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The Dark Side of Commercial Surrogacy · Restoration Spotlight

• [01:00:00:02 - 01:00:18:19] Thousands of American babies are born each year to mothers not their own in a country they won't be raised in. Pedophiles are buying surrogate children. Chinese communist elites are birthing an entire Manchurian generation. And all of it remains legal. Why? Find out today on Restoration Spotlight. [01:00:22:13 - 01:17:23:09] Everyone wants to see more American babies. Pronatalist policies are a core part of the movement to make America great again. But when it comes to IVF and commercial surrogacy, the devil's in the details. My guest today is Samantha Flum, senior investigative researcher for Restoration News specializing in life and abortion reporting. Sam, lovely to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the time. I want to start with a complicated and very controversial topic because I love those. Commercial surrogacy. Most people think of the phrase IVF in vitro fertilization. This is obviously a very complex topic and it's stirring the pot with pro-lifers for a very good reason. Now there's a lot of positions that we could take on this. What I'm most interested in is what is the controversy as you see it? And in the past you've compared IVF to eugenics. Why is that? So explain what IVF is and what the big deal about it is. So IVF or in vitro fertilization is basically the process people will use if they're struggling with infertility, struggling to conceive a child, where they basically will harvest eggs from the mother, the father's sperm, and then they will create a child basically in a petri dish like a science experiment. In a lab they will create a child. Those embryos will be frozen if they're unused. And much of the time those embryos will also be tested. They'll undergo genetic testing to see if they will be quote unquote viable for implantation. Unfortunately what that effectively is eugenics as you mentioned. Eugenics is basically the process of tailoring a baby's genetic code to fit whatever you have predetermined to be the best result. So I mean that might be, oh we're just trying to see if this baby's viable and will implant or it could be, I want my baby to have blonde hair and blue eyes. Maybe I want my baby to be tall when they grow up. Maybe I want them to be some kind of superstar athlete. Of course we might not be there yet as far as tailoring genetics but I feel like we are kind of on that slippery slope right now where we're headed in that direction. We already know that there have been cases of genetic editing, human genome editing in China. There was one case where a man actually went to jail. We went to prison for editing baby's DNA before they were born. So this is very concerning. It's basically, again genetics, it's basically eugenics and I think that we should honestly be very much more concerned about this than we are as a society right now. And I want to talk, there are some a lot of Chinese parallels and examples here and we'll talk about some in the United States. But for people who've probably heard the term eugenics, you know it comes from two Greek words, means well-born or beautifully born, right? But actually this is a very old topic so one of the things that I appreciate about you bringing this up in this way is that you're actually bringing a mid-20th century concept that we could trace back to before the Nazis. I mean actually in some ways it goes back to Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Goulton who coined the term eugenics in the late 19th century. And you're saying there's a through line from back when Margaret Singer and people from that half of the 20th century are basically saying, okay you southern Europeans or you mentally unfit was the phrase they'd use or want to forcibly sterilize you so you can't have children so only the you know superior Arians or whatever phrase they want to use can have children. You're saying we're basically living in an updated version of this given the technology that's advanced that could allow us to not only map the human genome but actually to edit it. Yeah so what this all kind of goes back to again as you mentioned the eugenics movement 1950s and even before that really we saw with Margaret Singer and Planned Parenthood is this idea that the human race needs to be cult and perfected and that we should weed out people who for whatever reason don't fit this this definition that this elitist group has decided is fit for reproduction whether it's because they're poor or if it's because they're a minority race or if it's because they've got some kind of genetic defect or disability they think that those people don't deserve deserve to exist basically and have kids yes so what they did what Margaret Singer did for instance was she created Planned Parenthood and she decided we're going to start pushing birth control in these areas and we're going to start pushing abortion in these neighborhoods that's why for instance if you look if you look at a map of all the Planned Parenthood clinics or across the country they're usually focused in very low income heavily black areas because at the time she was very adamant that black people should not be allowed to reproduce they called it the Negro project of the south yes exactly it was but they didn't want people to know i mean you can look up her own writings on this for a long time Planned Parenthood tried to pretend like that wasn't the case that wasn't really her purpose but eventually even i think it was in the last 10 years or so they did eventually have to acknowledge yes unfortunately our founder was a racist she was a eugenicist and we are on we are sad and upset about that but we're unfortunately they're still going to keep killing babies we're not going to do anything about it we're just going to pretend like we've changed when they really have it yes virtue signaling i think is the proper work exactly yes yes you see this is all very fascinating and in some ways you know the reason why this strikes people especially christians and conservatives so you know in the fields is because this is really like a pre-christian way of thinking you can go back to the ancient spartans and this is very common i mean throughout the ancient world right actually think the germanic tribes as barbarians they were like one of the only groups that didn't practice this kind of infanticide but they take these babies that they didn't want they'd throw them off a cliff or they'd leave them out in the forest to be to die you know starvation or whether it be eaten by wolves or anything it was the early christian church that one of the things that distinguished itself was not just charity with for the widows and the poor but they'd actually bring in these babies left in the roman gutter and they've raised them as their own they'd adopt them and that is so now implanted in the if you books you know excuse the phrase the dna of the christian west now that when you see movements to lose that and to go back to it to before then it's very very creepy in a way that is almost indescribable for most people living in america and i think one one aspect of this and this includes abortion as well this idea that you know you should if if a person if you're going to have a baby and for whatever reason that baby might inconvenience you in some way you should just get a get rid of it get a do away with it i mean it's basically child sacrifice is what we're talking about um and people don't like it when you point that out but that's exactly what we're talking about in the ancient days these ancient civilizations they would sacrifice their children to the gods because they wanted a better harvest or because yes because they they had some other aim that they thought you know their god was going to help them with well it might be that women today aren't going to the planned parenthood and killing their baby in the name of malak but they are doing it in the name of their god which is themselves they worship themselves they think that they are in charge and they get to decide what's right and what's wrong and that you know this this concept of well this is my truth this is my personal truth you don't own the truth the truth is not ownable there the truth is a person and his name is jesus christ and if he says something is wrong it's wrong and unfortunately we have a lot of people today who don't believe that and so they think that they can just kill people indiscriminately and that it's not a problem because well that was my choice so it's like well your choice was bad yes that's right according to an objective moral standard i like i appreciate something you said i want to hone in on it about people don't want to talk about it they don't want to name the thing and you notice how clinical abortion clinics actually are right it's it's everything to do with not seeing the consequences of the murder the infanticide that you're committing uh you know it reminds me all the time of if you go back to the punic wars i know this is going to sound crazy but rome fighting the carthaginians in north africa rome surrounds the great city of carthage and the carthaginians who worshipped mollock who was a phoenician god their response is mollock will bless us if we kill all of our babies and there is a massive sacrifice of thousands of children of parents who are willing to die to defend their own people killing their own people believing this is going to bring salvation they weren't ashamed of that fast forward to today people are rightly ashamed of it even atheists secular materialists they've got consciences because they grew up in a predominantly christian society that has taught them from birth this is wrong they know it's wrong that's why it hurts and that's why they try to hide it so all you're saying is i don't have to convince you truly on a gut level that this is evil you know it's evil that's why you want to hide it right so you know preach what you practice basically exactly yes so let's go into some specific examples here so you've pointed out and i want to start with the united states before we talk about china here you've pointed out very disturbing examples that i don't think most pro-life christians are aware of of pedophiles and gay couples who are abusing surrogacy laws to adopt children so let me give you some examples i have here brandon keith riley mitchell who is most disturbing a man with four first names this is a gay man convicted of sexual abuse of a minor and possession of child pornography these are felonies but he was allowed with his partner under pennsylvania law to gain custody of a child via surrogacy and you have pictures of this now if he was trying to do this through the foster care system my understanding is he wouldn't be able to get away with that but this was perfectly legal yes so one thing that a lot of people will mention when you talk about surrogacy they'll compare it to adoption and they'll say oh well it's just like adopting a child this is this isn't child trafficking this is well you're just adopting a child in the same way as a traditional adoption but there's a huge difference there which is that adoption is a massively vetted industry and it's not really even an industry i mean most most today is done through non-profit organizations it's not you know people just selling babies for profit like it might have been you know 50 years ago or so whereas with surrogacy the problem today is that these people are completely unvetted nobody is checking into their background nobody's making sure that these people aren't child predators trying to find an easy way to abuse a child for the next 18 years right so when you compare the two it's important to note that with adoption one for most private adoption agencies the parents or the biological mother will actually have the option to hand pick the parents that she wants her child to go to most of the time yes again those parents are highly vetted their background checked there's an entire extensive process that they have to go through before they're even considered eligible to adopt and at the very least if we're not going to ban surrogacy and i know that that's a controversial idea for many people i understand the desire to want to have a child i understand the struggles of infertility i had a miscarriage myself i wouldn't wish that on anyone but we have to also be pragmatic about what what we're actually rubber stamping when we allow this to continue now other countries actually they heavily they've completely banned commercial surrogacy like china china has even banned surrogacy completely and that by the way in a country that is facing serious demographic problems in the future yes yes they've banned surrogacy but note that all of these you know wealthy chinese elites are coming over here and they're buying children through commercial surrogacy who are us citizens which you know creates a whole other scope of national security concerns if those children you know grow up and decide to become ccp spies what are we going to do yes um but again like there there are so many countries that have banned commercial surrogacy or at least heavily regulate it and we haven't done anything at the federal level all of the regulation is state level in our country and so if you want to have surrogacy for altruistic purposes there are some countries that do that and that's a conversation we could have but right now essentially what we are doing is opening the door to child trafficking in our country that is completely legal and nobody is doing anything about it so it's not just you know homosexual couples or pedophiles or anything it's also there's problems of mixing up children now you and I are both parents like we've been to the hospital before there's a good system in place for not taking home somebody else's kid right but you've documented examples i think there's one in florida that happened not too long ago of people bringing home the kid that they didn't think they were getting via a commercial surrogate and then discovering potentially years or months later that wait a minute this isn't the child that we thought we were getting yes it's it's heartbreaking is this family i believe they were based in orlando they came out of orlando and they went through the process of you know becoming eligible and ready to conceive via ivf they you know thought everything was going according to plan the baby implanted all was great they go the whole nine months woman bursts her baby and it comes out a completely different color from her and her husband that's a surprise yeah completely different raised child so i mean it's pretty obvious from the get-go this is not my baby right and so they did a paternity test i believe to confirm that it wasn't either of their children a dna test and they did the results came back and sure enough it's not related to either of the parents um so now i believe they're actually they filed a lawsuit against the ivf clinic and they're trying to track down the baby's actual biological parents yes um but the flip side of this is also not only did this family i mean they birthed a child they bonded with this child and treated it as their own and came to love this baby still as their own and now they're faced with the moral dilemma of do we keep this child that's not even biologically what about her parents you know do they want this baby that's actually their child yes but the other side of that is also well if we got somebody else's baby yeah who got our baby so now they have to find out and they're basically going on this you know they have to i think that's the purpose of the lawsuit is basically to find out all of the other clients at this clinic did any of them end up with a child genetically related to them or somebody else's child so it's it's opened up this huge can of worms that now and it just kind of really calls back to the main issue here with ivf which is that we are experimenting with playing god and it's this is what happens when you do that unfortunately yeah it's almost like a like a non-consensual adoption situation right or like the most nightmarish adoption situation you could possibly conceive of because that child is perfectly innocent he or she didn't do anything wrong but you now have two sets of parents potentially and a potential sibling you're not even related to that and nobody consented to any of this they didn't realize what they were getting so what i'm getting is because some people would listen and they go well that's an outlier come on you're focusing on on one problem but you're saying actually there's a through line here of there's not enough recognition of these problems there's probably not enough regulation i mean far short of just banning definitely not enough regulation exactly so this is a bigger problem in other words this is not a couple isolated incidents and do you get the sense that more and more people are becoming aware that there's problems with this um i wish i could say that i i don't think we're there yet i think right now especially we see on the national stage in politics because you know on the right we're very concerned about abortion for some reason people have connected abortion and ivf and they say well i'm gonna oppose abortion but just so you don't chop my head off i'm gonna be super pro ivf and prone it's like that's great i'm i'm happy that you're prone natalist and that you want more babies to be born because that is a problem i think we have today people in the millennial generation and younger are really putting off having children or in some cases just swearing off kids completely because they've been brainwashed into thinking being a parent is somehow the end of your life that it's just so miserable and so unworth it that they're just gonna you know spend their entire life traveling and making lots of money and focusing on me and it's selfish and it's a very self-absorbed self-centered lifestyle and again i i understand also that not everybody should be parents there's some people out there who would not be good parents but i think today [01:17:24:09 - 01:21:45:18] this this idea that you know being pro-birth pro-baby means you must support every form of conception even those that have very clear ethical and moral concerns it's we need to take a step back i think and look at this from god's perspective as christians if we on the right we're very pro christian we need to be thinking about this not just from a perspective of well what will get me what i want as a parent but also what would jesus do what what do you think god has to say about this and the reality is the bible does not say it's okay to corrupt the human genetic code in fact that's one of the reasons why god flooded the earth in the first place was because people had corrupted the genetic code with the fallen angels the nephilim right so we we have to think about this from more ways than just the selfish perspective of well what's going to get me what i want the fastest yeah just a funny aside on that it the text actually says in genesis that noah was pure in his generations and you can interpret that as he was a really righteous man you could also interpret it he he didn't have that corrupted dna too perfectly reasonable read of it that a lot of the church fathers took you know just a simple question since you brought this up is becoming a parent a terrible decision i mean is it something you regret no absolutely not that my biggest pain i mentioned that i have a miscarriage that is the my biggest heartbreak my biggest regret is not that i got pregnant and lost that child it's that i lost the child that i desperately wanted and i think i mean yeah it would be lying to say that parenting is easy right i mean we all know that it's not easy to give up things that you wanted for your life or ideas that you had for what you know what your perfect life would be because when you have a child it it's no longer just about you it's about what can what do i have to do to protect this innocent child and raise them to become a morally upstanding citizen who's self-sustaining and so yeah it requires sacrifice but that doesn't mean that it's a terrible thing you know self-sacrifice is actually one of i mean look at jesus he gave up his example exactly that is the ultimate christian example if we are to be good christians we need to realize that it's not all about us and that yes we've been ordered we've been directed to be fruitful and multiply so yes have kids you can decide how many kids you want to have please do so before you get pregnant not after but this idea that you know being a parent is just it's more trouble than it's worth you only a person who's never had a child could feel that i know i know i used to think i was such a selfless person and then i had kids yes exactly so going back you know one final bit closing out the surrogacy discussion here you've already alluded to this but let's talk about china so um i believe his name is shubo a chinese billionaire this is a man who's fathered at least a hundred children via american surrogates because of course as you said that's illegal in china over a hundred children that he's fathered via surrogates now these children under current u.s law are u.s citizens right because they were born here to u.s surrogates their mother's a kind you know in a sense right here that means they could vote in american elections but as far as we know they're all going to be raised in china so you're creating what peterschweitzer is called a manchurian generation of and this is not a hundred kids we're talking about thousands of children who were born every year almost all of them to ccp officials because this is a very expensive thing yeah it's almost like there's a plan here and i'm not going to ask they ask you to speculate on the plan but how widespread a problem is this i mean well i can't say how widespread it is necessarily because i don't know you know how many people are actively engaging in this but maybe nobody knows right exactly i think that's that's the biggest concern is we don't know what what the purpose is here i mean okay if you want to be a parent again i understand that desire that's great but do you need a hundred american children to satisfy your desire to be a parent like that that's a little concerning to me i mean and why are they all american can you name their names by the way right well that's the other thing it's i mean [01:21:46:19 - 01:24:46:14] how like how many children do you have in one location being raised by countless nannies how many of them actually get to ever see their father's face right yes i mean that's its own form of trauma right there for these children but we don't know what exactly what the purpose is here why they're breeding effectively all of these children what is the goal is the goal to turn them into ccp spies is it just to sell them off to the child sex slave trade i mean what what is your goal with this and we saw this even in the homeland in california there's that couple that was found to have some 20 children that they'd created through surrogacy and i believe they were chinese or at least they were they're both chinese yes um i think they're chinese immigrants and so they had like some 20 children living with them all of them or most of them were under the age of three so this wasn't even like something they'd done over a long span of time this is something they did in a very short span of time telling women surrogates all over the country oh we just haven't been able to conceive we have we just want one child not these surrogates completely unaware that they already have you know dozens of children living with them in their home and so they tricked these women into thinking that they were just doing this altruistic thing helping them oh i just want to help you have a child turns out they have dozens living in home in their home with them and one of them the only reason we found out any of this was because a baby was actually so abused in that house that the baby was taken to the local hospital and found to have like head injuries massive head injuries that looked like it was came from either the baby being shaken or beaten oh my goodness and so thankfully the local police were alerted by the hospital and they went and looked into this and they found all these kids in this house and they check the the security footage and find that they're all being raised by nannies and the nannies habitually abused these children like physical abuse and they're still yes i guess the jury's still out on why on what the reason was for all of these children being purchased but there's the obvious concern that there could be you know child trafficking involved here and where do you get the money for that i mean you don't know the answer but where would you get that's hundreds of thousands of dollars exactly that's my question too because i mean they were with according to investigators they were actually running the surrogacy operation for which they recruited these women so they had this surrogacy company that they were running out of their mansion home but how were they if they were the clients right right where are they getting all of the money from they're not paying themselves to find surrogates they're not paying themselves for this so where is all this money coming from i believe it was also found that they are connected to a gambling ring locally it gets better yeah gambling and drugs drug [01:24:46:14 - 01:25:07:20] Before we continue, you should know about Independence Magazine. It's where we take the ideas we cover here and go deeper. Reporting, commentary, and analysis you won't find anywhere else. And you can read the latest issue right now, free at restoration-news.com, and sign up to get future issues of Independence Magazine delivered. Now, back to the show. [01:25:07:20 - 01:25:39:22] We can only speculate on why they'd mix all of these different things. I mean, children with gambling and drugs and it's disturbing no matter what the answer is. But clearly this is happening at least with the awareness of the CCP and given the scale and the amount of money involved. It might be financed by the CCP. Who knows? But we're seeing some kind of asymmetrical warfare going on here and none of us in the United States seem to really understand why. And that's the creepy thing is the not knowing why. [01:25:40:22 - 01:26:09:18] Yes. So, Sam, I want to tack to a different issue. So you are probably the most versed reporter I know of, certainly the one that I know of, maybe in the country on the abortion pill. You've dug into the origins of methopristone, which is, of course, the drug in the abortion pill going way back decades into its development in France and how it got introduced into the United States 26 years ago. Last time you were on the show, we talked extensively about the dangers of the abortion pill. [01:26:11:11 - 01:26:20:10] Bring our audience up to speed. What is the abortion pill? Roughly how does it work? And just give us a briefer on how it came to America and how long it's been available. [01:26:21:13 - 01:26:51:08] So methopristone is basically it's the first drug in the chemical abortion regimen. There's two drugs you take, methopristone first and then misoprostol. Methopristone works in that it basically cuts off the baby's supply of the hormone progesterone, which is what it's a pregnancy hormone that keeps the pregnancy going, keeps the baby growing. Without that hormone, basically the baby's heart stops beating, baby dies. Then the mom takes the misoprostol, which initiates contractions, expelling the baby's dead body from her uterus. [01:26:52:14 - 01:27:01:20] It's been approved in the US since I think about 2000 by the FDA, but it actually originated back in France around 1980. [01:27:03:04 - 01:27:39:23] Doctors basically experimented until they found a way to do this. They pretended like they were trying to find a medication for other hormonal imbalances. But in reality, they were actually looking to create a way to abort a child through this means. What I've noticed about it too is going back, the research that led to the abortion pill began actually with research into the birth control pill because it's a similar hormone blocker and a lot of that original research for the birth control pill, of course, was famously developed with funding from Margaret Sanger. So this goes a long way back. So how did it end up in the United States? [01:27:41:07 - 01:27:48:05] The long story short basically is that the Clinton administration forced its entry into the United States. [01:27:50:08 - 01:28:05:05] Under the Reagan era, the Bush era, they were both very pro-life. And so they had kind of nixed any kind of research into abortion drugs. But then Clinton entered office running on a platform that was very pro-abortion. [01:28:06:05 - 01:28:23:15] And he, at the time, the drug hadn't been tested by the FDA. So there was no way for it to actually be approved quickly. And so Clinton, once he became president, decided that he was going to find whatever means necessary to get this drug to be sold in the United States. [01:28:24:16 - 01:29:37:01] And that was actually a challenge, as it turns out, because the drugs manufacturer didn't want to sell it in the United States. Interesting. Didn't even want to sell it in France, actually, because at the time, they had seen so much blowback from producing a drug that kills babies. And this company, by the way, had ties to the German company HESH that had produced the Zyklon B gas that was used in the Nazi concentration camps to kill people. So at the time, now they're coming out with a new drug that's basically another form of genocide. You're going to love this one. Yes. Yeah. I know the last one was a dud, but this one's great. Yeah, exactly. They come out with this new drug to kill more masses of people. And people were rightly outraged. And there was huge backlash across Europe. And after experiencing that, just for a few weeks, the company that produced the abortion drug, Russell Ucloff, decided, you know what? Actually we're going to pull this drug because we don't want any part of this anymore. Wow. So it was actually, I think, only just days after the drug was approved in France that they pulled it. But then France's health minister basically came back and said, no, you're going to sell this. For them to sell it. Right. [01:29:38:05 - 01:29:48:18] And they said, no, you don't have a choice in this matter. And the drug was, or the company was partially owned by the French government, so they didn't really have a say. So they said, OK, fine. I guess we're selling abortion drugs now. [01:29:49:22 - 01:31:31:22] And so they still didn't want to bring it to the US because they knew, especially in the US, there was a much bigger pro-life population at that point. And so they knew that there could be boycotts of all their other drugs they produced, and they didn't want any part of that. So the Clinton team basically strong-armed them into creating this deal with the Population Council. And long story short, they donated the formula for this drug to the Population Council. Population Council gives it to Danko Laboratories to manufacture and distribute. And years later, in about 2000, I think, is when it was finally approved by the FDA. But it wasn't without, again, backlash across the US. And we'll talk about the intervening years since then, but I just want people to understand that the company that develops this drug at port, who knows how much money into research and development, treats this thing like it's a warhead that could go off any moment. And basically hot potatoes it into the hands of this pretty left-wing pro-abortion Population Council, which you've reported on has its origins in the eugenics movement from the 1950s. I mean, their entire purpose was to depopulate, right? They wanted to curb the overpopulation crisis that they believed was happening. We now know that's not the case. Birth rates are dropping dramatically, especially thanks to abortion pills. But for decades, this was a major movement to, you know, we need to do everything we can to stave off overpopulation of the earth, which is not a problem at all. Yeah, exactly. How backwards does that sound now? We need a population bomb, actually. [01:31:33:10 - 01:33:04:22] Okay, so it was approved in 2000. 26 years later, the Obama and Biden administrations have systematically gutted all of the original safety protocols. We don't have to go through all the specifics here, but give us a picture of what did the FDA require, you know, for any woman who wanted to buy it? Could they buy it? Did they have to buy it in person? Could they get it for the mail? What was the safety regimen like then versus the way it is now in 2026? So they had a long list of restrictions. They called them the REMS, which is basically just the FDA's restrictions for using this drug. Safety protocols. Which not all drugs approved by the FDA require this protocol, but they recognized even then that this was dangerous because you could only use it for a certain period during early pregnancy before it started to get incredibly dangerous for women. So they approved it with the caveat that there would be these restrictions in place that prescribers would have to follow and that patients would have to follow, which included things like you would have to visit a doctor in person. I think initially it was like a requirement of three visits. First visit, you would go consult with your physician. They'd give you the first pill. You would take it there in the office with the doctor. And you'd have to come back for a second visit to get the misoprostol, the second drug. And then after your abortion has completed, 14 days, I think it was, yeah, two-week visit was the third visit where you would have to do a follow-up with your doctor and make sure that there were no complications and that everything was good. [01:33:06:00 - 01:33:16:17] Now unfortunately, we have seen pretty much all of the meaningful restrictions that were initially put in place have been rolled back. Why? Because it's a safer pill now? Yeah, exactly. It's not safe. [01:33:18:11 - 01:34:07:12] We've known that. The reality is that this drug is actually dangerous, more dangerous even than previously known. As you mentioned earlier, we had our study that we put out last year showing, according to medical claims insurance data, that actually more than one in 10 women who take these drugs will experience serious complications. And that's not just like normal bleeding, nausea. We're talking about hemorrhaging. We're talking about sepsis and death. These more than one in 10 women are experiencing life-threatening complications from this drug. And it's unfortunately, nobody seems willing to actually do anything about that at this point. We've been raising the alarm, but unfortunately, even the Trump administration hasn't done anything yet to fix this situation. Yes, yes. [01:34:08:19 - 01:34:21:01] That's stunning. I mean, it's not stunning that the left would open the floodgates for this. So this is called chemical abortion, correct? As opposed to surgical abortion, which is what most people think of happening in a Planned Parenthood clinic. [01:34:22:04 - 01:34:49:13] It seems to me that the entire abortion industry has shifted, especially since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 by the Dobbs decision. But even before that, right, a decade ago, it's been shifting increasingly away from surgical abortion, which is more expensive, takes longer, is safer, but has to be done in person, obviously. Right. So, chemical abortions that can be done at home, you know, bought through the mail. Do you see this? [01:34:50:19 - 01:35:05:01] Are these a few instances or is this a massive industry-wide transformation? Oh, it's massive. I mean, we're talking, we went from surgical abortion being the norm to now we're at a point where 63% of abortions are chemical abortions. Two-thirds. Yes. [01:35:06:04 - 01:35:42:11] 63%. So most women who are considering abortion are opting for a chemical abortion. And unfortunately, because under the Obama administration, the Biden administration, they have now changed the rules so that you don't even have to see a doctor. You don't even have to consult a physician now to get this drug. You can just go online, order it from some gray market website, and they will send it to you. No questions asked, really. I mean, that you may fill out form, but there's no proof required. You don't have to prove you're female. You don't have to prove you're pregnant. You don't have to prove you're of age to be ordering these pills. Wow. That's how far along your pregnancy is. [01:35:43:20 - 01:36:09:06] Anybody, even male abusers, looking to poison their girlfriends and kill their unborn children. Well, surely that would never happen. Oh, no, never. Unfortunately, it's happening all over the place now, even in states where abortion is illegal. We're seeing women being targeted by their boyfriends, ex-boyfriends. They're slipping these pills into their drinks unbeknownst to them. They take a sip, and then within an hour, they're hemorrhaging on their bedroom floor. [01:36:10:10 - 01:36:39:12] Like we saw that in Texas, for instance. It was a case, it was a Marine, actually responsible, at least allegedly. It's named Christopher Cooprider. He basically spikes his girlfriend's hot chocolate with abortion drugs. She has no idea. She's made it clear to him, she does not want to abort her child. She wants this baby. And he's been pushing her and pushing her. Finally, he just decides, "You know what? I'm going to take matters in my own hands." Spikes her drink, then leaves. She leaves her alone in her house with her other children. [01:36:41:05 - 01:37:45:06] She's left to hemorrhage in her home. She's hemorrhaging, bleeding out. She has no means of getting to the hospital. Then she had to struggle to find someone. I think she said she eventually found a neighbor who was willing to drive her to the hospital. She had to have her mother come and watch her babies at home while she goes to the hospital and finds out her baby girl is dead. My God, I mean, there's no words for it. I can't help but think, Sam, that when you listen to Jane Fonda and the feminists of the 1960s and 70s, especially the pre-Roe V. Wade world, the backroom alley abortions and you want to coat hang hers. All that language, 60 years later, we're looking at, "Yeah, go potentially bleed out on your bathroom floor and then flush the remains of your child down." That's the bright, happy future that we were promised. This is the back alley. This is the virtual back alley. We're talking about, you want to talk about dangerous abortions. Women are taking these pills, passing a baby into their toilet, and then passing out on the floor because of blood loss. I mean, that was what happened to Abby Johnson. She talks about it now. [01:37:46:07 - 01:38:08:02] Decades ago, she had an abortion. She had a chemical abortion. She had worked at Planned Parenthood. She had no idea of what this would actually entail, what it could possibly do to her. She passes her baby in the shower. She has to be the one to dump it in the toilet herself and flush it down. Then she basically passes out in the tub and then she wakes up to a tub full of blood. [01:38:09:07 - 01:38:21:01] This is what women are experiencing when they take these drugs. This is not, quote, "safer than Tylenol." I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know anyone who's taken a Tylenol and passed out in a pool of blood. Goodness gracious, no. [01:38:22:02 - 01:39:58:08] Well, yeah, exactly. You and I are both children of the 90s. Our whole lives. It was the norm that, yes, there's abortion. There's too many abortions. But it's going down pretty much year after year after year. What you see is certainly under the Obama administration, but really the second Obama administration, which is when the first big loosening of these laws begins, you see abortion start to tick back up. As you've reported, the percentage of abortions that are done chemically via the abortion pill has ticked up to now it's at least two-thirds. Because of a couple of years ago, I don't think anybody knows the real number now, but there's no reason to think that it's not going to continue to grow, given how cheap and easy it is to obtain this. So in other words, it's pretty clear to see these policies, the loosening of FDA safety regulations from 26 years ago really did make it easier for people to get abortion pills and they're doing it. I mean, is that accurate? Yes. I mean, we're seeing that now. We're seeing, unfortunately, one thing I think that a lot of people were, at least on the pro-life side, were hoping for when the Dobbs decision came down was that, "Oh, we're finally going to see a real decrease in abortions," that now states can regulate it for ourselves. We can decide, "You know what? We don't want that in our state." And naturally, we thought that would mean a decrease. In reality, it's been the opposite because of this abortion by mail scheme, which the left had actually put into motion before the Dobbs decision even came out. They knew it was coming. They were ready and unfortunately, we weren't. Oh, which is so much of the conservative movement, unfortunately. [01:39:59:17 - 01:40:15:23] Okay, so what you're saying is effectively, it didn't matter that the Supreme Court said there is no national right to an abortion in the Constitution. Effectively, there is a national right to abortion in the sense that you can obtain it even if it's completely illegal in your state. [01:40:17:02 - 01:40:17:10] That's unbelievable. [01:40:18:11 - 01:43:01:21] So, Sam, you mentioned a phrase earlier, I want to hone in on next, "gray market." Okay, so you're talking in this context about buying illegal abortion pills online, is my understanding. Expand on that, please. So, because of the Dobbs decision, because of this plan of allowing abortion by mail, we now have this expanding, basically, a gray market of abortion pill providers online, where you don't have to have a prescription. You don't have to even speak or see face-to-face a doctor. They will, again, with pretty much no questions asked, just say, "Hey, you want abortion pills? Here you go." You couldn't even buy them. There are some sites that are open about the fact that they don't care if you're pregnant or not. They actually encourage you to purchase these pills in advance, basically stockpiling drugs that kill people. They're okay with it. Whether you're male or female, go ahead. Order the abortion pills. We'll send them to you. Now, they claim they don't send them to men, but I mean, men are obviously getting their hands on them, so they're not doing a very good job of making sure men aren't, and abusers aren't doing this. Are these at least pills that the FDA is regulating? No. I mean, there's no way they can regulate them, because, again, they're not getting them from doctor's offices. They're ordering them online, and some of these are coming from overseas versions of the drug that haven't even been FDA approved. We're talking, you know, manufacturers in India, in China, in other countries. We don't even know what's actually in these drugs. They're just being marketed as FDA approved, and in reality, they're not. Yeah, that's why you've called this an illegal drug cartel. Right. And, you know, I think you've made a really great, sophisticated argument that the president is very rightly fixated on defeating illegal drug cartels that kill many, many hundreds of thousands of people in this country, fentanyl being the biggest one, but all sorts of opiates and cocaine, et cetera. This is killing tens of thousands of people. I mean, this is a huge problem. And I've seen photos, you know, that you've shown of Vietnamese script on a box that is obviously a generic knockoff of a progesterone blocker. There's only three pills of mifepristo, mifeprex, you know, two generics that are authorized for sale in the United States by the FDA. So in my mind, what you basically have is you have, you know, trustworthy countries like communist Vietnam or Russia or India. We're basically saying, trust us, we're going to act as the FDA. I promise you, this is okay. And the left is basically giving this tacit approval. Yes. I mean, if you actually do any of the research yourself into these companies, for my personal, [01:43:03:10 - 01:45:47:06] to see what would happen, I actually reached out to one of these companies. They have like, you know, their little chat bots on their site and be like, "Oh, do you have any questions?" So I started asking questions. I said like, "What is the manufacturer of these drugs? Are they FDA approved?" They refused to even answer the question. They actually blocked me. Oh my goodness. They, like, they stopped communicating completely because they could tell that I was actually asking questions that they didn't, they were not in a position to answer unless they wanted to end up in court. Oh my goodness. Yes. Well, and some of these have received cease and desist letters from the FDA. Yes. So the FDA, I mean, this is, this actually goes back before even the in-person dispensation requirement was removed. I mean, back in 2019, under the first Trump administration, the FDA was sending out cease and desist letters to groups like Plan C, 8-axis. 8-axis, yes. Yes, sending them these letters saying, "Hey, you know, you are effectively flooding our country with drugs that we have not approved." And so it is kind of concerning, again, that they were willing to do that in 2019. And yet now that we have all this additional information about how dangerous these drugs are, even the ones that are approved, we're still, nothing is being done to change that. Nothing is being done to protect women or their babies. Okay, you say nothing is being done, but we're so used to inaction, surely it would take an act of Congress to change that? I mean, they could. Congress could change it, but it's not necessary. The Trump administration has all the tools they need now. I mean, it's ultimately, first of all, it's already illegal to mail these pills. It is. How was that? The Comstock Act, I think it was 1873, I think. It's the 1800s law, basically an anti-obscenity law that bans the mailing of anything to do with abortion, but it also specifically states that abortion pills, drugs to induce an abortion, are illegal. You cannot send those by mail in the United States. And under the Biden administration, what they said is, "Well, we know what the law says, but we're not going to enforce it because we are deciding that it only applies if those pills are intended to be used for illegal abortion." Which you can never prove. Right, exactly. How do you know? How can you prove someone's intent, necessarily? The Biden administration put that in place and say what you want about the Biden administration. At least they addressed the elephant in the room. The Trump administration has not. They have not even spoken about this blaring problem for the fact that they are allowing this to continue. I asked them myself. I reached out to the Justice Department and said, "Hey, what is your position on the Comstock Act?" They basically just said, "No comment." [01:45:48:09 - 01:46:13:09] That to me is very concerning because we're allegedly supposed to be pro-life on the right. We're supposed to be for life, for protecting innocent children. And if we can't even uphold laws that have already been passed by Congress and already been signed into law, what are we doing? And it's the president's directive under the Constitution to execute laws passed by Congress. Correct. [01:46:14:09 - 01:46:56:21] What you're saying is, set aside Comstock for a moment, right, even though that's massive. Just on the safety regulations, what you're saying is a lot of that actually doesn't even take Congress. It's the FDA that could change pretty much all of those because it was the FDA that undid the original regulations that it itself put in place a quarter century ago. These were the FDA's own rules. They can easily change them anytime. Yeah, nobody forced them to do that. Exactly. Without every ability to change this back since Trump's been in office and they haven't, we are seeing a lawsuit right now that is basically taking them to task for that and saying, "Hey, women are dying. Women's babies are dying without their consent. [01:46:58:16 - 01:47:08:17] You really need to change this policy back." And that's what a Louisiana lawsuit is currently seeking to do is at least just to reverse that change in 2023 when it was made permanent. [01:47:10:09 - 01:48:04:19] And the FDA, unfortunately, is fighting back and saying, "We want to extend this." Now, to their credit, to the administration's credit, they are supposedly conducting an ongoing review of mifepristone safety, sparked largely because of our own research and our study. But they want basically to put off even addressing this issue while they conduct this possibly two three-year review of mifepristone safety. And that's just, it's unconscionable in my mind. I mean, that's three years of more babies being murdered. That's three years of women being forced into abortions they don't want. Three years of women hemorrhaging on the bathroom floor. And we're okay with this because of what? Because of politics? Yeah. That's not okay. Well, that, according to projections and numbers that we know, that could be three to five million dead American babies. Right. [01:48:05:21 - 01:50:09:09] And that's just under the Trump administration, which he's the most pro-life president in American history. He's done a lot that's great. That would erase so many of those gains. It's a terrible thing to do. It's an absolutely terrible thing to do. A not so terrible thing is abortion pill reversal. Now, you've written a lot about, this is a fascinating phenomenon. I don't want to call it a trend, right? But this is growing. Tell us about that. How does it work? Who's it for? What's the effectiveness? How widespread is abortion pill reversal? So I can't speak to how widespread it is, but I mean, abortion pill reversal, it's basically the opposite of taking an abortion pill. As I mentioned, mifepristone cuts off the access to progesterone. It basically blocks your body's production of progesterone. Whereas abortion pill reversal is just doing the opposite. Basically flooding your body with progesterone to counteract the effects of the drug. That way, the baby still has enough to survive and keep going. It only works though if you do this before you take the misoprostol. If you take misoprostol, your body's going to start contracting and expel that baby from your uterus, whether it's still alive or not. So you have to do it before you take that second drug, which usually you're told to take it, I believe, like 24 hours after you take the mifepristone. So you have to act quickly once you've taken this first pill, but it has a success rate of close to 70% we're finding. If you do this in time, if you follow the doctor's orders, and you take it, I think you can get it either in a shot or you can take a pill. But there are countless babies who have been saved doing this. I think Heartbeat International estimates at least 7,000. My goodness. What's the effect on the baby if it survives? I mean, I can't speak to every case, but I mean plenty of healthy babies have been born with no defects whatsoever. That's an amazing phenomenon. You hope and pray that that continues to spread, of course. Yes. So as we close out, I want to change gears to a little bit of a different topic, but one you've written about. [01:50:11:00 - 01:50:27:22] There's this fascinating trend that I noticed, I think you've seen it too, about the Gen Z and millennials returning to Christianity, right? Filling the pews in Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox churches across the country, especially after the murder of Charlie Kirk in September 2025. [01:50:29:04 - 01:51:21:18] And it seems to be coinciding with a total collapse in the transgender movement among very young people. Two different phenomena, but I do think there's a relationship here. So let's talk about the return of Christianity and what you've observed, and then we can get a little bit into kind of the transgenderism aspect of this as you might see it related to this. So I think this actually started before Charlie Kirk's assassination. They were seeing this uptick in church attendance among Gen Z, particularly Gen Z men. And I do think with the Trump administration's return to traditional fatherhood, traditional families, Christian principles, I think as men have resonated with Trump and his message, I think they've also begun to resonate more with Christianity. [01:51:22:19 - 01:53:04:13] So I think we've been seeing that for a while, but I do think also that Charlie Kirk's assassination kind of served as a catalyst to really propel that movement. We saw countless people online after his death, just people who didn't even know of him much, but they for whatever reason felt something deeply, deeply wrong when he was killed. It was a martyrdom. I mean, that's how people perceived it. Yes. And I think that's a God thing. I think people, even if they didn't know him, they felt it in their spirit that a Christian martyr had just been created. And it was heartbreaking. And so many people said, you know what? I didn't know anything about him, but I just watched some of his videos. He talks about going to church, how important it is. I'm going to go to church. I've never been to church in my life. I'm going to go. People in the droves getting baptized, buying Bibles and packing church pews. And it was so beautiful. And unfortunately, I do think that's kind of backed off a little bit since then, because there's been a lot of infighting and backbiting on the right, particularly about Charlie Kirk. We've seen people criticizing his wife, his family, all because they feel some weird gut feeling that tells them there must be something wrong. And unfortunately, I mean, it's a very unchristian way to behave, frankly, because the Bible tells us we are to be the defenders of widows. We are to be the defenders of the fatherless children. And instead, these people are attacking Charlie Kirk's family, which, I mean, you have to wonder how Charlie would react to that if he were still around, how he would feel watching people completely slander his family and friends and organization. [01:53:05:17 - 01:56:02:17] So unfortunately, I do think all of that controversy has really kind of put a stop to what could have been a wonderful thing for the Christian right. We were poised for such an opportunity to bring more people to Christ, to advance the kingdom of heaven on earth. And instead, what's happened is we've devolved into backbiting and infighting and slander and gossip. And it's really devastating to watch, honestly. I agree with you. I also think a lot of people go to the church because they feel called to it, and that's where the body of Christ meets. And I think they're just often disappointed by what they find. I was not raised in the church. And when I came to as a young man, I was kind of disappointed. I felt like I needed to be there. I did. I still do. But I'm constantly disappointed by it. It's not to say there aren't great pastors and everything, but there's a generational divide for sure. I think the church over the last hundred years is very disconnected from the culture war in a way that's not helpful. Whereas people in their 20s and 30s, you grew up in it, and it's normal. And you think of Christianity as kind of a muscular thing that informs every part of your worldviews. When you go into the culture war, you should be acting like a Christian and thinking Christianly. And you go to a church, and the church is like, "Well, we don't preach politics from the pulpit." Well, everything you do is actually preaching cultural issues from the pulpit. I would hope you would be doing that. And so I think a lot of people have kind of backed off from that. But I'm also reminded, too, that the church is always failing. And yet for 2,000 years, it's gone from victory to victory to victory, looking like a complete disaster every step of the way, because ultimately it's not men and women in charge. It's God in charge. Right. And I think it's really sad, again, to see how many people in my own generation have kind of fallen away from the church. And again, what happened late last year with Charlie Kirk, it was so encouraging for a change to see more people saying, "You know what? I really do want to explore having a relationship with Jesus. I want to see what it is all these other people have found in him, what Charlie Kirk found in the church that I've been missing." And so, I mean, I do think even though things have died down a little bit since then, I do think we can come back from that. I think we're in a position now, you know, culturally where we could still have that revival that we're all hoping for. But it's going to require us to stop pointing our fingers at each other and start pointing people back to God. Amen. One last question for you. I want to talk a little bit about the future of transgenderism, ask you to speculate a little bit. A couple of years ago, it was reported that one in four Zoomers, Gen Z, self-identified as LGBTQ, any of the above, right? 25%. [01:56:04:01 - 01:56:20:20] Now, I don't know what the very latest numbers are, but just a couple of years later, that's collapsed back into maybe half that, maybe a quarter of that. Still very high. But it shows you they were hunting for something and trying on identities more than actually living a complete lifestyle with all that that entails. [01:56:21:23 - 01:58:53:20] Do you think that that changed that kind of that cresting wave, you know, do you expect it to come back? Do you think the transgender movement has been exposed? Where does it kind of stand? And what do you think is going to happen over the next few years? I don't think there's any coming back for the transgender movement. I mean, there's people out there who are still completely entrenched in it, and they're going to try to pull people in and keep multiplying. But I think it's become so obvious to so many people, and it's been, you know, thanks to President Trump, you know, sounding the alarm on this and how crazy it is, more and more people, I think, are waking up to the point where they're realizing, you know, I really shouldn't have to tell someone a complete lie just to make them feel comfortable. Like, I shouldn't, I just shouldn't have to call you ma'am when you're a dude in a dress. I shouldn't, like, I mean, if you want to wear that dress, that's your right, you can wear what you want. I'm playing the game. But you don't have a right to force me to join in your delusions with you. You know, you can't change reality just by enforcing your will on people. And I think more and more people are getting fed up with it. They're seeing what it's doing to, you know, female athletes in sports. They're seeing what it's doing to women who are getting raped in bathrooms, people having intimate spaces completely invaded by men with bad intentions. And so at this point, we all, I think, are kind of just done, done putting up with the crazy. And are you optimistic about the future overall? I am, yeah. I mean, that combined, again, with I think this return to traditional values, we're seeing that a lot among the younger generations, women deciding, you know, actually, I'm going to forego a career and be a homemaker. I'm going to be a mom, you know, and that's okay. Do you bake sourdough, I have to ask? I do. I didn't until-- Perfect, Delia. I didn't until recently. I just started trying and I'm terrible at it. Can I just tell you, my wife was doing that like 15 minutes before the whole like tradwife thing got going. And she's like, "But I was already doing this." You know, this isn't fair. I'm not part of a stereotype. Actually, you are. Well, you made the stereotype. No, but it's, I think seeing people want to get back to that, you know, traditionalism, I think is wonderful. Especially, you know, we've had decades of feminism ruining society, frankly. I mean, there's so many aspects. I mean, it would take a whole other podcast episode to go into all the horrors of feminism and what it has done to society to destroy society. Well, we'll get it booked. Yeah, next time. [01:58:55:00 - 01:59:35:18] But it's just, it's really refreshing to see young women especially deciding, you know what, I'm going to embrace modesty. I'm going to embrace purity. I'm going to start going back to church, embracing who God says I am and not who Planned Parenthood says I am. Yes, indeed. Samantha Fong, thank you for your time. This has been so lovely. Thank you again. Thanks for tuning into Restoration Spotlight. I'm your host, Hayden Ludwig. If you like what you hear and want to join the fight to protect the next generation of patriots, visit restoration-news.com, where we publish hard-hitting news, commentary, and investigative deep dives that put America first. That's restoration-news.com. [01:59:35:18 - 01:59:35:18]