← Them Before Us
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- [00:02]
Josh Wood
Welcome to Them Before Us on American Family Radio, where we strive to put children before adults. Our goal is to educate the public on a child centric perspective of marriage and family and represent the rights of children on policy matters. Now here's the host and founder of Them Before Us, Katie Foust.
- [00:21]
Katie Foust
Welcome to Them Before Us Radio. I'm your host, Katie Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us here with my executive director, Josh Wood. We're gonna hit a few of the stories that populated our news feed this week. But as always, before we get to the juicy juicy, we start with a little bit of the word of God. Fantastic foundation, not just for your life, but for a radio show as well. And Josh, unsurprisingly, had some pretty great insights for Mother's Day that I had never really thought about before. So, you know, when you hit something in scripture that I'm like, wow, new material. Hey, it's worth broadcasting across, you know, several dozen states. So, Josh, kick us off a little bit with some Bible time this morning.
- [01:09]
Josh Wood
Well, it is. I know last week was Mother's Day, or depending on when you're listening to this, it might have been a little while ago, but we kind of at them before us, we celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day and pretty much all the time in between. We believe that mothers and fathers are incredibly important to a child. We believe a child has a claim to their mother and father that we shouldn't be separating them unnecessarily. If you listen to this show, you know, that's kind of what we're all about. And so one thing, I was at a, actually a conference today, and they were talking about this chaplain. He's actually an Air Force chaplain. He was talking about how he used to read the stories of the martyrs and Chuck Colson's book shared about how all of the disciples were martyred. Everyone that went through this experience with Christ ended their life in a similar fashion to Christ, except one, and that was John, who was exiled, but he lived into old age. And this person was talking about different reasons. And someone suggested, I've always heard that that was because Jesus told John John was the one at the cross. I can read some of this in just a second. But also that he had this take care of Jesus's mother. I always found that so profound that at Jesus's, you know, final breaths, what is he concerned with? Honoring his mother, taking care of his mother, making sure his mother is taking care of and giving, giving him to one of his or her to one of his disciples. So this is from John 19. This is the scene at the cross. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister Mary, the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, woman, behold your son. And then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her into his own home. I think there's two parts to this number. One, John was there to even have that said to him, which I think shows fidelity. Then second, Christ's, you know, turning outward and always being concerned with other people, even at this moment. And we talk about that commandment. I believe it's the fifth commandment to honor your father and mother, how important that is. And not only everything we're fighting against right now in culture, saying that children come out of the womb belonging to no one, that we can place them with other people, potentially even an unrelated adult and their father in these arrangements, same sex marriage arrangements, or orphaned through sperm donation or egg donation, not even having the opportunity out and fulfill the fifth commandment. The first time you said that, Katie, it stuck out to me that it is so fundamental to who we are. We come from exactly one man and one woman. And this is Jesus living that commandment out, showing how important it is. And so I don't know if you've got thoughts on, especially this Mother's Day, just how culture has shifted this conversation so far away from honoring your father and mother to making all the way down to where mother doesn't really mean anything anymore today.
- [04:18]
Katie Foust
Yeah, one of my biggest retorts when people come at me with this isn't Christian love? Because there's an awful lot of that as we'll talk about. There was a hit piece on me from the Seattle Times over the weekend. And so I've spent a fair amount of my day responding to comments in local online forums where people are trying to, you know, get identifying information about my church or my kids or whatever. And, you know, they'll say, well, this doesn't seem very loving to me. This doesn't seem very Christian to me. And I always say, how is it that Christians are supposed to normalize a form of family where children will never be able to honor the first commandment with a promise? You are so far out of step with God's original good design if you are endorsing mother and father loss in the name of love and tolerance. And it's just, to me, it is an evidence that we have distorted the gospel to such a degree that we have made the gospel about being welcoming and affirming. In fact, that was one of the areas where the Seattle Times hit piece said she says she tells pastors that their primary job is not to be welcoming and affirming of non traditional marital arrangements. And I'm like, dude, do you think that's some kind of dig? That's like, that's like a killer line. I can't believe he just put in like one of my killer lines there. But that's true. The goal of Christians at obviously is to be honor God, care for our own family, but then enact justice for the most vulnerable. And the normalization of things like gay marriage does the exact opposite. We as Christians are here to protect the vulnerable. And I actually love that Christ did that on the cross. Like here he is asphyxiating, bleeding in spiritual and physical pain, and he's like, you know what I need to do? Take care of my mom. I need to take care of my mom. And I love that he put her under the provision of another man who very clearly was ready to adopt responsibility on behalf of somebody else. That especially in that moment was so, so vulnerable.
- [06:39]
Josh Wood
Yeah, no, you get this argument. Jesus didn't talk about this. Then it's like, well, he'll go back and say it's for this reason that, you know, or he'll say that a man leaves his mother and father. Or he'll say, you know, in the beginning they were created male and female. He created them. Like Christ goes back to this kind of creation order thing and we forget that mothers and fathers are a creation order thing. There's not optional. These are not just any two people. You can, I can take a child and take their blood and find out who their parents are. They come from exactly two people, one man and one woman.
- [07:22]
Katie Foust
You know what cracks me up? When God is like officiating the first wedding in Genesis. This is pre fall. He says, a man shall leave his father and mother when fathers and mothers didn't even exist yet. There was no father, there was no mother. But it was so embedded in the embodied reality of male and female that mother and father have been there from the first page, first page of scripture and the first page of human existence and the fact that there's this whole contingent that wants to redefine not just marriage, but the nature of humanity itself because of some five minute old supp imposed civil rights that five justices decided to smash down on the entire country. No, we do not consent and we will fail to comply. So that's kind of where we're at here today, people. A little feisty in Seattle happening.
- [08:20]
Josh Wood
Well, I mean, that builds right into our first story. It's been a day. It's been a week in Seattle. Here. We, you know, if you don't follow us on social media or subscribe to our substack, you should do that. It's hembefore us atiefoust. And also our substack is them before us.substack.com we had a person try to essentially, just like Katie said, throw mud, sling mud at us by repeating, like you said, some of our arguments, which we appreciate, getting such public airing of the case against gay marriage. And you can go into that if you want. Katie, talk about the Seattle Times piece. And then also one of our friends, Chloe Cole, who also is getting kind of pushed out of the University of Washington event she was supposed to do because of more threats and political violence.
- [09:15]
Katie Foust
Well, it is the way they roll up here in the pnw, the Pacific Northwest. The thing is that they really think this is going to work. We're going to intimidate them. But I just have a message for the Seattle Times. The Christians that have not moved to Idaho, we don't get pushed around very easily. Okay. And it's so fascinating to me. I've submitted a couple different responses to the Seattle Times article, which hopefully will be out by the time this show airs. So you can go see kind of the other side. But some of the things that I said in it is, you know, he spilled 2,000 words doxing me. You know, everybody read that article and they know how many kids I have, the neighborhood I live in, the church that I go to, where I grew up, what kind of degree I had, what I did post grad, my husband's current and former employer.
- [10:02]
Josh Wood
And which is what doxxing means for those. It's kind of like outing you and where you live and these things to the general public, which maybe is one thing in Alabama, you live in the Pacific Northwest.
- [10:14]
Katie Foust
Yeah, Pacific Northwest, with a readership, a Seattle Times readership, who, by a variety of different recent polls, 25% of their readers would say that violence is a justifiable response to political opinions that you don't like. So if you want to use the word dog whistle, that's what that is, right? Hey, boys, come and get her. Here she is right here. And it's so funny because after the article was published, I was messaging with my husband, who is deployed right now he is floating in an undisclosed location, people. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea the reporter reached out to you. And my husband's like, yeah, I didn't get back to him because I'm Busy doing, like, eight counselings a day and shepherding 5,000 people in the armed forces through, you know, their mission. And I wrote to the reporter afterwards, and I said, so here you reached out to my husband. Did you tell him that you were planning on using the First Amendment rights that he is out there protecting to dox his wife's location later this week? Is that what you did? And I said, you must think of yourself as a real hero. Is that what you think, Jim Berner? I am a hero for targeting a woman who is currently a single mother because her husband is out fighting for my right to slander his wife in the pages of the most powerful publication in the state. He didn't respond to me. No big surprise there. But violence is what they do. You know, even now, I've got friends. What they'll do is they'll go to my private Facebook page, which is pretty locked down. But then they'll try to see any friends, any. Any mutual friends that I have, any friends, and then they'll go after my friends, anybody that just is friends with me on Facebook, you know. So right now, they're targeting one woman who is a single mother and relies on selling her art to pay her rent. And they're overtaking some of her threads saying, oh, don't buy her artwork, because she has liked some of Katie Faust's comments in the past. These people are so vicious, you know, And a lot of the times, what they're doing in these forums is there saying, oh, she's going after gay marriage, but what is she doing? For single mothers, I'm like, here is a single mother that I've supported in a variety of different ways, and you guys are the ones targeting her. I just have no patience anymore for the compassion brigade that will target not just me, but anybody associated with me as a means of punishment for wrong think.
- [12:58]
Josh Wood
Well, you mentioned that poll. What it did was it looked at the very liberal and the very conservative and tried to just see. Ask the simple question, should you ever use violence? Is it ever justified in response to politics? Well, 25%, 1 in 4 very liberal said it is sometimes justified. 3%, a very conservative said, yes, 3%. That is not even close. If you look at a hundred people, you're gonna find 25 very liberal. You look at 100 people you're gonna find three very conservative. We are not the same. That especially when you got down even to them going after people who like posts to try to ruin their business. I'm like, what happened to the coexist bumper stickers? What happened to tolerance? These are the most intolerant people.
- [13:58]
Katie Foust
Yeah, there's a lot of yard signs around here that say things like hate has no home here. And I'm like, oh, I think hate is cozied up on your couch right next to your fireplace targeting single mothers, you know, in the name of social justice. So all that to say children are worth the fight. You know, most of the people that speak up about these things, you don't have to, but you do it because there's very real victims to silence. And I'm no longer going to be silent. I did stay silent for too long because I like to keep my friends. But ultimately, even social acceptance is not worth child victimization. So go to GreaterThancampaign.com take a look at the marriage campaign that the feckless reporter revealed refused to link to get on board. Join us. We are going to retake marriage on behalf of children. Stay with us. We're going to hit some more headlines in the next segment.
- [15:02]
Josh Wood
Welcome back to them before us on American Family Radio.
- [15:06]
Katie Foust
Obviously, I needed a little break from that last segment where things got a little worked up. Up. I got worked up over this, this article about me in the Seattle Times saying that even though I'm little known in the state of Washington, I'm a massive threat to the right of equal marriage. And that's fine. I'll take it. I am a major threat. We actually are going to overturn your, your precious civil right that has existed for exactly five minutes of legal history. That's fine. But that wasn't the only thing that transpired in Seattle over the week. They also, in essence, shut down an event at the University of Washington for D transitioner Chloe Cole. So, Josh, do you want to tell us a little bit about the other act of rhetorical violence that was going to lead to probably literal violence on behalf of what is an 18 year old woman with double mastectomy scars because she was caught up in the transgender medicine craze and is now speaking out against it?
- [16:13]
Josh Wood
Yes. One, one note not to carry over the last segment, but I thought that the article our team put out this week in response to the Seattle Times made a really good point that's worth kind of leaving. There's tons of reasons to be upset about that article. It is wrong to try to use tactics of intimidation to make people, everyday people, think twice before speaking up for kids because not everybody wants to have their location doxed. Not everybody wants to have their kids get made fun of in school. Not everybody wants to, you know, have their family text about them in the group, text about how they're going crazy. They're right wingers now because they want to overturn gay marriage because they've seen the real harms of depriving a child of their mother or father. We get that this has a really specific action. It's trying to make others count the cost before they speak up. That is the goal. That is the intimidating goal. What I loved, though, was when we wrote about this, there's plenty of reason to be upset about that intimidation and the threats of violence. But the bigger picture is it's not about us. It's not about getting angry that they did that. It is making them return to the argument. They can talk about how the person Katie's scary. She's going to do this. This is where you can find her. Here's the thing, she's. They'll do anything to avoid having to talk about the children that are victimized. And that was what came through. The real victim here isn't even us. I mean, yes, it's bad. Katie, I don't. I think threatening your family is a horrible thing. But putting it in perspective, the whole reason we're doing this is because there are tons of victims who don't have platforms that you have, that don't have the ability to articulate their thoughts, that get thrown into these situations from birth to lose parents, to be commodified or as we've seen over and over again, it feels like a parade of these things getting put into situations with really dangerous people, often men, because they didn't get background check, they didn't get vetted because to put two men through an adoption level screening for their surrogate children would be discriminatory. And so I love that reframing to make sure that even though they're going to sling mud, even though they're going to personally attack you, continue to center the child, to take a step back and say it is always wrong to deprive a child of their mother or father. And that is our whole argument.
- [18:55]
Katie Foust
One of the op EDS that I wrote this week that hopefully will be published by the time this comes out, it makes that exact point. Like, you spent a lot of time talking about my personal details. But my argument, you know, the speech that you Snapped that you clipped for that cover article, the one that you referenced with a couple juicy little tidbits. You didn't link to that speech. But that speech is called How Obergefell Commodified Children. And the very best evidence of the connection between gay marriage and child trafficking actually happened in Washington State in 2018. We passed the Uniform Parentage act. And the sponsor of that bill was a guy who rewrote, who updated those parenthood statutes. And what did it do? It scrubbed the words mother or father from all of our parenthood statutes. It created intent based parenthood so unrelated adults could acquire children. It normalized the payment from intended parents to genetic or birth parents, which is categorically trafficking. So that reporter, if he wanted to even just give some kind of locally relevant application of what I was talking about, it happened about 60 miles south of here, soon after gay marriage was legalized. But no, no, no, no. He can't be bothered with contending with the actual argument because the caricature would fall apart. And, you know, his readers might realize that this is actually a pretty reasonable argument, not some fringe right wing religious nutter, which is what they were led to believe.
- [20:23]
Josh Wood
Which is why we mentioned Chloe Cole kind of at the top of this segment. She represents such a grave threat to them when the actual victims. Because I do think there's a race to be seen as the victim. And I think some of the country got swept up in that in the initial discussions. If I don't get to get married, I count me among the greatest victims in society. I'm going to be oppressed if I don't get to get married. And they, they, they captured the mind of the American people by saying, if we don't get equal dignity in scare quotes to get married, then we are victims. You know, we are the number one victim. Essentially, what Chloe Cole represents through this transgender ideology is an undeniable victim and far more sympathetic than any case an adult can make. When a young child talks about a double mastectomy and hormones, and really what's happening is a mutilation of young bodies, sterilization for life changing, unalterable circumstances, you do go, oh, this was a fever dream. We ignored the real victims. And I think what we're beginning to see now, Even years on, 10 years, 11 years on from Obergefell, is we're beginning to see the cost of making children. When you talked about erasing mother and father, why is that significant? It's significant because if in law, it talks about a mother and a father, those are Identifiable people. Those are two specific roles. You can't just make them anybody. They are the two people who created the child. When you can make it parent, we can slot anyone we want into that. So this whole regime that mandated the erasure of specific roles for general roles to make it anybody can be a parent. So we can give children to unrelated people, we are now seeing, oh, gosh, kids don't even in. Even in the best of circumstances, kids have real harm from being severed from the people that created them. They go in search of those people. And in the worst, worst cases, when these go home with dangerous people, it's horrendous. We're talking about trafficking and child abuse materials mean horrible, horrible stories which are becoming all too common.
- [22:51]
Katie Foust
So there is a direct parallel between the transgender debate and the gay marriage debate, and it is fundamentally a rejection of sexed biology. Okay? So that is what is at the root of both of these ideological
- [23:11]
Jen
phenomenon.
- [23:12]
Katie Foust
Okay, so the rejection of biological reality happens in the transgender space by saying a man can become a woman, and what happens in the marriage space is mothers and fathers are optional in parentage. But you, Josh, made the really fantastic. You really distilled this down in an article you wrote for the Federalist a couple months ago where you said, look, we've really come to the point, especially red states, especially, are passing laws that say that you can't assign gender at birth. Okay? Gender is recognized, right? A child's sex is recognized at the moment of birth. We do not assign gender. We recognize it. And similarly, what they're doing in the case of same sex parented homes is. Parentage is also recognized. Like you said, you can take a blood test. You can recognize who the child's mother and father is. But because biology is the bigot in the room with both of these conversations, we're now assigning parents at birth as well. Both of those create child victims. One is going to mutilate and damage their bodies. The other one is going to sever their relationship with one or both people that are statistically the safest for them, who grant them their biological identity and maximize their development. When we reject biological reality, it doesn't take a whole. Just two steps away, and you've got child victimization. The connection is always direct.
- [24:39]
Josh Wood
Well, what strikes me, too, is it's even in the cases of some of this transgender medicine, you can even have all parties saying, I want this, raising their hand. The parents, even the children, I think, can get caught up in this kind of mind warp of social media. And we, as A society still have to recognize truth in those situations. That it is not that going against how we are made, going against biology will have consequences. Even if culture. I mean it reminds me of that meme where it's like what position or what opinion puts you in this position and it's you and swords at your neck or it's you versus the crowd. There are some things that quite frankly screw public opinion. I don't care if every person is cheering this on. There are some things that might does not make you right. Biological realities. The definition of a child. When they come out of the womb, do they belong with someone or do they belong to anyone? That is a fundamental question that our society cannot afford to get wrong. But we're debating that right now. We're debating can a child just come out and we get to pick. They go with these two men, this woman, this one man, this two. Is that really something we're willing to put up as a commodity and have be assigned when it is?
- [26:14]
Katie Foust
Because that's where we're going. What does it take to reduce children to the status of commodity? You, number one, need the technology to sever them from their mother or father. We have that through reproductive technologies. We have that through IVF where you can purchase somebody else's sperm or egg. And we have that through surrogacy where you can rent someone else's womb. So we have the technology to sever children from their biological parents at the moment of conception or at birth. You also need the laws, the laws that easily detach children from their natural parents and reattach them to biological strangers without any background checks. And that is what Oberge felt furnishes. So we've seen all of these terrible cases emerge in places where they have both the technology and they've rewritten parenthood laws. One of those places is California. And there was a terrible news story that came out late last year of a Chinese couple in Arcadia, California who had 21 surrogate born children. Fifteen of them were under the age of three. Since they've been arrested, six more babies have been born to other surrogates who had been in the process of gestating additional children for this couple. The New Yorker just did a big follow up article on that where they quoted me where I said, hey, this isn't surrogacy gone wrong. This is surrogacy as designed. That is, this is what the technology is made to do is mass produce children for anyone and everybody, regardless of whether or not they're a pedophile, whether or not they have one children or 21 children, regardless of whether they're being shipped overseas to Chinese billionaires. That is what the industry is here. But there has been a very interesting connection in California specifically as it relates to this one area of California, including where this Chinese couple lived, tends to be a hotbed for surrogacy arrangements specifically for Chinese nationals. Those who live here, but especially those who are coming over from the mainland to acquire children who will then be US citizens that will never come back to the country unless maybe they want to run for president. So there was a really interesting development in that case this week that you posted a really great X thread about Josh.
- [28:31]
Josh Wood
Yeah, so this woman, I think her name's Eileen, she's Chinese and she was on city council and then she ran for mayor and then through, I think they caught her handler first, but they found out that this mayor was directly reposting. I mean, I'm not kidding. Getting articles from the CCP and like dropping them into one article she published ended up getting posted by the LA Times. And I mean, they have email exchanges now. This isn't even, I don't even think this is alleged anymore. I think she signed a plea agreement. Like she's guilty. She, she said, this one got 15,000 views. They're like, great work. She goes, thank you, leader. Something like, I mean, it's like, is this a bad spy drama? Like she is a legit CCP agent and you ask how, how does a city, I think it flipped from 18% or 12% Asian in demographics to 86 now. I mean it has become this essentially hotbed. And California, if you don't know China, leads all of our foreign national surrogacy arrangements and specifically California, I believe is a majority of all the international arrangements. And so you get down to it, it's like, man, the odds are that if you find a surrogate carrying a baby, you are looking at a 42 year old Chinese single male who's paid this woman for her womb, sent his sperm over, will send a nanny over to grab the kid and send them back when they get born. I mean, that should scare all of us. And what killed me is this child is now an instrument of statecraft. And honestly, from a policy back in China that left them with a generation of men because they aborted all the females they had. Because you only get one kid. So we better have a boy. So let's leave all the girls out to be killed. Let's only keep boys. Now we've got a generation of men with Nothing to live for. They're not married, they have no kids. Well, that's not good for society. So let's go back and let's give them an opportunity to create kids and actually they'll get to go to the US One day. I mean, this is mind blowing.
- [30:59]
Jen
Yeah.
- [31:00]
Katie Foust
And if you can customize that child using a white donor, you know, so that you can get exactly the kind of looking kid that you want and, and one that's a citizen of the United States who can help you immigrate later or maybe just become a political tool that can be controlled by the ccp because that's kind of how they roll. Like, even if you're here and you don't necessarily want to be an agent for the Chinese government, they'll leverage your family members back in the mainland to pressure you to do their bidding. And so this, this door that we've cracked open to pay for babies and become a fertility center for foreign buyers, it's bad. It's bad for our nation. But even if it wasn't a national security risk, babies shouldn't be bought and sold. They need their mothers. That bond is primal. We are going to subject children to identity struggles and abandonment fears all their life because we've prioritized adult desires about the fundamental rights and needs of children.
- [32:01]
Josh Wood
If you'd like to comment on the show, email commentsembeforeus.com Once again, here's Katie Foust.
- [32:09]
Sam
Hey everyone. Welcome to Here for the Comments, a Them Before Us podcast series where we dive into the comments and questions that we get online and we unpack the children's rights perspective that we use to answer those comments. So I'm your host, Sam and I'm joined by Jen and we are here for the comments. So for this week, I actually am excited about this topic. So RFK Jr and Trump just released moms.gov and if you haven't heard about it, basically it's like a one stop shop for resources, information and help for new and expecting moms. So I'm actually on their website right now, kind of just scrolling through, but I've had a chance to already look through a lot of it. There's, there's pros and cons. So of course, you know, when you look at this face value, it's a good thing because we want, you know, expecting moms, whether planned or unplanned pregnancies, to have a lot of resources and help. And it's so nice that it's in one spot. So it covers a lot of different things that they might need. It goes over, like, their health centers. You can find a pregnancy support center. They even have, like a find pregnancy centers near you button. So you can just type in where you're located, and that will help you. And that gets you all kinds of free services. Pregnancy tests, ultrasound, std, STI testing, parenting support, childbirth classes, medical referrals, and clothes, diapers at no cost to you. So, again, that's beautiful. That's wonderful. We love to see it. The things that I'm a little worried about. So there's two things, mostly. One, it also promotes IVF heavily. So there's like a whole page dedicated to basically saying, like, if you need ivf, here's a bunch of resources. And we know that that's been, you know, a big issue between pro lifers and Trump is a lot of pro lifers are coming out and speaking against IVF saying, this is not pro life. It's not okay. Because as we know, IVF definitely, the whole industry destroys more children than even the abortion industry. So a lot of people might not know that, but. But usually if you're probably listening to them before us, you know that. So I wanted to stop there and get your reaction to the IVF part of it, and then I can dive into the other issue that I think we. We face with this.
- [34:34]
Jen
Yeah, this is my very first time looking at the website at all, and it looks really nicely done. Like you said, we're so thankful that they are doing pregnancy resource centers. If you've been in the pro life movement for any amount of time, you know that Planned Planned Parenthood and other abortion mills hate pregnancy centers and pregnancy centers. I think most of the time, by law, aren't even allowed to say, do not get an abortion. And that's not necessarily their goal. Their goal is that you're informed about the baby. They offer ultrasounds, resources and things like that. And women will often not choose an abortion because they have those resources. So obviously they have to be shut down and considered evil by Planned Parenthood and folks like that. As I'm looking at the website, though. Oh, another thought was, at the very least, we're referring to women as women on this page. That's a huge.
- [35:27]
Sam
We'll take it.
- [35:28]
Jen
There's no pregnant people on here or chest feeding references and things like that. But as I'm looking at the page, I actually couldn't find a reference to ivf. So I don't know. I know that was a big thing that popped up was they were promoting IVF and Reproductive technologies that we don't agree with. I just don't see it on this main page.
- [35:48]
Sam
It doesn't say on the main page. If you scroll all the way down, there's preconception health. And then it says if you're preparing for pregnancy or trying to conceive, addressing chronic health conditions and identifying risk factors can lead to a healthier pregnancy, healthier mothers, healthy babies. And that's fantastic. Again, we're on the same page. We agree with you there. But when you click on that link that they give for preconception health, it jumps you over to like a whole page that talks about, see here, sources for ivf.
- [36:20]
Jen
And yeah, I did click over, you're right.
- [36:22]
Sam
Yeah, that's where it starts to get in the weeds a little bit. Because if, if I was somebody who didn't know much about IVF and that was like something I was interested in, then I would definitely find my way, you know, to this website. And this is where it starts. When he talked about when he was running, he said that he wanted the government to fund ivf. So I don't know what specific funding has been agreed upon or changed or anything like that, but I'm sure, like, if somebody's wanting to go through that process, this walks them through it. So, yeah, and it doesn't give any warnings about, again, the negative side effects of IVF or like, things like that. Like, hey, just in case you are interested in, let's also talk about things that you might not hear from IVF clinics who are trying to get your business, you know, which is like, you know, all the extra embryos created and killed and having to store them for life or else they're going to be destroyed and the siblings that they might have and like, all the things that go into it.
- [37:19]
Jen
Yeah, well. And why aren't we directing toward the restorative reproductive medicine, restoring reproduction to its natural, natural function? And from the Venmo for Us account, we said ivf, you know, we affirm the people who say this, IVF does not solve infertility. And someone commented and said, no, it does solve infertility. I know a friend who had two or three babies from ivf. And my response was, so now are they able to have babies naturally? Because if you're solving ivf, you've restored the natural function of the person's body. That's not what they mean, though. Yes, you were able to conceive and have a biological child, create a biological child in a laboratory a. At the cost of more of your biological children, overwhelmingly. That's true statistically. And B, it bypassed the problem. It did not solve the problem. And we're posting the series IVFF, FYI for our insiders on our substack thembefores.substack.com and one of those interviews is with a doctor, Dr. Naomi Whitaker, who does restorative reproductive medicine and surgeries. And she said, at least if you go this route, you will be healthier at the end of the journey, whether she's not guaranteeing that you get a biological child out of it, but you will be healthier. We're going to adjust your diet, we're going to look at your cycle, we're going to track, we're going to look at the health of your eggs and the health of your husband's sperm, you know, talking to women. And maybe you need some invasive, you know, not, not invasive, not crazy, complicated surgery, but some surgery to remove something or to fix something that is in the wrong place. And she's able to help women.
- [39:09]
Sam
And just to be clear, IVF also cannot promise a baby. So like, when you say, like, oh, she doesn't promise a baby, but she promises that you'll be healthier. IVF can't promise a baby either. But also there it's usually like, depending on which route you take. Again, IVF is like a big umbrella. But like, like most of the time, it's unhealthy ways of getting that baby, like all the hormones that you're pumping your body full of, that's not normal or healthy or good for your body and things like that. So at least when you go the restorative health way, reproductive health way, it is, it's about actually healing your body and making it better. Not, like you said, trying to work around it and just force it to do what it's not wanting to do.
- [39:51]
Jen
Yeah, well. And if people have followed us for a while, I believe it was last year, I want to say in January, when Trump came out, you know, as the administration big thing, we are going to fund ivf. This is a part of what we're doing as an administration. And I remember we were kind of going so quick to try and do a press release to respond to this. And it was part of this big movement between the Democrats and the Republicans that whole fall before the election and into the new year to argue about, the Democrats were saying, Republicans are going to take away your abortion access and your IVF access. And Republicans falling all over themselves to say, no, no, no, we promise we'll keep it for You IVF is great. We all love ivf. And I've said this so many times because it blows my mind that Ted Cruz got nailed on MSNBC by a liberal host who was seeing the inconsistency. But I thought you believed life began at conception. Democrats literally know this is a part. It's the other side of abortion. It's Republicans and conservatives that they can't follow that logic. Democrats are following the logic. They want to ban abortion. They want to ban ivf. Well, they both kill humans. Just because you really want a child and so you'll kill some humans to get it is not that different from, I really don't want a child, and I'm killing humans to get what I want. So, I mean, that's. And that sounds so harsh. Of course people are going to say, then you never dealt with infertility. You don't know. And the reality is, if we boil it down, you're talking about human beings that live and die based on decisions we are making. We have to talk about those ethical issues. When we get to IVF and not done before us, Our feelings about the matter don't. Don't mean we get to talk or not talk about it or that we get to do or not do different things just based on how we feel. We always have to bring it back to the rights of that child.
- [41:50]
Sam
Yep, 100%. And speaking of abortion, so that was actually the second kind of red flag that I saw. Okay, so the green flag is there's nothing about abortion directly on the site, which is so refreshing because the government has been so pro abortion and still isn't a lot of, you know, areas. But this is nice that. Because this is about unplanned pregnancies. So, like, immediately when you think of unplanned pregnancies, that's my fear is they're gonna somehow sneak in some, like, you know, oh, go here. And this is an option for abortion, literally in the. There's a, like, little dictionary section, you know, addressing all the different terms and, like, topics that they cover. And, like, abortion's not even on it. And so that's, again, very nice. But the other thing is, so they tell women, go to these pregnancy centers. Again, I'm super pro that. That's wonderful. But then right under it, there's federal, federally qualified health centers, FQHCs. And the issue with FQHCs instead of pregnancy centers is that these centers can provide abortions. And it's actually, like. It's funny because I was going to, like, the FQH website itself under their Q&As. It says here that one of the most common questions that they get, like, coming in to their centers is that they can't, like, can you provide an abortion or not? Because it's a myth that they can't provide abortions because it's funded by the government. But it says right here, yes, it's a common misconception that F. FQHCs cannot provide abortions. The restrictions that health centers face regarding abortion are on the federal fund side, not the institute as a whole. So they can use different funds that they receive from grants and from state funds and other things that are like, not directly federal funds to fund abortion. So that's my only other thing is like, he's accidentally. I wouldn't say accidentally, but he's directing people to both of these. Luckily, the pregnancy centers are first on the website, so at least they get the most attention. But right under them is the FQHCs, and those ones I don't really think we should be supporting.
- [44:08]
Jen
So it's so interesting that question of federal money is not allowed to be used for X when let's say it's a hundred dollars. The budget is $100, and it's for something you don't want to happen. The company's doing something you don't want to happen, and they're doing a thing that you're fine with, and the government gives them, you know, $80, 80% of their budget, but you're not allowed to do the bad thing with it. Okay. But their entire other. The most. The rest of their budget is handled so they can put all of their money, 80% of their other donations to the bad thing.
- [44:49]
Sam
Yeah, that's.
- [44:50]
Jen
That's what kind of blows my mind. I don't know if we can get around that. I guess probably everything we donate money to, you know, in some ways is doing things like that. There might be some. If you think about the company you buy something from, of course they're doing things that are unethical you don't agree with. We all make our peace with that at some level. But I hate that notion that, well, federal money's technically not allowed, but we'll give you a bunch of federal money to cover the rest of your budget so you can perform that horrible thing.
- [45:18]
Sam
Yeah. And it's one thing if like, like you said, you know, even us as pro lifers and people who are against abortion, I'm sure that there's companies that I give my money to that support abortion on the backside or like they donate or whatever it might be like that's going to happen because we live in society. And like, if I went through every single company and only donated to pro life organizations, I don't think I'd be able to function, to be honest, because so much of it is wrapped up in that. But when it comes to directly providing the abortions themselves, I feel like that's a pretty good line of like, what the government should give money to. And so it's like, well, if we. We just tell them not to use it for this, okay. But the organization itself, that's what they do. So I think maybe you could just not give money to them at all if they do that. Especially when we've provided pregnancy centers that offer all the same stuff except for no abortion. So again, it's really unnecessary to be funding these organizations in the first place when we have other things in line that protect children.
- [46:23]
Jen
So just my parenthood is a billion dollar for profit. I mean, in profit. And are the pregnancy centers getting federal funds? That's so interesting to me. How are we deciding which companies get federal funding? Which don't? And they're so scared about their federal funding getting taken away, but then their donations just increase. So they don't need our money.
- [46:42]
Sam
Yeah, I actually don't remember. I feel like the last time I looked into it, they don't, but I don't fact check me on it because I don't know for sure they might get federal money and I hope they do, but they might not. I thought it was all donations from people, so from churches and pro lifers and things like that. So, yeah, the rest of the website, I feel like it checks out. I mean, they talk about nutrition and the whole maha movement, really, this was like their thing of like, how can we help these women eat better while they're pregnant? And that also helps babies. I think that's fantastic. It does talk about a Trip Trump account. It says, jump start your child's future with Trump account. I just think it's funny just because I think Trump is funny, but I actually don't know much about it. I'll have to look into it. But it says here that eligible children enrolled in Trump accounts will receive $1,000 from the US treasury in an account that they can access at 18 years old. So I don't know much about it, but I'll have to look into it.
- [47:42]
Jen
But yeah, well, that's actually all the time we have for today, so thanks everyone for joining us. We enjoy hanging out in the comments, talking about new projects with you, reacting with that children's rights perspective. And we will catch you next time.
- [47:55]
Sam
See you.
- [48:12]
Katie Foust
The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast do not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.