← Them Before Us With Katy Faust
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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 Faust.
- [00:21]
Katie Faust
Welcome to Them Before Us Radio. I'm your host, Katie Foust, founder and president of Them Before Us, a global nonprofit seeking to defend children's fundamental right to be known and loved by their mom and dad, by their mother and father, by the two people who made them. And when we understand all marriage and family policy and questions through this lens of prioritizing children in their natural rights, we're going to have thriving children and a thriving nation. So that's what we talk about here at Them Before Us Radio every weekend. And we're going to get into some headlines that are particularly relevant as it relates to child protection. But we always start things off with a little bit of Bible time. And this week, my executive director, Josh Wood penned a substack on the executioner that is in the Apostles Creed. And I just read it and I thought, you know, there really is so much depth there when we talk about Pilate's role and what it means for us as we approach responsibility in the realm that we are sovereign over. So, Josh, tell us a little bit about this article on Pilate and what you kind of thought about and discovered about as you dug into his role in Christ's death.
- [01:44]
Josh Wood
Well, I'm Anglican, so we recite the Apostles Creed every week. And I guess it was a couple weeks ago where I went through and was saying it and noticed they put Pilate in the Creed. And it just struck me because there's not a lot of people name dropped in the Creed. You've got Jesus, you've got Mary, and you've got Pilate. On one hand, there's this beautiful kind of symmetry that exists that through Mary you see the beginning of Jesus life, and really under Pilate you see the end of Jesus life. And so in that short, born of the Virgin Mary crucified under Pilate, you see a bracketing of his life. So there's that part. So I started to ask, but why did they put Pilate, Why did they specifically name him? Everyone's familiar with the crucifixion. So on one hand you do get that it timestamped the crucifixion, you know, in the third year of the emperor Tiberius. We often do see in the Bible or some of the epistles, you see Them almost name things based on the person that was in power because they knew that more than they knew in the year 26 or in the. They kind of knew. Oh, and that guy was in charge. So you do see that. But another part, it just got me going, kind of walking through. It's so ironic that the man who did his best through this whole trial to not be associated with it is the man that ends up actually having his name put on the record. So you kind of walk through.
- [03:20]
Jen
He.
- [03:20]
Josh Wood
He has this famous conversation with Jesus during the trial where he says, you know, what is truth? Jesus says, I'm the man that I represent, the truth. And Pilate says, well, what is truth? He walks out. You almost see him. He sends him to Herod. Let Herod deal with him. He comes back, he tells the crowd, well, you deal with him. No, we want Barabbas. It's like, oh, my gosh. So you see constantly. His wife sends him a message from a dream saying, don't have anything else to do with. This man comes back, what do I do? What do I do? He finally stands up, pulls out this basin of water, and says, I wash my hands of this. What's fascinating about that is we still kind of use that phrase, I've washed my hands of this. Coming from this abdication of Pilate's authority. People don't wash their hands of stuff that they couldn't have ever had an influence of. They say, I'm washing my hands of it. When they specifically could do something or stay involved, they choose not to anymore. So it struck me, kind of convicting all at once, oh, my gosh, how many times has that been me? Where if you look through Pilate's trial with Jesus, he never says Jesus isn't the king. He never says Jesus is doing something wrong. In fact, he kind of says, Jesus is innocent. Pilate, in some ways, doesn't lie about Jesus through the process. So he's not the liar. He's not necessarily the bad guy or the villain. But God does give him this massive platform and this big opportunity to have an influence. And what does the crowd say when they begin to sense you might let this guy go? They say, if you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar's. And so it says to assuage the crowd, to avoid a disturbance. He gives the crowd what they want, and he ultimately lets them do to Jesus. He is kind of a sense. It's like, well, I'm not going to proclaim he should die, but you guys can go on with it, do your thing. And so you have this moment where he gives into the crowd. I'm like, man, how many times has that been me? Where I didn't exactly do a bad thing, I didn't necessarily lie, or I wasn't leading the charge on the evil. But I also had a platform, I had knowledge, I had the opportunity to influence. And. And I actually did nothing. I didn't do all. Or I didn't do all that I was capable of doing. In some ways, it was like, man, I honestly feel like I see myself in Pilot in that situation.
- [05:59]
Katie Faust
I think that there's lessons here. There's so many lessons, even as I was just listening to you talk things through, that I think a lot of us are principled and. And we like to. And. And probably can consistently hold to those principles. But then it's like when the pressure gets ratcheted up, then you really see what do I really believe, and what am I willing to lose for it? The other thing that stands out to me in that story is what did they finally do? What was it that the crowd, the hostile crowd, what did they finally. Everybody sort of has their own pressure point. So what was the pressure point for him? It was lying about who he is. You know, you're no friend of Caesar. And this guy, whether or not he had affection for Caesar, he definitely did not want to undermine Caesar. And I think that that's true, that a lot of the times, the things that finally will get to us is when people who should know better believe we are something that we are not or accuse us of being something that we are not. And the absolute. I personally am revolted when somebody believes that I am somebody that I am not. And it can lead me to want to justify or compromise because I want them to see me as I really am. So it's striking to me that that was kind of the thing that put him over the edge. And he goes, you know what? Never mind. I'm out. Okay, forget it. Forget it. If you're going to lie about who I am and something that really matters, something that definitely would have implications for his own political career and maybe his own life, that's where we see that's his breaking point. Like, that is the. That is the finger right in the chink of his armor, almost that spear in the chink of his armor. So it just helps me reflect. Like, where's my pressure point? What are the things that people can say or do to me that would get me to say, okay, never mind, I'm out of this fight.
- [07:54]
Josh Wood
Well, and what's fascinating, too, is it didn't work. Like it says, he did this to satisfy the crowd, hoping to avoid the disturbance. Okay. So he thinks, well, they could have my head for this. So he relents, hoping to have his name left off. I don't want any of this. You guys do this. Well, what happens? Of all the people in history most associated with condemning Jesus to death, he's the one that presides over his trial, right? So it didn't work. It reminds me, the mob will make demands of you, the lion slander you, and it doesn't matter if you give them what you want, it's not going to turn out the way you think it will.
- [08:40]
Katie Faust
Maybe too much of a stretch, but we have been involved in our own disturbance over the last couple weeks. Maybe you have heard, maybe you have seen, because it has gone viral, that them before us put up a few billboards, a few benign billboards in three different states in Tennessee, Alabama, and Ohio. And the billboard says, no child has two dads. No child has two moms. And all was quiet on the Midwestern front for a couple weeks. But about a week ago, those signs went absolutely viral. They have been shared by mega accounts on Facebook, on X. It's been covered by local news. It's been covered by. Not the be national platforms. And I'll tell you what, there we see a lot of those same dynamics happening. A lot of personal attacks, a lot of lying about what our nonprofit is doing, a lot of obscuring, a lot of demanding, a lot of emotional manipulation deployed to get us to relent. And it's been really interesting to see the conniption that has taken place on the left accusing us of being religious or
- [09:56]
Josh Wood
that.
- [09:56]
Katie Faust
That we are. This is anti LGBTQ rhetoric, or we're being demeaning to adoptive children and their parents. It's like they're pulling out all the stops. They're really just trying to see what's going to work here, what are the things that we can say or accuse them of or slander them with that will get them to stop. And we literally got people on camera, you know, sort of LGBT activists, saying, you need to stop. This is cruel. It's cruel to families. It's cruel to children. So, Josh, what's your response, you know, to all of these attempts to get us to change course?
- [10:32]
Josh Wood
Well, it has. It does strike me that if no one would have ever taken issue with this, how many people would have ever seen these billboards?
- [10:39]
Jen
We.
- [10:39]
Josh Wood
We didn't it's not a. We're not a, you know, $50 million nonprofit, so we can't afford to put these up all over. We picked a few places and we thought it is good to get the truth out, but because people decided, and maybe they misread, I think that's part of it, the cultural moment to say, we're going to push these down, help us unite. Well, most of the people who've ended up seeing this have said, wait, where's the lie here? Children don't have two dads, they don't have two moms. And so it's almost brought more and more attention to it. And I think, for me, Katie, it's highlighted that the basic facts of our existence. What makes you a man, what makes you a woman, what makes you a child? They're at odds right now. I think that's part of what we're arguing over. And I think people are waking up to the fact that even the most basic things are, you know, in the middle of the debate right now.
- [11:35]
Katie Faust
You know, even 10 years ago, I don't think you would have seen this level of freak out at stating something that is not religious. That is universally true around the world. But we are at a place now where you are seeing. I mean, like, we have seen dozens and dozens of leftist pages and platforms decrying this, and then all the comments to the hundreds and thousands. How do you get your culture to a place where stating a biological non negotiable produces such outrage? And the answer is through very deliberate, coordinated conditioning of an entire population. After Obergefell was legalized, we saw laws change. We literally have seen states strip the words mother and father out of their parentage laws. We have seen media change. LGBTQ representation spiked by about 150% over the last 10 years, peaked in 2022. And we saw messaging even to children, even in cartoons about how children have two moms and two dads. We saw curriculum change. We have seen now mandated curriculum or recommended curriculum by the education association that instead of just mentioning that sometimes families come in different forms, we've got curriculum aimed at kindergarteners, first and second graders to normalize two mother, two father homes and say, this is just one of many ways that people can form families and it's good, right? You should celebrate that kids can have two moms or two dads. And of course, we have seen big fertility swoop in to provide the motherless and fatherless children that are the end result of legalizing gay marriage. So you take all of these together, culture media, school curriculum and our technology. And that is the only way that you can get an entire population to have this kind of over the top response to something that is a biological fact. And so that's what we need to do. We need to get back to the place where we are reasserting biological reality in all of these spheres. We need to retake the law. We need to create great art and media that shows the goodness of mothers and fathers. We need to fight the big fertility industry that is seeking to sever children from their mother or father in the name of gay liberation. And we need to retake the schools or pull our kids out of the school.
- [14:10]
Josh Wood
Well, I think this is just the forecast of where we're going. I think for a long time people had the ability to basically make whatever traffic true, felt good, felt inclusive, felt diverse. And I think this is the time now to fight back for basic definitions and truth.
- [14:27]
Katie Faust
Well, that is what we do with them before us. Josh, so grateful that you brought some ancient wisdom to light through your substack today. If you're not following them before us on substack, we are there to equip you. Go to thembefore us.com, you'll see a place to subscribe. We will deliver to your inbox twice a week all of the tools that you need to think clearly about these issues through the lens of child protection. Stay with us. We're going to be back with a few headlines next.
- [15:02]
Josh Wood
Welcome back to Them Before Us on American Family Radio.
- [15:06]
Katie Faust
Welcome back to Them Before Us Radio. I'm your host, Katie Foust, founder and president of Them Before Us, here with my executive director, Josh Wood, to talk through a few stories that truly threaten the rights of children. The first is threatening their right to an intact, unmedicalized body. And the other is threatening their right to life and their right to their mother and father through mandating IVF coverage. But first, let's talk about this story out of the University of Minnesota, where scholars are launching a transgender doll project for four year olds. Four year olds. They say it is built to help children tell their stories and see themselves represented. My gender dolls promote resilience, confidence and joy through structured, engaging play. Josh, tell us about these dolls.
- [15:58]
Josh Wood
This is gross, honestly and honestly reprehensible that this is aimed at such a young age. But this if the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health. It's this my Gender Dolls project, which has customizable dolls marketed as a therapeutic tool for clinicians and educators working with children as young as four kids select interchangeable internal and external genitalia clothing and accessories to help them visualize their anatomy and gender. The project has sustained criticism, including from the American College of Pediatrician. Questions also persist about the public funding. The projects received some innovation fund prizes. I mean, some private donation funding. I mean, you can kind of. This, this doesn't smell. Pass the smell test. This is a progressive funded idea, pseudo taxpayer funded. And it's probably not a coincidence that it's Minnesota. This is Tim Wall's home territory where he has proven, I feel like even since the election, I can double down on being progressive. You thought I was progressive before. Watch this. I'm going to do some of these things, like these swappable and removable genitalia dolls that we can teach our four year olds just how easy it is to just look different, to become a boy, to become a girl, which Katie flies in the total face of the detransitioners who say, look, I'm on the other side of it now. I'm dealing with massive wounds. I'm sterile. I can never get back to the way I was. And I need to, you know, be a warning for the children that are being preyed upon now that, that you can never go back. Once you do this, and you will, this will not fix your problems. I feel like that message from the detransitioners is exactly the opposite of what these dolls hope to portray to these little impressionable children.
- [17:56]
Katie Faust
My kids are all teenagers and young adults now, so they are clear thinking about the differences between men and women. And they have gone through the full Faust regime of understanding how transgenderism and its four stages of transition each harm children. From the social transition, where the child just identifies as something else, to the puberty blockers, where you chemically halt development, to the cross sex hormones, where you will destroy a child's sexual function and endocrine system very often through these, this chemical cocktail off label. And then finally the gender surgeries that amputate healthy organs for cosmetic purposes. But Josh, your kids are young. You've got little kids. And part of bringing children up is teaching them about the world and as it relates to humans. There are four categories that children tend to put people in because all of us are going to look at somebody and figure out how to understand them. And when kids are little, they're sort of four different buckets. There's adult and child, and there's man and woman. And the immediate judgment that all people make conscious or unconscious is putting everybody in one of those buckets. Are they an adult, are they a child, are they a man or are they a woman? This is instinctual for kids, right? This is something that they immediately are going to try to categorize who they are with. And what this doll seeks to do is say you actually can't believe your own eyes. What you see, what you're trying to order in your world based on the kind of interactions that you're having and the very self evident understanding of the, the dichotomy within humans, especially as it relates to male and female. Irrelevant, unimportant, malleable. How do you think the. Tell me about the damage that you think this is going to inflict to children who are just starting to grasp the importance of and difference of men and women.
- [19:56]
Josh Wood
I just think it's confusing. That I think is at that age you need incredible clarity, you need incredible. The ability to articulate how different men and women are and help people understand their roles. And then as you grow up, sure there is room to talk about kids that are struggling with their gender, that are, that do feel like they're having a dysphoric event or that there's time and place to do that in, in nuance as they get much, much older. Targeting 4 to 10 year olds. And I think the challenge for me is how confusing it is to make it seem like it is an option. That there is something that, like there is something as. That you can do called a sex change, that you can become a boy or a girl. That stuff will just wreck the black and white minds of little kids. And, and then you now multiply that when they go into schools and they talk to their peers about it. I mean I have little kids in school and when one kid gets a toxic idea and then tries to go tell other kids about it, I mean we see this with a million examples that I won't share here because I don't want to spoil any of these things. I'm thinking about holidays and things like that, traditions. When one kid has an idea and starts to tell other kids about it, it can really ruin each individual kid's perceptions. And then they go home and tell their siblings and you get a chain reaction. It's like a virus. What is this trying to do? It will spread. It was difficult on a little mind. When children should be coming to adults especially this will be administered by people they think are doctors. It's like, man, that really ruins the trust. It ruins the. Even with parents, it ruins the safety they feel knowing they're going to get truth from these People, institutions, places.
- [21:52]
Katie Faust
And I think that you. You nailed. Actually creates the confusion that these people are supposedly trying to treat that. A lot of times what we have seen is this rapid onset of gender confusion tends to take place around middle school and in groups. Typically, kids who are just welcomed and joyously received as their maleness or femaleness maybe expresses itself in some atypical ways, those kids are going to be fine. But when you start to introduce the idea that maybe atypical interests are actually a sign that you were born in the wrong body, that is when these kids are incredibly susceptible. So these dolls, what are they communicating? They're communicating that if you step out of line at all as it relates to these superficial gender stereotypes, if you're a boy that likes pink, if you're a boy who's interested in ballet, if you're a girl that would wrangle. That would like to wrangle cattle, that actually. Maybe you were born in the wrong body. And what do you need to do? Well, these dolls tell you you need to swap out your organs, you need to carve off your breasts, you need to. You need to carve off your.
- [23:11]
Josh Wood
There's so many examples, right? It's. It's horrific because you can't even euphemize it. I mean, it's like.
- [23:17]
Katie Faust
And you can't do it when there might be kids listening. So the children playing these dolls cannot even hear me describe what these dolls would mean for their own bodies.
- [23:25]
Josh Wood
Absolutely.
- [23:26]
Katie Faust
But this is cruel. You know, so often what the left does, especially as it relates to sex and gender and life, is it gets the victim wrong, and therefore it gets compassion wrong. So they think that it's compassionate to validate a child's fantasy that they're actually the opposite sex. What is cruel is telling them that their physical body is an obstacle to their true self, when the reality is their physical bodies are good, altogether wonderful, and it is their mind that should conform to the body and not the other way around.
- [24:00]
Josh Wood
Well, and worst of all, do you think Tim Walls is going to be around in 15 years to walk with this young woman who transitioned first socially, got a breast binder because that's not considered a surgical intervention by many. Ruined her breasts to the point where they pretty, you know, in her mind, had to be taken off because they looked so bad, and then now took drugs and sterilized herself. And at 22, realizes that she was just a tomboy, meets a man that she wants to have a family with. And you're going to look back at the seven or eight important figures in her life that influenced her parents, who her parents listened to and didn't speak up, the families around them that didn't intervene. And suddenly she's now going to be told, hey, I think we had that wrong, man, but we were doing the best we could. And yeah, you can't have children now. I mean, not to mention the damage to your body, the mutilation, but that is so sad. None of these bureaucrats, these ideologues are going to be around for that child in 15 years. They're picking up, I mean these are, they're cashing in their grants, they're cashing in on their pharmaceutical deals to, to push these drugs and surgeries and are going to walk away. It's a one time intervention. See you later. Not, not the damage this child's going to have to live with for 60, 70 years.
- [25:33]
Katie Faust
And they're cashing in on validation from people within their own circles who still believe that the way to express your progressive bonafides is to uphold this lie that a man can become a woman and a woman can become a man. I think so much of this is about these elite circles where these luxury beliefs show everybody that you're on the right side of history when the reality is there are child victims on the other side of this. That takes us into our second story where some of the most pro abortion Democrats have proposed a right to IVF Act. We're talking about Patty Murray, unfortunately from my state, Tammy Duckworth, Cory Booker and Chuck Schumer. Okay, so these are some of the biggest names in the Democrat party and they're proposing a bill that would make IVF a nationwide statutory right mandate, employer sponsored and public insured coverage of fertility benefits. Expand this in the military, and the military has a very generous health insurance package, but it does not cover IVF services and it does not cover the use of sperm or eggs, freezing or purchasing or use. And they're doing this all in the name of reproductive rights. Now does that ring a bell to you? Does it ring a bell that when somebody says reproductive rights, what does, what do you typically think of, you think about abortion. But guess what? IVF is the flip side of the abortion debate. It is both, both of these issues. The baby taking industry of abortion and the baby making industry of IVF are two sides of the same child commodifying coin. Both of them say adults can decide if children live or die based on their wantedness. If you have an unplanned pregnancy and the child is unwanted, you can violate their right to life and force them out of existence. If you are creating an embryo or 17 through IVF and the child is very wanted, then you can destroy as many embryos as you want or separate them from their mother or father and force them into existence. So we spend a lot of time talking about and educating people on IVF because it victimizes children as it relates to their right to life and the right to their mother and father. And Democrats understand that these two things go together, abortion and ivf. Josh, why doesn't the right understand that these two issues are connected at the hip?
- [28:08]
Josh Wood
Well, it does make the progressive line of thinking does make sense. At least they're consistent. It's the most adult centric way you could think about this issue. They have accepted and are open about it. A child completely comes into existence at the whim of an adult. I don't care how old it is, nine months, one month, we decide that's the adult centric view. And quite frankly, they're just taking their position to its logical end. I don't care if it happens in a lab. 17, 20, 25 embryos. You're not going to scare me like that. Mindset of complete commodification before birth. Okay? They're expanding their view to include in vitro and natural conception. That in their minds the baby is completely disposable now. Well, you take it after birth too. Again, they're extending their line of thinking to say we're will decide what, you know, in what manner a child comes into the world and with what parents. And could be one parent, could be five parents, could be two men, could be two women, could be a man and a woman. They don't have it. It completely depends on the buyer, the adult in the situation. And so ivf, make no mistake, the expansion of it is has one goal in mind. It is to enable this access to child creation for all people because they can assemble through this international supply chain any number of sperm, egg, surrogate and womb and create children. What kills me and what you're tapping into right now is why is the right on board with this? This is not consistent with conservatives. It is consistent with the human condition that when things bump up against what we want and it requires great sacrifice of us, like we may not be able to have children, which is heartbreaking, infertility, heartbreaking. But we have to stare in the face that some situations do put us in a position where we do have to make a hard choice. I can continue to pursue a family, but I know it will now come at great increased risk to the life of the children I am trying to bring into existence. So I have to choose. We can lament the choice. The choice exists. I'm having trouble with the conservatives who are acting hypocritically to their pro life positions. What we've always wanted to conserve life and protect the unborn and the most vulnerable, the progressives. I understand completely.
- [30:41]
Katie Faust
If you're confused about ivf, let us help you. I think two years ago we did more interviews, wrote more articles, produced more content about IVF than any of the other topics that we covered because we understand that it's kind of a new topic for a lot of conservatives and even Christians. We all know and love children who have been born through ivf. The reality is that only a fraction of children that are made in a laboratory, that are made in vitro, that are made in glass, in a glass petri dish, are going to be born alive. The vast majority are going to be eugenically screened out of existence because they didn't have the right kind of genetic markers or they didn't make the grade. They were deemed non viable, which is a subjective standard. They were the wrong sex, they had the wrong eye color. Like clinics encourage you to mass produce so they can weed out the ones that you don't want or they don't want. So this is an area where there needs to be no confusion among Christians and conservatives. We cherish the children made through ivf. We just wish that all IVF embryos were afforded the same level of protection and offered the same chance at life.
- [32:01]
Josh Wood
If you'd like to comment on the show, email commentsembeforeus.com hey everyone.
- [32:08]
Sam
Welcome to here for the comments of them before for us podcast series where we dive into the comments and questions we get online and unpack the children's rights perspective that we have done before us use to answer them. I'm your host Jen and I'm joined by Sam and we are here for the comments. Sam, what did you see on the Internet that was blowing up this week?
- [32:27]
Jen
Yes. Okay, so Live Action posted a video. I'm assuming they found it on TikTok and the video was a mother. She wouldn't consider herself a mother, but she was somebody who donated her eggs when she was like 19. Now she' like 38 or older and she got a text message from the child that was conceived after she donated her eggs, basically saying like hey you're my mom and I would like to have a relationship with you. And she posted it on TikTok and basically just said, like, this is creepy. Why is this girl reaching out to me? I'm not her mom. The mom is the one who gave birth to her and raised her. And I don't want her reaching out to me. This was supposed to be anonymous. She wasn't supposed to know who I am. And the comments are wild, so you definitely get both sides. But what I also thought was sad is this girl who was reaching out, she's 19 years old and it was just this weird thing of like, she's 19. She's reaching out to this woman who she. That is her biological mother and her mom is the one who donated her eggs when she was 19. And it just shows, like, 19's such a kid. It's not a kid, it's an adult. And like, they should be responsible. But at the same time, when these, these, you know, companies go to these colleges and try to talk to 18 year olds and 19 year olds and 20 year olds and offer them money to donate their eggs, it really shows that these women, they're. They don't fully understand what they're doing. You know, if she could be 38 years old and be like, oh, I wasn't expecting this. And it's like, then you didn't understand what you were consenting to because this is. That was part of the gig. That was definitely a possibility. You're a mom. And so I thought it would be fun to get into some of those comments.
- [34:17]
Sam
Yeah, I remember seeing the video. I don't remember if it was an Instagram reel. And what kind of shocked me was that it was the mom herself recording screen, recording the conversation and sharing how she had reacted to this girl reaching out to her, her daughter reaching out to her. Because what's crazy is when people post things like that, we talked about this with the divorce posting or posting that you're leaving your husband or your wife or I'm gonna, I don't care about full custody of the kids. I'm gonna go find myself. Okay. People are recording themselves and posting themselves doing this because I disagree. Of course. You know, our cancel culture thing of people getting recorded out in the community having an argument or doing whatever and they try to go and destroy someone's life. No, we're talking about people who are recording themselves and putting it on social media because they think everyone's going to agree with them, right?
- [35:10]
Jen
Yep.
- [35:11]
Sam
And so, yeah, her, I think full disclosure, like, she kind of walks it back later. Right. She says she does agree to meet with her, give her some information or something. So I'm sure she felt her initial reaction was probably because of defensiveness, feeling, oh my gosh, I'm caught out. Yeah, like, I didn't expect this to happen, like you're saying. But the problem with the anonymous donation idea is that it's false. It's not if they're going to find you, it's when they're going to find you. Because the technology that we have, the DNA, Ancestry.com and things like that. So this lady, like you're saying she was probably recruited out of college to donate her eggs, sell her eggs, and so she didn't expect what was going to happen. That's. It's kind of a rude awakening. I think a lot of these anonymous donors that think they're anonymous are going to get. But what are some of the comments, let's see, you said Ali V. Stuckey posted about it?
- [36:09]
Jen
Yeah, that's kind of where, where I looked first. Honestly, I was, I was a little shocked by how many people actually did agree with the mom and said, like, that's weird, that's creepy. Why is she doing that? Because I felt like recently when it came to like any kind of topic we cover, a lot of people have been on our side lately. You know when you have two gay men saying like, oh, we hired a surrogate and they don't need a mom in their life, you know, there's a lot of like average people out there now saying, no, that's wrong. And so I was really hoping more people would be like, on our side and feel for this girl. But there was a lot of like, just cruel comments. So I'm going to read just a couple. We could kind of react to them, but so it said. So this girl felt empty and disconnected from a woman she calls her mom. And she thought that reaching out to a stranger with whom she has no connection other than a doctor donated ovum was somehow a fix for her mental health non crisis. And so much to unpack there. Because it's like, even if she didn't feel empty or disconnected to, to the person who raised her, even if she felt loved and fully accepted and fully like, that's my mom, it's so natural for children who were adopted or children who, like, that's not their biological mom to also feel like something's missing or want a connection with the person who's actually their biological mother. So, like the fact that she also felt disconnected with this woman who was supposed to be her mom all this life, like, isn't that also telling you something? Maybe Biology is a bigger deal than, than we let it be. It's not everything, but it's not nothing. I guess that's where the pendulum swings. You know, a lot of people will say, you know, biology doesn't matter. Love is love, that's all you need. And then some people will say biology is everything. Adoption's gross. Or like some awful comments. And it's like there's a balance in between those two, you know. And so yeah, makes me, it makes me really sad because I think she got a lot of comments like that. Like that's weird. Why would you feel like that's your mom? And it's like because it is her mom. Can we stop denying reality?
- [38:25]
Sam
Right? Yeah. One of the comments under that says does this 19 year old have a father? She is not a complete orphan. Adopted to the family. Where does the empty and disconnected come from? And we just wrote about this on our sub stack, guys. It comes from being separated from that person who's half of you. I almost said separated at first but like this gal doesn't didn't experience that because she was donated or sold. Well, we don't know who she was raised by. Dewey in particular. We don't know if she was taken by gay dads or.
- [38:56]
Jen
Well, my understanding is that she had like, like her mom raised her. My understanding is that it was like her, she the mom basically. I don't. It's not a surrogate because she wasn't giving the baby away but she just used donor. It was donor conception. So the mom just used a donated egg.
- [39:14]
Sam
Yeah, her birth mom and social mom were the same woman, which is better than nothing. Yeah, but she lost out on that genetic identity piece. And so we think about this girl looking in the mirror every single day, depending on what she knew or didn't know, how soon and thinking, I wonder if she looks like me. I wonder if she has ever thought of me. That was, that's another thing that I was thinking of with this, this lady reacting so strongly against this girl texting her. The girl has thought about. The mom has thought about this woman probably, you know, ever since she could probably start thinking about, yes, this woman thought about I sold some eggs in college. So if perhaps, and maybe she's not, maybe she's not real with herself to actually consider, oh, maybe it did occur to you that you have children somewhere. But that's the difference, right? The kids looked in the mirror. The girl has thought, do I have my mom's nose, my mom's eyes? I wonder what my grandparents Are like, I wonder if I have cousins and he had an uncle. So when someone's like, he probably had a family. Doesn't love make a family? Why are you feeling empty and disconnected? It's just proving our point is like, you guys are pretending you don't understand or you're refusing to accept that. That genetic identity biology, like, there's something about it that matters to people and you really don't. A lot of people don't acknowledge it unless it's happened to them. Or you're like, adoptive parents really acknowledge this. Or a lot of step parents do a great job acknowledging this. They're like, yeah, I'm stepping into some brokenness, but I can't fully replace what you've lost. And when adults understand that and treat the kids with that understanding, the kid has a lot more space to feel and heal and feel connected, I think. But that's the problem with our culture. It's too uncomfortable. We would have to change our behavior if we acknowledged it. So they don't want to.
- [41:04]
Jen
Yeah. Instead they just tell the victims of these things to just be quiet and not talk about it and be grateful you're alive and be grateful that you had somebody to raise you, you know, Another comment said, your parents are the one who, if you're lucky, raised you. Donors are simply donors. They don't want you. They never did. And I just had this conversation with somebody not that long ago where I basically was saying how sad it is when two gay men, you know, do donor conception and hire a surrogate. And someone was just like, well, why does it matter? The mom didn't want them anyways. And it's like to purposely create a child whose parent doesn't love them and doesn't want them. That doesn't matter to you? That doesn't sound wrong. Like, we all can acknowledge in the day to day, like, if you weren't thinking about donor conception and you weren't thinking about surrogacy, if you said like, oh, this, this, these parents don't want this kid, isn't that a tragedy? We would all agree that that's horrible. It's heartbreaking. And like a lot of people, the left especially will say, you know, if you don't even know for sure you want kids, then don'. Have them. Because every child deserves to be wanted, you know, and they'll usually use that to promote abortion and say, that's why you should have an abortion. Because if you don't want the child, then that child that's really sad for the child. And they don't. They shouldn't even be alive. Yet you champion something that purposely creates children who aren't wanted by their parents. Like, it's so backwards and like, conflicting. It's so wild.
- [42:31]
Sam
This tweet says, I agree that buying an egg to conceive a child is wrong, but I also believe motherhood is defined. Raising and loving a child. Her feelings of emptiness are more likely the result of life experiences than not being raised by her genetic parent. And of course, it's. You can't quantify necessarily, like why some kids. Someone might say to this, I was raised by my biological mom and dad. They were married the whole time. They had a pretty fine marriage. I felt disconnected from my parents. Okay. So there could be lots of reasons people do or don't experience different things. Well, we will have kids who. For someone who's like, I have gay moms. I don't care. I never cared about a dad. I didn't want one. It's like, okay. But the reality is, what we have to look at is the social science data. We look at the studies where kids record how they felt. The my daddy's name is donor study we've talked about, you know, 60 something percent say I think about my donor, like my dad every day and wonder if. So okay, we're going off of things like that. So when one person says, I never think about him, I don't care. It's like, okay, that's probably true for you. But for 60ish percent that answered these things, it's not true. But, you know, so motherhood though, and your ability to connect with someone is not just a feeling. And we've had stories of kids who've been donor conceived who express a lack of connection from the parent before they knew anything. Yep. Because if, if you grow up knowing that my mom's not my. By my biological mom. Okay. And maybe you're like reading into it some disconnect. But we have people who are sharing they experience that my dad acted like he didn't really like me, but he liked my siblings. And then they learned that you're not the biological kid of your father, but his other kids are. And you're like, okay, it all makes sense now. So it's hard to quantify the lack of connection when a parent. When you're not biologically related to that parent and they're interacting with you. So it's interesting. Yeah.
- [44:42]
Jen
Another comment that I thought was interesting is she said, who gave this girl this information? They should be sued. That woman gave an egg to help with conception. It's like, okay, she sold her baby. Agreements.
- [44:58]
Katie Faust
Yeah.
- [44:58]
Jen
Gave an egg. Agreements were signed. This is very much her choice to not want to mess with that in her life. Where are the girl's parents in real life? Presumably, she. Presumably don't know if I said that she has a father, right? And it's like, okay, well, first of all, you can't assume she has a father because a lot of donor conception and a lot of surrogacy is done with people where it's like, they. Single moms are doing it now, Gay parents are doing it now. Like, you don't know that she has a father in her life. And also, we don't know if the father is also a donor egg or, you know, donor sperm in that situation. Like, people don't realize how dark this whole system is where, like, you can literally Mitch and match and grab a child from, like, any mix of people and you don't know who they're going to end up with. And then also this idea that, like, who gave her this information, it should be sued. And it's like, you know, you realize that you could just track your DNA at this point, right? Like, no one even had to give her this information, most likely, because, like, she could just go do a DNA test. And if her mom's DNA is also in the system, that's actually what's been happening in the last, like, what, few decades now that we've had like, 20. What is it, 23andMe?
- [46:05]
Sam
Yeah, I don't remember. 23Me.ancestry.com. yeah.
- [46:08]
Jen
Yes. And so, like, literally, people are. There are people who didn't ever get told that they were donor conceived, who were finding out later in life that they are donor conceived because they're related to so many different people they've never heard of before. And we're finding out that there's these massive donor pods of siblings where it's like, oh, I have 80 siblings. I have 20 siblings. I have. And that's when they realize they're also donor conceived. And so this idea that, like, the problem is not the system, the problem is that she found out about the truth is so alarming to me because. And it's like, well, she signed an agreement. Okay, well, the daughter didn't. The daughter didn't sign any agreement saying, I never get to meet my mom and know who my biological mom with. And for a hundred years of my life, I never get to reach out to her, even if I know who she is. No one signed that. The adults did. So that's, you know, that's a big part of what we do where it's like we come at it from the child's perspective of like, they didn't agree to that at all.
- [47:07]
Sam
Yeah, that's absolutely true. And there's a number of the very typical comments. Are you glad she was born, though? Shouldn't you at least be? You were born. We talk about kids get gas lit, gaslighted all the time with. You should just be happy you're born. She didn't ask for this. You need to respect her privacy. It's fine what she did. You just need to people two people have said you need to drop this fantasy of meeting your quote, real mom and just be happy with what you have. And so interesting. Like, we don't live in a culture that says be happy with what you have unless it's people trying to tell kids, don't make me conform my life to your needs. Just be happy with what you have. And so it's kind of funny. So that's all the time we have for today. Thanks everyone for joining us on here for the comments. We will get back to you next time with more crazy things we see online. Hope you'll join us.
- [48:00]
Jen
See you.
- [48:12]
Katie Faust
The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast do not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.