Latest / The Catholic Current / What’s Wrong with Third-Party Reproduction? (Patience Sunne) 9/8/26

Transcript

What’s Wrong with Third-Party Reproduction? (Patience Sunne) 9/8/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTagg.
0:05
We might want to do a little acknowledgment of God Almighty who gave us this
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peace and prosperity. We should have children. That didn't
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happen. What happened to us that children
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are not only seen as a financial liability but a personal liability as
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well? There is a very deep rejection of the child. I think
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the father of lies has always persuaded us in every age to see in the
0:28
child something of an attack on our pride.
0:33
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague
0:37
of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring
0:40
Christ to the world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the
0:43
Station of the Cross Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic
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Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
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and charity. As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father,
0:54
Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint
0:58
Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit
1:02
of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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Well, friends, you know, I taught medical ethics for many years,
1:09
and I specialized in beginning of life issues. The reason
1:13
for that was quite simply that if you get beginning
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of life issues right, nearly every
1:21
other moral issue falls into place.
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And if you get it wrong, almost no moral issue
1:30
fits or, or coheres. You, you disrupt the
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entire jigsaw puzzle. And I have a guest here
1:38
today who I think is, is going to agree with me strongly. We're going
1:42
to talk about the distinction between adoption and third-party
1:46
reproduction. They are not the
1:50
same, and we've got to talk about what the significant differences are
1:55
and how really nature and the author of
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nature have intended for children bond
2:03
with the people who conceive them, who ideally should be married
2:07
to each other, preferably before the conception.
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She is the engagement director for a very important group called Them Before
2:15
Us. Patience Sonny, welcome to The Catholic Current. Thank you.
2:19
I'm glad to be here. Patience, I know that the organization
2:22
that you represent called Them Before Us says you're unapologetic
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supporters of adoption. I certainly am as
2:31
well. It is a lifeline to children who are in
2:35
very great need. And that is very different
2:39
from third-party reproduction— surrogacy,
2:42
IVF, etc. Now, the children born of those
2:46
processes are as human as anybody else, but the process
2:50
is morally different in a very significant
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way. Can you begin to tell us about that, please? Yeah, absolutely.
2:57
So adoption exists to mend a wound.
3:01
Every adopted child has lost something. And,
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you know, more and more people recognize and acknowledge that when they
3:08
interact with the topic of adoption. They understand that a child
3:11
who's been adopted, that adoption process began with a
3:15
very profound loss for that child. Third-party reproduction,
3:18
on the other hand, exists for the adults involved. The loss occurs
3:22
for the sake of the adults who have commissioned this child through a
3:27
third-party reproduction. And because of that, the loss is very rarely acknowledged.
3:31
By the people in the child's life. They, they talk about it
3:35
as, oh, it's such a great gift, rather than recognizing and understanding
3:39
that the child has lost something profoundly important.
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And this is at the level of biology and genetics.
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I mean, the child starts bonding with mother in,
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in the womb, gets to know her, her, her, her smell,
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gets to know the sound of her voice, her rhythms, her feelings,
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etc. There is immediate recognition.
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Now, sometimes with adoption, a tragedy
4:05
occurs, etc. But with third-party reproduction,
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there is a transaction. That separation,
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which ordinarily we wish didn't happen,
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becomes in fact the goal.
4:22
Am I reading that correctly? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
4:26
It's a very transactional process. It's a manufactured loss.
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Um, and like you said, there, there is that goal of that separation,
4:34
often for the sake of serving the, the modern family. You know,
4:38
if you have an arrangement with, quote, 2 moms,
4:41
you don't want to involve the dad. So the sperm donor is not wanted
4:45
to be a part of the child's life. If you've got a situation with 2
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dads, then the surrogate and the egg donor don't fit into the
4:53
family structure that they've recreated for themselves. Or even
4:57
when you have a heterosexual couple pursuing third-party
5:01
reproduction, they're not looking for a third party to be
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present in that relationship and in that child's life, even though
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that third party already is a profound part of that child's life.
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So in saying, no, don't be part of the child's life,
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they're, they're saying the child must lose someone who is
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deeply important, be that their birth mother, their genetic mother, their genetic
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father. Um, they're taking something out of that child's life,
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right? There's a choice to separate the
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child not only from the birth mother but from, from lineage,
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uh, from identity, from ancestry,
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etc., etc. I've— I read somewhere, and I agree with it, that the
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desire to have a child is not a medical condition.
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And even though science, or as the cool kids would call it
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today, the science, can give you a child on
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demand, that doesn't mean that
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it's okay. What led up to this,
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in your view? I mean, we didn't start here,
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but it seems to me that things accelerated rather quickly. I mean, certainly,
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this technology didn't exist when I was born or my sister was
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born, But in relatively short
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order, a business, an unregulated
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industry, if you will, grew up to have children
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available as lifestyle accessories. How do you think
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we got here? Yeah, I think that there's a number of factors.
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One is that, you know, the, the science outpaced the
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ethics. And when, when third-party reproduction
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was introduced, there were not enough people who said, hey, this is probably
6:45
not a good idea. It was framed as something deeply compassionate
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done for couples who are struggling. And I think
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kind of like you mentioned, that there was a bit of a mindset that
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was shifted from children have a right to their mother and father,
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and instead it was adults have a right to a child.
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And then I think that has kind of snowballed with kind of these modern
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family, family redefinition ideas where the
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presence of a child in the home, the ability of 2 adults to
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have or acquire a child reinforces kind of the
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social legitimacy of their relationship. And I think that's also a
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fact that has been driving this. You know, you see that in
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the pressure on faith-based adoption agencies to
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bow to social pressure to allow same-sex couples to
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adopt through those agencies despite their strongly held beliefs.
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You see that in this idea that it's a
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matter of inequality if 2 men or 2 women can't access
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third-party reproduction in order to build a
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family for themselves. It's become a matter that's entirely focused
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on the adults rather than on the needs and the loss
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that the children will go through if that process is forced on them.
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Right. And, and I, I'm glad that you mentioned the idea of, uh,
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that process being enforced on them. I mean, no one
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would— things would have to go terribly wrong
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for you to want to absent yourself from your mother. And certainly that's not something
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that, that an infant, uh, or a newborn can, can choose.
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And I want to emphasize the transactional, uh, part. I Here's,
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here's my concern. There are people who say, look, I paid
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a lot of money for this child. I don't want the child I
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paid for to be broken. So I know there are contracts
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that stipulate that say in the first trimester, if the child
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has some abnormality or dysfunction, the birth
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mother is obliged to abort the child, or she's quote unquote stuck
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with it. And with, with the expenses. Doesn't that make the
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child a product in someone's science project rather than a
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human being? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, not in a way that
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says that child has less dignity because of the nature of their conception,
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but the, the fact of the matter is the process treats them as
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less equal and less dignified than their naturally conceived peers.
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And there's actually a very high-profile case going on right
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now with A couple from California commissioned a surrogate in
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Alaska, and at 20 weeks, they discovered that the baby had a
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heart defect and they demanded an abortion. And she refused and
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fled to Texas. And now there's an ongoing legal dispute about
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who has custody of the child. And also,
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you know, the baby's in a situation where the adults who
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commissioned him are also the adults who demanded his death. And they're the
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ones who are most likely going to have custody, um, which is
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a very troubling situation. And like you said, it treats the child
10:03
as a product. And if the product doesn't fit the specifications,
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then there is this, this incentive to destroy those little
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lives. And, and I have to wonder, I mean, if, if that couple who,
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I don't know, put in the order for a child, you know,
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bring the child home and raise a child and I hope come to love the
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child You know, the child goes to the attic one day and finds newspaper clippings.
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I still use that term because I'm that old. What is he gonna think?
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You know, the people who bought me wanted me dead,
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and because I'm somehow defective,
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and only accepted me reluctantly, and ripped
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me out of the arms of the woman who gave me birth and who didn't
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want me murdered. What does that do to a child's psyche?
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What does that do to his worldview? Friends,
10:54
we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Patience Suni. She is
10:57
from— with an organization called Them Before Us. You,
11:00
you should check out their very good work. We're talking about the, the difference
11:04
between adoption and third-party reproduction.
11:08
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. We're talking about
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the profound moral differences between adoption and third-party reproduction.
13:02
My guest today is Patience Sonny, of a very important organization
13:05
called Them Before Us Patients. Recently you
13:09
published an essay talking about what researchers are calling
13:13
the primal wound. Would you tell us about that, please? Yeah,
13:16
absolutely. So the primal wound is a term that was coined by Nancy Barriere.
13:21
She was an adopted mom herself, and she
13:25
published a book under the name The Primal Wound, kind of pushing back
13:29
on the idea that adoption doesn't make a difference
13:32
to the child if the baby is adopted shortly after
13:37
birth. So this was kind of coming out of the baby scoop era of
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the mid-20th century where the operating assumption was that a
13:44
baby relinquished before she could form memories would carry no
13:48
wounds from the loss. And Nancy Berrier started
13:52
to push back on that. She said, hey, I'm noticing things in my
13:56
own adopted child, seeing additional struggles that they're dealing with.
14:00
And that kind of led to a
14:04
better understanding of the fact that the bond between mother and child
14:09
begins well before birth. When a baby is
14:12
born, that baby recognizes her mom.
14:16
She knows mom's smell. She knows mom's voice.
14:19
She's been responding to mom's emotions in the womb and
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has this deep connection with exactly one person, and that is
14:28
her mother. And then when that child loses
14:33
her mom, even in early infancy, that leaves a lasting mark.
14:38
It disrupts attachment. It leaves a loss often
14:42
that the child doesn't even understand or have a way
14:46
of expressing to the adults in their lives. And so
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a better understanding of this led to a more trauma-informed
14:54
approach to adoption, including children who were adopted as infants
14:59
who had previously kind of been put in this category of, oh, they're probably fine.
15:04
And that's led to some really great research on,
15:08
you know, the importance of maternal fetal bonding and also just
15:12
the differences in outcomes. Between adopted children
15:16
and their peers, which is not to say that adoption
15:20
is a bad thing, but to recognize that those losses that occur
15:24
do have ongoing ramifications. There's kind of a paradox
15:29
when it comes to adoption where adoptees are typically
15:33
raised in very stable, well-resourced homes,
15:36
often slightly above the average income level school,
15:40
and yet they have 10 times the higher odds of severe
15:45
emotional disturbance versus kids who are raised by their married
15:48
biological parents. They have 4 times greater odds
15:52
of reported suicide attempts. And so
15:56
we're seeing these outcomes even among kids who,
16:00
on paper, everything looks great. They should be absolutely
16:04
thriving. And yet, because of that early loss and
16:08
the ramifications of that, they're dealing with struggles that a lot
16:12
of their peers are not. And I think, and that's the same,
16:16
and again, I think it's heroic and noble to adopt a child,
16:19
to offer a child a lifeline, a rescue,
16:23
if you will. But it seems to me to be even more awkward,
16:28
a social faux pas, if you suggest that children
16:31
who are born, you know, via surrogacy and IVF
16:36
by, by third parties, uh, they also have
16:41
a need for the biological mother. Uh, I know
16:45
that sometimes they search for their biological father, uh, as well.
16:49
But, you know, one of the, the lines stood out for me in your essay
16:52
was they said they have no permission to mourn.
16:57
That just as, you know, adopted parents wondering, gosh, is it a rejection
17:01
if the kid asks about, you know, who was mom, who was dad.
17:06
But it's understandable. But isn't it considered almost
17:10
gauche to suggest that a child who, who is come—
17:14
who comes into the world via third-party surrogacy,
17:18
uh, is also going to ask those questions, that somehow you're just
17:22
ungrateful? Yeah, absolutely. And that's where the logical
17:29
follow-through just stops for these children born via third-party arrangements because we recognize
17:33
the significance of that loss when the child is an adoptee.
17:37
And yet when that loss is planned,
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so often they're not given that permission,
17:44
that space to say, hey, something's missing in my life.
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And if they do express it, it's upsetting to
17:52
the adults in their lives. They'll often get pushback and reaction, oh, but you're
17:56
so loved, you're so wanted, and you should be so grateful,
18:00
instead of saying, you're right, something is missing
18:04
and that shouldn't have happened to you. But it's really hard
18:08
to look a child in the eye and say that the thing that you did
18:12
is something that shouldn't have happened to them. Um, and I think that's why
18:15
there's so much more reluctance in those third-party arrangements And
18:19
also, especially with surrogate, you see kind of an unwillingness
18:24
among researchers to follow through with that logical next
18:29
step. The research on maternal fetal bonding,
18:32
a lot of it was done with animal models because it would be unethical to
18:37
separate an infant from her mother. But we know that human
18:40
children are so much more capable of attachment, bonding,
18:44
emotional intelligence, than a monkey or a rat. And yet when
18:48
it comes to human children, we're dismissing it. Um, and we're
18:53
saying, you know, because of the amount of wantedness in
18:57
this arrangement, the child can't possibly be experiencing a loss
19:01
that they should be allowed to express. We see that that roots
19:05
someone's right to life and existence
19:10
in terms of whether or not you flick the switch to wanted
19:14
and unwanted, because we know what can happen in the
19:18
United States to children who are quote-unquote not wanted.
19:22
It's all just— it's just gone. I remember when I was a chaplain in a
19:26
hospital and a child was going to be delivered at a very unusually
19:30
early age, and they had a room full of all
19:34
sorts of medical specialists and millions of dollars
19:38
of equipment, and I was all ready with holy water for an emergency
19:41
baptism. And I said, you know, all this happens because somebody
19:46
else said, yeah, I want this child to live.
19:49
But in the very same municipality, if someone said, no, we don't want the child
19:54
to live, the child could have just been killed outright.
19:58
Aren't we heading out onto very thin ice when
20:03
we start to tell children you're valued only
20:07
if you're wanted. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
20:10
And I think, you know, that's the fact that in
20:15
third-party arrangements, the line that children received is, you were so wanted,
20:19
is kind of a— an attempt at creating a contrast to adoption
20:23
and say, oh well, the, the adopted child wasn't wanted by
20:27
their parents, but the, the donor-conceived child, that loss wasn't
20:31
significant because they were wanted. But the reality is, you know,
20:35
the adopted child's parents made the choice to preserve
20:38
their life and to place them in a safe and loving home,
20:42
you know, regardless of what other circumstances were involved, regardless of how
20:45
that came about. And also, like you said,
20:48
wantedness is not a metric of someone's value,
20:51
someone's dignity, someone's rights, or whether
20:56
or not something significant and harmful has happened to them.
21:00
Wantedness does not take away the fact that that child lost
21:04
their birth mom, that they lost their genetic origins,
21:07
that they lost their connection with their family history, that they probably
21:12
don't even have accurate access to their family medical history.
21:15
These are all significant losses with tangible
21:19
effects. And to simply slap the sticker of wanted
21:23
on top of that and say that fixes it really disregards
21:27
the reality of what those children are experiencing.
21:31
And there's research indicating that outcomes for
21:35
donor-conceived kids are sometimes even worse than those of their adopted
21:38
peers, not just compared to their naturally conceived peers being
21:42
raised by their biological parents, but children who have experienced
21:46
a similar loss, but children who
21:50
whose parents acknowledge that loss, because the adoptee's parents
21:54
are willing to talk them through it. And often the donor-conceived children's
21:59
parents are, are significantly less willing, and in some cases even withhold
22:03
the information, um, that they were donor-conceived. And, you know,
22:06
if the, um, if the child, you know, grows up and learns
22:10
how IVF and surrogacy works,
22:15
he might ask, hey, Do I have any siblings
22:19
who are in a freezer somewhere?
22:22
And, you know, why did I get born? And did
22:26
I have a buddy in the womb that you decided you didn't want? Twins?
22:30
Were there any that you rejected because they
22:34
weren't up to snuff? What happened to them? Were they donated
22:38
to science? I think that's still not legal for now.
22:42
Aren't there all sorts of thickets of very awkward
22:46
questions that, um, I'm just going to call them the,
22:50
the consumers of the child, the purchasers of
22:54
the child, uh, have stirred up that they're not ready
22:58
to have a conversation about? Do you understand what I'm saying here?
23:02
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think survivor's guilt is a piece
23:05
that, um, doesn't get talked about with ART conceived kids.
23:09
And yet we've heard stories from children born via these technologies
23:13
who are aware of 27 embryos that didn't
23:18
make it, and they're the ones who did. And why them and
23:22
why not these others? And in some cases,
23:27
there are well-known reasons why not the others. They were
23:30
not the preferred gender. They had abnormal genetic testing.
23:34
They were considered low grade and might not be as healthy.
23:39
And especially with technologies like Orchid
23:44
is a startup in Silicon Valley where you can get basically predicted
23:48
outcomes for all of your embryos in a dashboard, including things like how
23:52
likely they are to develop cancer, how likely they are to have certain
23:56
diseases, certain disabilities. Even there are a few clinics starting
24:00
to offer likelihood of certain eye color, and this growing number
24:04
of things that you can choose as a reason for choosing
24:07
one embryo and rejecting another. And I
24:11
think that's going to be something that a lot of ART-conceived
24:16
individuals are really going to struggle with in the next 20 to 30 years.
24:20
When this is— I'm sorry, we're coming up on a break.
24:23
I'm sorry, we're coming up on a break, but this is very reminiscent
24:27
of what Aldous Huxley was writing about in the '30s in Brave New
24:31
World, that children are going to be
24:35
bred for certain qualities as
24:39
if they were cattle or sheep or some kind of
24:44
farm animals. And I think it is beneath human dignity to
24:48
apply the principles of animal husbandry to the
24:51
conception of children. Friends, we come back, we're going to continue
24:55
our conversation with Patient Sunny. She is with a very important group called
24:59
Them Before Us. We're talking about the difference between adoption and third-party
25:03
reproduction. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
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26:54
My guest today is Spanish, uh, Patience Suni. She is with
26:58
a very good group called Them Before Us. We're talking about difference between
27:01
adoption and third-party reproduction. Now,
27:05
Patience, I know it's— a lot of things have happened even in my
27:09
lifetime. We've certainly— we've separated sexuality from
27:13
fertility, and we've separated fertility
27:16
from marriage, and then we redefined marriage,
27:20
and science said, let me help you with that.
27:25
The Church's perennial teaching is that the primary purpose
27:29
of marriage is the begetting and education of children.
27:35
Now, obviously, some couples are by definition incapable
27:39
of doing that, but they want the child to kind
27:44
of complete the look. You know, we're a family just
27:48
like everybody else. We have kids too. There was a couple, a gay couple,
27:52
some months ago where they, they got a woman to donate 45
27:56
of her And then they donated their own sperm
27:59
and then had had them linked up with this woman's ova,
28:03
and they've got kind of a lottery going and a chart of who made
28:07
the first cut and who made the second cut and so on. It was horrifying.
28:11
It was appalling, and it reduced the the
28:16
children to a science project, or you
28:19
were you're raising chickens for four H or something like
28:23
that. For those couples who say, "By golly, science." gives us
28:28
a chance to have a child in the way that nature would never allow.
28:32
Why not make use of it? What's your elevator pitch for
28:35
those people? Well, often, especially in the scenario you
28:39
described, there's a disrespect for the earliest stages of
28:43
life. And so that's an important starting point, is to
28:47
clarify life begins at conception. Personhood begins when life begins.
28:50
There's no rational argument for personhood beginning at some later
28:55
stage. And the science is very clear that life begins at that
28:58
moment of conception. So we need to be treating those early
29:03
lives as truly lives and recognize the
29:06
completely unnecessary risks that they're being exposed
29:10
to in the lab, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the
29:14
people who have commissioned them. Also really thinking
29:18
about it from the child's perspective of what are they going
29:22
to lose. If you are using
29:26
a third party for eggs, you're using a third party for gestation,
29:30
and then you're also raising that child without a mother
29:33
in the home. You've first split the role of mother into 3 different
29:37
women. You've said there's the genetic mother, the birth mother, and the social mother.
29:42
And then you've said none of those women are necessary. In a child's
29:45
life. So what could have been one woman is now 3, and you've
29:49
said none of them have a place in that child's life. And the fact
29:53
of the matter is, mothers and fathers bring something unique to a child's life.
29:56
There isn't gender-neutral parenting. There's mothering and fathering,
30:00
and those look different, and children benefit in different
30:04
ways from those things. You know, I see the way that my daughter
30:07
interacts with me versus with my husband. And, you know,
30:11
she's getting different things from her,
30:15
her mom versus her dad because of the God-made differences between
30:19
men and women. Sure, absolutely. You have to consider the
30:24
loss that happens on that level. And then also, you know,
30:27
like we've been discussing in the last couple of segments, the loss, that primal
30:31
wound when a child loses the woman who gave birth to
30:35
them, in addition to the loss of one's genetic origins that has very
30:39
significant ramifications, not just from a
30:43
social and emotional standpoint, but also from a health standpoint where,
30:48
you know, so often donor-conceived individuals are growing up
30:51
without access to their family medical history, without an understanding of
30:56
what cancers they need to be screening for at an earlier age,
31:01
what medical conditions could be causing things. I actually heard
31:05
from a state representative whose granddaughter
31:09
was the child of someone who was donor conceived,
31:13
and she coded because they
31:17
didn't know what was wrong. And once they finally got access to some of her
31:21
family medical history, they understood, I believe it was a
31:25
heart condition that had been driving some of that. And they
31:29
were able to put the pieces together, but here they've got an 8-year-old in
31:34
the ICU without an understanding of what caused this.
31:38
And it's because they don't have access even to basic
31:43
family medical history. There's so much loss that goes on.
31:47
And the fact of the matter is the adults who are making
31:50
these decisions need to hit pause and need to say, okay,
31:54
There's a difference between a desire and a right. I have
31:58
a desire to have a child, but that child has a right
32:02
to their mother and father. And I can't put my desires
32:07
ahead of somebody else's rights, even if that somebody
32:10
is someone smaller than me, someone younger than me,
32:13
someone more vulnerable than me. And I have the opportunity
32:17
to take away their rights in favor of my desires.
32:21
You have to come at it with the understanding that desires don't get
32:26
to come first because that's a profound injustice. No, no, I,
32:30
I agree, uh, fully. You know, I think of, um, you know, my sister who's
32:34
got 2 very wonderful girls, uh, in their mid-teens now,
32:38
mid to late teens now. But when they were growing up, my sister said when
32:41
the girls have a need, they call for mommy,
32:45
and when they have a fear, they call for daddy.
32:49
And again, you would think there was an intelligent design behind it all,
32:52
but once you start talking about the complementarity of men and women,
32:57
that's going to upset at least certain forms of feminism,
33:02
and it's certainly going to upset people who think that— I'm
33:06
going to say this delicately because it's a family-friendly show— that other forms of
33:10
human conjugation are okay and morally equivalent
33:14
to male and female complementarity. Once you erase that,
33:18
then the child really is presented as simply
33:22
an object of desire, a blank
33:25
slate. There was another gay couple who had money,
33:29
and they, they basically went gene shopping and
33:32
wanted to find someone who was, you know, kind of a Victoria's
33:36
Secret model, you know, with a certain type of IQ. And that
33:41
was the So they were, again, they were treating it like they were having
33:45
a dog bred for, for show purposes.
33:49
You know, you're, you're a, a wife and mother. You understand
33:53
how children develop. What does that do to a child's self-concept
33:58
when the child begins to discover this? Yeah, absolutely. That's,
34:01
you know, that's world-shaking to a lot of these
34:05
children, or, you know, if they find out as adult,
34:08
these individuals who discovered this,
34:10
that they were commissioned as a
34:14
product. And often they'll tell their stories anonymously
34:17
because they don't want to deal with the upheaval that comes with putting their name
34:21
on this story. But at Them Before Us,
34:25
we share their stories. We have people who reach out to us and say,
34:29
hey, this is what happened to me. This is how I felt. This is
34:32
the damage that it did. And, you know, I,
34:36
I feel like a project, a science product. I, I feel
34:40
like, you know, an item that was purchased. And no matter
34:45
how— even if the adults going into it aren't saying,
34:48
oh, we want, you know, the attractive
34:52
blonde with blue eyes and a high IQ, um,
34:55
there's still that piece where they were
34:59
commissioned. They were created in a lab
35:02
for the sake of the adults. And that's something that does
35:06
profoundly impact many of these individuals.
35:09
And I think, like I mentioned in the last segment,
35:13
I think we're going to see a lot more of that as more
35:18
and more of these completely unregulated fertility clinics are
35:22
offering boutique add-ons like, we can do this genetic test
35:26
testing that has maybe a 60 to 70% accuracy
35:31
in predicting eye color. So you can pick your baby's eye color. And what
35:36
a facetious and cruel reason to not give a different embryo a chance
35:40
at life. This embryo might not look the way I want them to
35:44
when they grow up. And it makes a child a
35:47
choice that you shop for. I'm expecting my second and
35:52
gotten to see in the ultrasound photos that he has his dad's nose, um,
35:56
which has just been kind of fun for, for both of us, of course,
36:00
you know, seeing the ultrasound. But it really contributes
36:05
to the reality that this child is a gift. You know, we didn't, we didn't
36:08
choose who he's going to be, how he's going to look. We didn't choose
36:11
any of that. And, and we gratefully accept
36:15
who he is and what he is. And if you shift away
36:19
from that mentality and say, I can pick all of these features in
36:22
my child, you know, I want my child to fit these specifications,
36:27
then you lose sight of the fact that that child is a gift, that every
36:30
life created is, is ultimately in God's hands,
36:34
um, even if there were scientists in the lab contributing.
36:38
And you, you lose the delight
36:42
in that gift. And the child then feels the pressure
36:46
of, you know, I was commissioned to be smart,
36:50
or I was commissioned to be XYZ, to fill this
36:53
gap in my parents' life, to give this kind of affirmation.
36:58
And that's an unfair expectation and pressure
37:02
to put on a child. A child doesn't exist for the sake
37:06
of adult fulfillment. And when we allow the message
37:10
to be communicated to that child, that you exist
37:13
because I wanted XYZ. That's where they're
37:17
going to search for their identity and their worth. And if they don't feel like
37:21
they measure up, then they will feel like they have failed and they have let
37:24
their parents down, which is absolutely unfair and unjust to that
37:28
child. And I do wonder, especially with
37:32
the increase in genetic testing of embryos, if we're going to have kids who feel
37:37
guilty for having health problems after they were screened from a set of embryos.
37:41
And just so many things that a child should never have to carry,
37:46
that because this unregulated industry
37:49
is allowed to do all of these things and couples are willing to go and
37:53
pay for those add-ons, we're going to have kids who
37:57
feel like they exist because they met those specifications,
38:00
right? I mean, we're treating children as, as you know, as if human
38:04
life was kind of a genetic dim sum menu,
38:09
and I find that appalling. And we also have to deal with sex selection
38:14
as well. In some cultures, there's a very profound preference
38:19
for boys over girls for a lot of different reasons,
38:23
but I don't hear a lot of academic feminists yelling
38:27
about this. Have I just been looking in the wrong places, or does your research
38:31
suggest they've been silent about this too? There is far
38:35
too much silence on that topic and far too much willingness
38:39
to accept that from the industry. The Times, which is
38:43
the UK-based paper, did a fascinating profile a couple of years
38:47
ago on a boutique IVF clinic in California where
38:51
the embryologist there is like— his big thing
38:54
is that he offers all of these things that you can select about your
38:57
embryo. And he got asked by this journalist about sex selection,
39:01
and his answer was basically, well,
39:04
couples coming from India will typically prefer boys.
39:09
Couples coming from China used to prefer boys. Now there's more of a preference
39:13
for girls. In the US, it's roughly 50/50
39:17
with a little bit of a preference for girls, but it comes out about even.
39:20
Wow. And just this very cavalier attitude towards
39:24
the fact that embryos are being rejected for being the wrong sex.
39:28
And, you know, the UN has documented the missing girls
39:32
due to sex-selective abortion and also now because of
39:36
sex-selective ART. And the fact that, you know,
39:40
a child can be rejected on the basis of their sex is really a horrible
39:43
thing. And in the US, you know, Paris Hilton, famously went
39:48
through, I think, 15 embryos that she chose not to use because they were
39:51
boys, um, and she only wanted a girl. Oh, oh, see,
39:55
that, that's, that's just— I'm sorry, we're, we're coming up on, on a break here.
39:59
That, that is the, the stuff of, of nightmares, and we
40:03
have to find a way to turn this around. And that's why I, I think
40:06
your organization, Them Before Us, is a, is a heroic organization that should
40:10
be supported by the listeners. Uh, patients Sunny, uh, thank you for a fascinating conversation.
40:14
God bless your very good work.
40:16
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague,
40:20
your host every day, The Catholic Current. You want to stay with us for the
40:23
rest of the hour. Coming up next on this Timely Tuesday, you and me sharing
40:27
timely thoughts reflecting what we've heard today. Part of
40:30
the conversation, follow or following on Gab, that's gab.com.
40:34
The channel is The Catholic Current. You can influence the conversation,
40:38
write us at thestationofthecross.com/askfather.
40:42
Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
Have a question or feedback about today's
41:05
today's episode? Want to suggest a guest or a future topic? Go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather and
41:13
help influence the conversation.
41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:30
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the fullness
41:35
of truth with clarity and charity. Here we are on this Timely
41:38
Tuesday, you and me, the last segment sharing timely thoughts, reflecting on
41:43
what we've heard today. My guest was Patience Sonny of Them Before
41:47
Us, really excellent organization, and we're talking about what's
41:50
wrong with third-party reproduction and Them
41:55
Before Us and Patients and I, we agree adoption is a really wonderful
41:58
thing. It's throwing somebody a lifeline.
42:03
When you hire someone to be basically
42:08
a surrogate incubator, and when you hire someone
42:12
to donate genetic material, you're turning
42:16
a human being made in the image and likeness of God into your science
42:21
project. And husbands, if you're contemplating your— I'm
42:25
not even gonna say it. This is just a bad idea across the
42:29
board. It's a very bad idea because ultimately you're depriving
42:33
children of their parents. I mean, it's been empirically
42:37
demonstrated. It's common sense. It's universal
42:40
in every culture around the world. Kids need mom
42:44
and dad. Now, some moms and dads are pretty lousy at being
42:47
moms and dads, but overall Kids benefit the
42:51
most from having a mom and having a dad, and also knowing what a mom
42:55
is and having what a dad is. That's not rocket science either. That's,
42:59
that's not all that hard. And I'm going to say something very blunt: the desire
43:03
to have a child is not a medical condition.
43:07
Also something, Ed, because I've had friends who've gone through the adoption process,
43:11
which I think is noble and heroic and so on, and they
43:15
are investigated out the wazoo.
43:19
But, and rightly so, you know, you gotta have a site visit and this and
43:23
that and interviews and et cetera, et cetera. But if you want
43:28
to order a child according to your specifications,
43:32
all you need is a credit card and
43:37
that's it. You can have a bespoke
43:41
child. There are agencies that say, hey, you know, we only
43:45
get ova donated by women who are 5'10 with green eyes and
43:50
who are accepted to Ivy League schools with an SAT score of a
43:54
certain rank. And those gametes go for
43:58
premium prices. Uh, you know, sperm donors
44:02
who are 6 feet tall and blonde hair and blue eyes and
44:05
got accepted to medical school and have a good MCAT score,
44:10
their genetic material goes for a premium.
44:15
This isn't procreation. It's not
44:19
even reproduction. This is animal husbandry.
44:25
This is eugenics. So rather
44:29
than a husband and wife invoking the creative
44:33
powers of God during their marital embrace, What we
44:37
have is a science project that costs a lot of money.
44:42
We also have to be clear that with IVF,
44:45
with in vitro fertilization, where the conception takes place in
44:49
a petri dish thanks to a lab technician,
44:54
that's a low-yield procedure. You might put one embryo in,
44:58
it's only got about a 25% survival rate, so you've got You
45:03
know, you're going to put in probably 2, 3, 4, and fingers
45:07
crossed, hope that 2 of them or 3 of them don't survive.
45:11
You might have twins. But what if all 3 implant
45:15
and then you unexpectedly discover that you've signed up for triplets?
45:19
Well, gosh, you're not ready for triplets. So you
45:22
have what's called selective pregnancy reduction.
45:27
So basically it means you're murdering your own child.
45:30
And, you know, if you've decided, by golly, we're paying a lot
45:34
of money for this, we want to look at a lot of samples. You might
45:37
pay to have 3, 4, 5, 7 embryos
45:42
made, and then you put the embryos through rigorous quality
45:46
control. What happens to the rest?
45:51
What happens to the rest?
45:55
What happened to those children who are consigned to
45:59
a frozen limbo. We don't
46:03
talk about those things. What's the hallmark
46:07
of the moral maturity
46:10
of a toddler? Is, I want what I want when I want it,
46:14
and I'm gonna have a tantrum to get what I want. And if you give
46:17
in to the toddler, if you give in to the 2-year-old,
46:21
you end up raising a tyrant. So when
46:25
an adult says, I want what I want when I want it, and by golly,
46:28
I want a kid, and I want a kid according to my specifications.
46:33
And oh, by the way, I've got money.
46:37
Then unscrupulous scientists say, oh really?
46:41
Let me help you with that. And let's also be clear that, uh,
46:45
you know, we're— it's just a bad business.
46:49
It's completely unregulated. I'm blanking on this woman's name, but she
46:54
was a fitness guru She started off early
46:58
in life with a whole lot of body positivity,
47:01
lost a whole lot of weight, and now, you know, she's got abs and she's
47:05
got exercise videos and so on. And she's decided that now it's time
47:09
to add a child to her life as,
47:12
um, you know, kind of a lifestyle accessory.
47:16
But by golly, as in here, I quote, she's not going to, quote,
47:19
ruin her figure, unquote, that she worked
47:24
worked so hard for by putting her female body through the indignity of a pregnancy,
47:27
labor, and delivery. No, no, no,
47:30
she's gonna hire somebody else to do that.
47:33
And you know what? Young women who are putting themselves through an Ivy League law
47:37
school are usually not the ones who rent
47:41
out their wombs to serve as surrogate mothers.
47:45
It's poor women women who are
47:49
in financially dire straits.
47:53
So, we get very upset about slavery
47:57
and bodily autonomy and bodily integrity,
48:02
except, except,
48:05
except when somebody with a lot
48:09
of money wants to buy a child.
48:14
A child made to order.
48:17
And then there's no more talk about my body, my choice,
48:21
bodily integrity. There is
48:24
no talk about the exploitation of
48:28
women. There's no talk about, you know, the evils
48:31
of colonialism. All is forgiven
48:38
because why? Because someone is prepared
48:43
to spend an awful lot of money on
48:47
something that science promises to give. Now, am I
48:51
giving this a hard time? I sure am. Do I make it sound very ugly?
48:54
Yes, I do, because it's an ugly business.
49:00
Civilized people should not be in the business
49:05
of turning children into science projects
49:09
and then selling them to the highest bidder.
49:13
That's what's wrong with third-party reproduction.
49:17
It reduces human beings to the status of science
49:22
projects. It exploits poor women,
49:26
and it abandons embryos to a frozen
49:30
limbo. This is unregulated,
49:34
and we are depriving children of the
49:38
mothers and fathers that they deserve and that we need.
49:42
So God bless all of you who have made the heroic choice
49:46
to rescue a child through adoption. I'm not criticizing adoption.
49:51
I'm criticizing turning children into science
49:55
projects and then putting them up for sale. I'm Jesuit Father Robert
50:00
McTeague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current. Join us tomorrow for another
50:03
round of The Catholic Current. Great guest, great topic, great conversation, because that's how
50:07
we roll here every day at The Catholic Current and The Station
50:11
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50:15
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50:23
We need to attract the attention of the listeners so these conversations get
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50:31
to the whole world. Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may almighty
50:33
God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace,
50:37
and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.