain set
Speaker 2: of policies, practices, principles that involve giving a giving racially
Speaker 2: preferential treatment to certain groups over others. So that term
Speaker 2: of art DEI, yes, I object to. But if you
Speaker 2: want me to drill down further. I object to equity.
Speaker 2: Equity is the thing I object to. I don't mind
Speaker 2: having diversity. If that's the byproduct of giving equal opportunities
Speaker 2: to everybody, that's great. I want I would love there
Speaker 2: to be diversity. I don't want a system that says no,
Speaker 2: Black people can't participate. That's that's wrong, that's evil, that's immoral.
Speaker 2: I want it open to everybody. I'm an inclusive guy.
Speaker 2: Everyone come in. Equity is what I object to. The
Speaker 2: modern definition of equity means equality of outcomes, not equality
Speaker 2: of inputs or equality of opportunity for everybody, but equality
Speaker 2: of outcomes. If the makeup and this is happening within
Speaker 2: California public schools, they got rid of certain kinds of
Speaker 2: gifted tracks, advanced track math programs because they looked at
Speaker 2: the racial breakdown of who was participating in it and
Speaker 2: saw it was predominantly Asians and white, predominantly Asian kids,
Speaker 2: white kids, not enough Latinos and black kids given their
Speaker 2: relative shares of the California school age population. So the
Speaker 2: DEI based solution is to get rid of the gifted
Speaker 2: kid program, get rid of these higher track math programs,
Speaker 2: because too many Asian kids were doing too well, and
Speaker 2: the Latino and black kids weren't doing as well because
Speaker 2: the outcomes weren't equal to what you would expect if
Speaker 2: it was perfectly proportional to the population. The DEI approach
Speaker 2: assumes that any difference in outcomes that doesn't reflect the
Speaker 2: population's racial breakdown is rooted somehow in racism.
Speaker 1: That's the assumption. So I objected that. So it brings
Speaker 1: me no small delight to learn that the Trump administration
Speaker 1: is cracking down on DEI efforts in school districts around
Speaker 1: the country and particularly in California. Here is this whining
Speaker 1: article about it, published by ed's source run in GV wire.
Speaker 1: A letter to US schools from Craig Trainer, acting Assistant
Speaker 1: Secretary for Civil Rights at the Federal Department of Education
Speaker 1: in Washington.
Speaker 2: D C.
Speaker 1: Has schools nationwide trying to figure out what to do
Speaker 1: about their diversity programs. Tough decisions lie ahead for schools
Speaker 1: across California as the federal government cracks down on diversity,
Speaker 1: equity and inclusion efforts. The latest measure came in the
Speaker 1: form of a letter issued Friday by the US Department
Speaker 1: of Education giving K through twelve schools across the country
Speaker 1: to options to eliminate programs focused on DEI within two
Speaker 1: weeks or face unspecified cuts in federal funding. I fully
Speaker 1: anticipate that it will have a chilling effect on school districts,
Speaker 1: but also colleges and universities, said Royal Johnson, who leads
Speaker 1: the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center's National
Speaker 1: Assessment of collegiate campus climates. The Department of Education's letter
Speaker 1: isn't law, nor is it legal. Johnson, Oh, it's not legal,
Speaker 1: Johnson said, I'm pretty sure it's not illegal. Pretty sure
Speaker 1: the Department of Education can put strings on funding. It's
Speaker 1: just a question of what the operative statute says. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Oh oh well, actually, by the way, let me point
Speaker 1: this out. I'd bet the Department of Education's letter is
Speaker 1: super legal, given that pretty much all grants of federal
Speaker 1: funding for education come with certain kinds of non discrimination requirements.
Speaker 1: And the non discrimination requirements it's based on language that
Speaker 1: was adopted in American law based on the heritage of
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Acts, okay, and the Civil Rights Acts. Basically,
Speaker 1: the big breakthrough of the Civil Rights Acts was basically
Speaker 1: saying that the federal government will not allow discrimination treating
Speaker 1: people differently on the basis of and then it would
Speaker 1: provide a list of categories in certain circumstances, sex, national origin,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The big breakthrough of
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Acts was applying this in all this
Speaker 1: sort of standard no differential treatment on the basis of
Speaker 1: these various categories, applying that in all kinds of contexts.
Speaker 1: In the operation of private businesses. Okay, your grocery store
Speaker 1: can no longer say that, well, we're not going to
Speaker 1: serve black people. No, you can't do that. You cannot
Speaker 1: discriminate on the basis of race in operating your grocery store,
Speaker 1: in hiring our law firm does not hire black people
Speaker 1: or does not select African Americans to be partners in
Speaker 1: our law firm. Now, you can't do that. You can't
Speaker 1: say that you're just not You're only going to have
Speaker 1: white partners. Can't do that. And with lots and lots
Speaker 1: and lots of federal funding that goes, especially to educational institutions,
Speaker 1: it all has non discrimination requirements, like you can't I'm
Speaker 1: not going to give this to a school district that's
Speaker 1: refusing to admit, you know, that that's going to have
Speaker 1: segregated public schools. So I would bet actually that in
Speaker 1: spite of what this article from ed source says, written
Speaker 1: by presumably left wing hacks, I don't know that for
Speaker 1: a fact that the authors are Malika Sheshadri and Lasherica
Speaker 1: Thornton look like to millennial teachers. Actually, I would guess
Speaker 1: that this letter from the Department of Education is fairly
Speaker 1: solidly grounded educationally, because the whole idea, the whole idea
Speaker 1: of DEI, I think, has always been intention with American law,
Speaker 1: with American non discrimination law. The whole idea of DEI
Speaker 1: is to affirmatively discriminate in favor of certain racial groups
Speaker 1: at the expense of other racial groups, and not just
Speaker 1: white people. Often Asian kids. Often Asians are one of
Speaker 1: the loser. Asians a historically a racial minority group that
Speaker 1: hasn't always been treated very well in American society. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's compare. You know, obviously, no one had
Speaker 1: it worse than African slaves in the South. Historically, I
Speaker 1: think it'd be hard to argue someone had it worse
Speaker 1: than people of African descented. But certainly I don't think
Speaker 1: you can say that Asian Americans had an easier time
Speaker 1: than Latinos. So DEI says, we have to treat Latinos.
Speaker 1: We have to give affirmative deferential treatment to Latinos and
Speaker 1: affirmative worse treatment to Asians. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: with DEI is that it really does exist in serious
Speaker 1: tension with American non discrimination law, and including with like
Speaker 1: recent Supreme Court cases that you know, destroyed the idea
Speaker 1: of affirmative action within college admissions. That's what affirmative action is.
Speaker 1: Affirmative action is basically the DEI concept as applied to
Speaker 1: college admissions. So I would say probably the Department of
Speaker 1: Education is on really solid ground to tell the State
Speaker 1: of California, hey, you got to stop doing these DEI programs.
Speaker 1: We're going to cut off your funding because probably that
Speaker 1: federal funding has some kind of non discrimination thing tied
Speaker 1: into it, and the whole point of DEI is discrimination.
Speaker 1: Dei's is this new paradigm that really is divorced from
Speaker 1: the classic Civil Rights Act, civil rights era paradigm of
Speaker 1: how we treat people on the basis of race, which
Speaker 1: is really attempting to be a color blind approach to
Speaker 1: how you operate businesses, how you educate kids, how you
Speaker 1: whatever hiring employment, all that the ideal as presented in
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act is genuinely a color blind approach,
Speaker 1: and that's firmly embedded in American law. So this contention
Speaker 1: by this piece, oh the Department of Education's letter, isn't law,
Speaker 1: nor is it legal. Johnson said. However, many advocates, when
Speaker 1: a liberal journalist wants to make an argument for something
Speaker 1: that they just agree with, they say that. Advocates say,
Speaker 1: because it sounds better than you know, lobbyists for such
Speaker 1: and such industry or or act active activists for such
Speaker 1: and such advocates and community members say, what's a community
Speaker 1: I'm a community member. Community members say they are concerned
Speaker 1: that more and more districts will cut their diversity, equity
Speaker 1: and inclusion initiatives out of fear. Yeah, they should, and
Speaker 1: deprive students from marginalized backgrounds of the support they need
Speaker 1: to succeed in the classroom and beyond. We often think
Speaker 1: about California as being protected from this larger right wing movement,
Speaker 1: Johnson said, But as we saw with changing patterns and
Speaker 1: demographic votes in the presidential election. I think there are
Speaker 1: many people in California who are wrestling with this conservative
Speaker 1: movement and who are afraid of it, and who are
Speaker 1: proactively and preemptively making decisions. What do you This isn't
Speaker 1: some vague, amorphous like for No, it's a very concrete
Speaker 1: we will cut off your funding if you keep doing
Speaker 1: DEI stuff. This isn't like, This isn't someone bowing and
Speaker 1: scraping to Donald Trump. This is a very rational reaction
Speaker 1: to a genuine funding concern. The Department of Education's letter
Speaker 1: opens with the words dear colleague, but the ensuing message
Speaker 1: takes on a different tone. Well, yeah, that's just how
Speaker 1: these things work. Dear Colleague letters are a classic way
Speaker 1: in which specifically the Department of Education interacts with school
Speaker 1: districts around the country who are recipients of federal funding.
Speaker 1: The dear colleague letter, this is like a standard form thing.
Speaker 1: It's not like, it's not like they're Oh, they pretend
Speaker 1: like they're being so nice and then they're being chillen. No,
Speaker 1: the Obama administration had all kinds of mandates for public
Speaker 1: schools on the basis of using a Dear Colleague letter
Speaker 1: like this is not some The fact that the tone
Speaker 1: is mean, whereas the dear colleague at the beginning is nice,
Speaker 1: is not a remarkable feature. Rather than engaging in that
Speaker 1: work of acknowledging and affirming educators, what the Trump administration
Speaker 1: has done thus far is to express hostility and disdain,
Speaker 1: said John Rogers, a professor at UCLA's School of Education
Speaker 1: and Information Studies and an Associate Dean for Research and
Speaker 1: Public Scholarship. Instead of acknowledging and affirming educators, the point
Speaker 1: of the Department of Education is not to affirm you.
Speaker 1: It's to give federal money. It's to give federal grant
Speaker 1: money for school districts. They're not your friend, they're not
Speaker 1: your therapist. They're not there to affirm you and encourage you.
Speaker 1: These are sources of federal grants. If you want these
Speaker 1: federal grants, this is what you have to do. By
Speaker 1: the way, this source of federal grants given to you
Speaker 1: by the federal government that is accountable to whom the
Speaker 1: American electorate who is paying the bill, and the American
Speaker 1: electorate who is paying the bill, just voted for a
Speaker 1: guy who ran on, among other things, the whole idea
Speaker 1: that DEI is nonsense and should not be. I want
Speaker 1: to dig into this more after the break. Just the
Speaker 1: unreality in which California public educators apparently live. That is
Speaker 1: next on the John Girardi Show. Reading through this piece
Speaker 1: written by ED Source GV wire, local Fresno outlet. They
Speaker 1: love publishing pieces by this entity called Ed's Source, which
Speaker 1: is this entity that publishes various kinds of op eds
Speaker 1: and news stories, etc. About matters impacting education, and it's
Speaker 1: just reliably like, it seems very reliably like this is
Speaker 1: what public school labor unions think, liberal public school liber
Speaker 1: unions think. And they have this whole piece freaking out
Speaker 1: about the Trump administration saying they're going to cut off
Speaker 1: federal funding for California public schools if they don't cut
Speaker 1: out their DEI initiatives. And they live in this alternate
Speaker 1: reality where they just don't understand. They're not smart enough
Speaker 1: to understand the legal battles, the legal controversies that are
Speaker 1: at play here. So they're talking about this dear colleague
Speaker 1: letter that came from the Civil Rights Division at the
Speaker 1: Department of Education, and it says, hey, stop engaging in
Speaker 1: DEI measures. The whole idea of DEI is that you
Speaker 1: are basically affirmatively discriminating in favor of certain racial groups
Speaker 1: against other racial groups in order to achieve some kind
Speaker 1: of outcome equity. The idea that, well, if you have
Speaker 1: Asian kids all doing much better in math and science
Speaker 1: and Latino and black kids not doing as well, that
Speaker 1: there must be some racism inherent in the system, so
Speaker 1: you need to do things affirmatively helping to discriminate in
Speaker 1: favor of the black and Latino kids. That's the whole
Speaker 1: premise of DEI is. It is affirmative. It is not
Speaker 1: a color blind approach to providing educational opportunities or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's affirmatively saying we need to discriminate in favor of
Speaker 1: certain historically oppressed groups, and we do that by discriminating
Speaker 1: against certain historically oppressed groups like Asians. There's no reason
Speaker 1: to think that Asian Americans had an easier time in
Speaker 1: American history than Latinos have or had. Now here's this
Speaker 1: piece from ed source DA DA DA this complaint from
Speaker 1: a professor at UCLA that it stead of acknowledging and
Speaker 1: affirming educators, the Department of Education is expressing hostility and disdain.
Speaker 1: Oh that's terrible. The letter specifically claims the authors incredulously
Speaker 1: right that white and Asian American students, including those from
Speaker 1: lower income backgrounds, have been discriminated against, and that education
Speaker 1: in educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with false premises
Speaker 1: that the United States has built upon systemic and structural racism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Okay. The California like restructured all kinds of
Speaker 1: things within its math programs, specifically because the Asian kids
Speaker 1: were doing too well. Asian white kids were doing too well.
Speaker 1: It was too big of a percentage of the student
Speaker 1: body within these sort of higher track math programs where
Speaker 1: Asian white kids relative to their shares of the school population,
Speaker 1: So they got rid of it. They continue to write,
Speaker 1: increasing school's scores on the national report card has been
Speaker 1: a justification for some of the administration's changes, according to
Speaker 1: John Rogers from UCLA, But instead of boosting student performance,
Speaker 1: Roger maintains that this directive getting rid of DEI programs
Speaker 1: could quote throw K through twelve schools into further tumult ah,
Speaker 1: but it'll it'll cause confusion due to the high fiscal
Speaker 1: costs of culture wars, Okay, this is hilarious. So if
Speaker 1: you get rid of DEI stuff, it'll result in costs
Speaker 1: because of culture wars. Just last year, conflicts surrounding race
Speaker 1: and LGBTQ plus issues costs schools more than three billion
Speaker 1: dollars nationwide. I discussed this story on the show This
Speaker 1: is the Biggest Hunk of BS. This was another piece
Speaker 1: from ed Source, written by a woman named Diana Lambert
Speaker 1: that talked about some study that was done to try
Speaker 1: to show that basically parents being angry over sex ed
Speaker 1: smut pornography, basically within sex heded programs inappropriate content, parents
Speaker 1: being angry about it led to all these costs, with
Speaker 1: the underlying thought being that parents should just shut up
Speaker 1: because them being upset about what public schools don't do
Speaker 1: costs money, and it's costing money in the forms of
Speaker 1: public schools had to hire more security for school board
Speaker 1: meetings and apparently had to hire more security for superintendents
Speaker 1: and things like that, and they use this three billion
Speaker 1: dollar number, which is spread across the entire country, which
Speaker 1: you know is again when you think that Clovid president,
Speaker 1: so unified by itself, is getting five hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: just from one ballot measure, like three billion dollars spread
Speaker 1: across every school district in America is actually not that
Speaker 1: much money, relatively speaking, but any anyway, I don't even
Speaker 1: know how they're calculating such a thing, but this idea that, okay,
Speaker 1: if we get rid of DEI, it's going to distract
Speaker 1: from the work of public schools more costs because culture
Speaker 1: wars cost so much money. This is the laziest freaking
Speaker 1: thinking I've ever heard in my life. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: These DEI programs are total waste of time and money,
Speaker 1: frittering away public school money on a bunch of administrators
Speaker 1: who are not doing anything to ensure that these kids
Speaker 1: are actually learning to read, or write or do math.
Speaker 1: It's bogus good for the Trump administration cut off this
Speaker 1: DEI funding. When we return, I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: President Trump's order on IVF next on the John Girardi Show.
Speaker 1: President Trump issued an executive order the other day about
Speaker 1: IVF in vitro fertilization, and I kind of need to
Speaker 1: talk about it as mister Right to Life being director
Speaker 1: at Right to Life Es Central California. It's within kind
Speaker 1: of my purview because of some of the ethical issues
Speaker 1: considerations that are involved with the IVF. So let me
Speaker 1: get started by acknowledging I hold a very minority position
Speaker 1: on IVF. I realize that probably a lot of you
Speaker 1: listening to it don't think IVF is a problem. Maybe
Speaker 1: some of you listening to it have a grandchild who
Speaker 1: is conceived brought into the world via IVF. Maybe some
Speaker 1: of you have gone through IVF, have a child via IVF.
Speaker 1: I want to just preface this by saying, I'm not
Speaker 1: condemning your motives, your desires, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people go into IVF without really understanding some of
Speaker 1: the ethical issues that are involved. So I am not
Speaker 1: here to condemn people, just as I am in the
Speaker 1: abortion debate. I'm not actually here to condemn people who
Speaker 1: have abortions. I think abortion is wrong. I love people,
Speaker 1: I hate sin, I hate things that are wrong. The
Speaker 1: idea of judge not lest you be judge, is that
Speaker 1: I'm not judging people's subjective consciences and motivations. I am
Speaker 1: judging actions. And I think IVF has really serious moral
Speaker 1: ethical problems. Namely, one of the most significant moral problems
Speaker 1: with IVF is the fact that as it is practiced
Speaker 1: in the United States. Most of the time, it involves
Speaker 1: the creation of far more embryos than will ever be implanted.
Speaker 1: There are about ninety seven thousand children born. There are
Speaker 1: about ninety seven thousand children born per year via IVF,
Speaker 1: and the number of embryos who are destroyed or left
Speaker 1: indefinitely frozen is far greater. It's an enormous number. It
Speaker 1: could be in the million. You know, there are million,
Speaker 1: over a million right now in storage, and we could
Speaker 1: it could be like over a million children created and
Speaker 1: destroyed via IVF, destroyed or frozen every single year. And
Speaker 1: often embryos are held frozen until the family decides to
Speaker 1: stop paying for the storage fees, and eventually those children
Speaker 1: just die. Those embryos just die. And before you say, well,
Speaker 1: is that a human being? Guys, it is an early
Speaker 1: stage human being every bit as much as an embryo
Speaker 1: growing inside of the womb of a woman who's considering abortion.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: There is no ethical biological difference. This is a new
Speaker 1: human organism, that's it. President Trump and Vice President Vance
Speaker 1: have made a lot of noise about wanting to have
Speaker 1: pro family policies to make it easier for families to
Speaker 1: have children, and I find it kind of bizarre that
Speaker 1: they lead off with IVF, not with making the process
Speaker 1: of adoption easier, simpler, better promoted. I think there's a
Speaker 1: huge problem right now that's not talked about enough that
Speaker 1: gen z and millennial moms don't who are in difficult situations,
Speaker 1: would rather have an abortion than place their child with
Speaker 1: an adoptive family. That basically you have whole adoption agencies
Speaker 1: in the San lu Quin Valley that went out of
Speaker 1: business for lack of babies. Okay, Infant of Prague adoption agency,
Speaker 1: which was founded by a large group of Catholics, a
Speaker 1: lot of whom were sort of tied in with us
Speaker 1: at Right to Life, went out of business a few
Speaker 1: years ago because they had no babies. So the first
Speaker 1: move that the Trump administration does for helping promote families
Speaker 1: and allowing people to have more children is not through adoption,
Speaker 1: not through managing the costs of childbirth, the newborn care.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean we a Right to Life. We
Speaker 1: helped start, I helped found our Obria Clinic, which I
Speaker 1: talked about a lot on the show. It's our nonprofit
Speaker 1: pro life Obgyn clinic that we founded in Fresno. Why, Well,
Speaker 1: it was because of this basic problem. There are a
Speaker 1: ton of women in South Fresno who are on medical
Speaker 1: and there are fewer and fewer doctors who want to
Speaker 1: take care of them because medical loses money. So rather
Speaker 1: than fixing some of those economic incentives and reimbursement rate,
Speaker 1: maybe we have a program with more reimbursement rates for
Speaker 1: doctors who take medical Medicaid patients in order for it
Speaker 1: to be profitable for doctors so that more of them
Speaker 1: can take more medical patients, to allow women to more
Speaker 1: readily have access to doctors. No, we're going to IVF,
Speaker 1: and let's remember that IVF is an industry. This is
Speaker 1: a usually cash industry, doctors making a ton of money.
Speaker 1: And it's also arguably not even really healthcare. Why do
Speaker 1: I say that? Okay, this isn't necessarily a moral judgment
Speaker 1: on it, but it's a of a technical thing. Healthcare
Speaker 1: means fixing something that is wrong with the human body.
Speaker 1: Something is wrong with the human body, and you do
Speaker 1: an intervention to restore the body from non health to health,
Speaker 1: or an intervention to help keep and maintain the body
Speaker 1: in a state of health. You have a headache, something's
Speaker 1: wrong with your body. You take tile and all it
Speaker 1: makes your headache go away. That's healthcare. Now with that definition,
Speaker 1: certain things are not really healthcare. Michael Jackson getting a
Speaker 1: nose job because he's convinced his nose looks funny, that's
Speaker 1: not a healthcare intervention. There was nothing wrong with Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson's original nose. He wanted it for cosmetic reasons, some
Speaker 1: kind of social reason. IVF is not really healthcare in
Speaker 1: the sense that it is not fixing something that is
Speaker 1: wrong with a woman's hormonal health, or a or a
Speaker 1: man's hormonal health, or a couple's hormonal health or reproductive health.
Speaker 1: It is sort of bypassing whatever issues are happening, whether
Speaker 1: it's for women polycystic ovarian syndrome or endometriosis or whatever.
Speaker 1: It is, bypassing those problems and creating a child through
Speaker 1: a different means. It's not actually addressing the underlying fertility
Speaker 1: health issues that the couple is experiencing. And as a result,
Speaker 1: I think it has made sense for it not to
Speaker 1: be mandated to be covered by insurance. Also, the extreme
Speaker 1: cost of it makes sense that it's not generally something
Speaker 1: covered by insurance, and this is part of the money
Speaker 1: side of it has led to this warping and distorting
Speaker 1: of the field of fertility care. There are whole ranges
Speaker 1: of hormonal health approaches for addressing infertility that for the
Speaker 1: most part, most infertility doctors are not taking advantage of
Speaker 1: or pursuing because IVF is such a cash cow. I've
Speaker 1: had plenty of stories of people who had infertility in
Speaker 1: their marriages went to infertility docs who would do maybe
Speaker 1: a few things maybe to try to help increase like
Speaker 1: sperm motility or something, and then immediately go to Okay,
Speaker 1: so when are you doing IVF. You know, he's talked
Speaker 1: about it on the radio a lot. But my very
Speaker 1: good friend Jonathan Keller, my co host on Right to
Speaker 1: Life Radio, he and his wife had infertility within their
Speaker 1: marriage for ten years and bang their heads against the
Speaker 1: wall of fertility doctors who would immediately jump to IVF,
Speaker 1: and Jonathan and his wife believed ethically that that was
Speaker 1: not something that they could do. And then finally I
Speaker 1: was able to get them in touch with a doctor
Speaker 1: who There's a lot of infertility medicine that has come
Speaker 1: out of certain kinds of Catholic hospitals and medical schools,
Speaker 1: particularly Creighton Universe promoted this thing called Napro technology, which
Speaker 1: is sort of this range of surgical and hormonal hormonal
Speaker 1: treatments for infertility that actually try to address the underlying
Speaker 1: hormonal health problems with a couple's infertility. Jonathan's wife had
Speaker 1: a surgical procedure to help address anometriosis and had a
Speaker 1: surgery called a bilateral wedge resection, basically surgery that's done
Speaker 1: on the ovaries to help sort of kickstart activity, and
Speaker 1: they had two babies within five years of that process,
Speaker 1: two sons who are their absolute joy. And most of
Speaker 1: the infertility industry is not interested in that because of
Speaker 1: the because the cash cow of IVF. So I would
Speaker 1: say just a couple of things. I think any kind
Speaker 1: of insureurance mandate for IVF, which is something that the
Speaker 1: Trump people have floated, would be insane, completely insane. Mandating
Speaker 1: that IVF, which is not really healthcare and which is
Speaker 1: incredibly expensive, be covered under insurances is an insane idea.
Speaker 1: Promoting IVF without more restrictions on it in order to
Speaker 1: lessen or eliminate the number the creation of excess wastage embryos,
Speaker 1: which is actually how the IVF industry is regulated in
Speaker 1: most of Europe and also within the state of Louisiana,
Speaker 1: they have certain specific laws that are better. I think
Speaker 1: would be a massive mistake. I think mandating IVF coverage
Speaker 1: in insurance plans would be a massive fiscal mistake. It
Speaker 1: would lead to massive incre lead, further increases in insurance premiums,
Speaker 1: all kinds of problems. And I think also just just
Speaker 1: this focus on IVF leads to this continuing diminution of
Speaker 1: real fertility healthcare treatments that again have gotten such short
Speaker 1: shrift because of what a cashcow IVF is. This will
Speaker 1: if if a Trump EO results in just insurance coverage
Speaker 1: for IVF for everybody and whatever sort of subsidization, it's
Speaker 1: only going to make that problem worse. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if we're all in on this MAHA thing, which I'm
Speaker 1: more and more believing after our f CA. So, oh,
Speaker 1: President Trump's totally right about IVF with no sort of skepticism,
Speaker 1: you know, RF case, who's allegedly so skeptical of the
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical industry and the practice of medicine, no skepticism about
Speaker 1: the iv industry apparently, which makes me think that his
Speaker 1: make America Healthy Again agenda is not really some logically
Speaker 1: coherent and consistent series of principles and policies. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of whatever he thinks. Actually promoting real, authentic fertility
Speaker 1: health care and real fertility health care treatments would be
Speaker 1: a much more MAHA thing than going to IVF. And again,
Speaker 1: if the Republican Party becomes the Party of IVF and
Speaker 1: leads to a massive increase in the number of embryos
Speaker 1: being created and destroyed via IVF, it honestly leads me
Speaker 1: to a very displaced place as a pro lifer, because
Speaker 1: why am I so concerned about abortion numbers when other
Speaker 1: children are being legally killed? Maybe more children are being
Speaker 1: legally killed through this other means. It's honestly an incredibly
Speaker 1: politically disorienting thing for me and makes me question, well,
Speaker 1: what kind of a Republican am I if my own
Speaker 1: party is supporting the legal killing of hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of embryos. When we return, journalists covering Pope Francis's illness
Speaker 1: are bad at their jobs. Next on the John Girardi Show,
Speaker 1: those of you outside of the Catholic world may not
Speaker 1: be aware. Maybe inside the Catholic world may not be
Speaker 1: aware that Pope Francis is in very bad health right now.
Speaker 1: He's got pneumonia, bilateral pneumonia. He's eighty eight years old,
Speaker 1: he had actually had most of one long removed from
Speaker 1: a childhood illness, so he's not in good shape. And
Speaker 1: all the reports coming from the Vatican, they all start
Speaker 1: with this headline, Pope Francis, who has been diagnosed with
Speaker 1: pneumonia and both lungs, passed a peaceful night, the Vatican
Speaker 1: has said, amid growing concerns over the eight eight year
Speaker 1: old's condition, stop saying that he passed the night comfortably.
Speaker 1: Two nights in a row, we've had headlines saying that
Speaker 1: he passed the night comfortably. Stop saying passed Pause through
Speaker 1: all thinking means he passed away. That'll do it. John
Speaker 1: Gerardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk