What Happens When Society Puts Adults Before Kids? | Tim Barton & Katy Faust

What happens when a culture begins prioritizing adult desires over the fundamental rights of children?

In this compelling episode of The American Story, host Tim Barton sits down with author, speaker, and child advocate Katy Faust, founder of Them Before Us, to explore one of the most important cultural conversations of our time.
Together, they dive into the question: What do children truly need to flourish? From the importance of family structure to the long-term cultural impact of redefining parental roles, this conversation challenges today’s narratives and calls viewers to think deeply about faith, responsibility, and the future of the next generation.

This episode connects timeless truths with today’s headlines—equipping you to engage culture with clarity, conviction, and compassion.

If you care about the future of families, faith in America, and protecting the rights of children, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

Subscribe for more conversations on faith, history, and culture shaping America’s future.

Websites: 
Thembeforeus.com
WallBuilders.com



#AmericanStoryPodcast #TimBarton #KatyFaust #ThemBeforeUs #FaithAndCulture #FamilyValues #ChildrensRights #BiblicalTruth #CultureConversation #AmericanValues

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

My parents had divorced when I was 10, and my father dated and remarried, so I had a lot of experience with kind of like blended families and the instability that goes with divorce, kind of on my dad's side of things. On my mom's side of things, right after the divorce, she repartnered with a woman. So in that world, when I was at her house, I was in the gay and lesbian space. So like I that was my context growing up. So as I moved forward in my relationship with the Lord, like he filled my heart and I loved him with all my might, but it took me a long time to love God with all my mind. Especially as it relates in sort of the realm of marriage and sexuality, because there is what I believe to be a God-given kind of ingrained loyalty to your parents. And it took me a while to say, no, the Lord and what he wants supersedes even my own personal feelings. And thankfully, he navigated that relationship to the point where I still was really close to my mom and dad before the divorce and after the divorce. But um, you know, it didn't grow up in this neat and clean environment. Even after I became a Christian, it was still a lot to navigate in terms of how do I hold fast with what the Lord is requiring, but also fiercely love the people in my family who disagree.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

It's a little bit like calling William Wilberforge an extremist as he was opposing slavery. That is Katie Faust from Them Before Us, a brilliant organization we've been able to do some things with along the lines. And I am honored to have her joining me today. Katie, thanks for being on the program.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

So good to be with you. We are big wall builder fans. You know, you guys were some of the first contact that we started to have sort of in the policy space with your family, uh your pro family network conference that it happens every November. And it just like opened my eyes to the amount of we talk a lot of trash about politicians and rightly so, but somehow you guys have gathered together the ones that are like we actually don't live for the approval of man, and we don't even just live for the votes of our people. We live for the Lord. And if we're voted in, great. And if not, I guess not. But it was just, it was such a great kind of first taste of spine in the political realm. And you guys were a big part of sort of introducing me to that. So anyway, we are big fans. Um, so thankful for what you guys do, uh, the content that you create and the truth on which you stand. So great to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Well, I I I'm honored by all of that. Um, you are someone that we have really loved partnering with because of the cause of what you support. We are people that that first of all, as Christians, we are driven uh by biblical callings and principles. And then as Americans, recognizing our foundation, uh the declaration values uh of the truths that were self-evident, of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. But there's a lot of things that get overlooked and the basic ideas of what those were and what we were supposed to have protected in the Constitution, not to digress, but we're gonna get there in a minute, but I want people to know part of your story, who you are, what you do, but also like how did you get to this place where you're leading this incredible organization doing things all over the nation? So I want to back up and start with who is Katie and how did you get here? How did God get a hold of your life to get you to the place you're doing what you do?

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Uh well, it's a long and winding road. I bet a lot of people kind of relate to that. I wasn't raised as a Christian. I was raised in Portland, Oregon, and um by parents who were anti-Christ in a lot of ways, um, not satanic, but just anti-God. They had both had not positive experiences with God in their childhood, so it just was not a part of our family. And if it was, if it was brought in, it was um viewed negatively in a lot of ways. So um I didn't have any kind of context. A friend invited me to youth group when I was like a sophomore in high school, and like I did not know. If if you said go to the old testament, I'd be like, yeah, I got no idea. What I don't know what you're talking about here, you know, and I would like member listening to all of the stories and be like, well, it's like a Goliath. And I'm like, Goliath, Goloth, Goliath. Like I had no idea, I just had no context. So um I ended up getting saved at when I was a gosh, junior, and then really gave my life to the Lord as a senior. So I just kind of had to begin at the beginning. My parents had divorced when I was 10, and my father dated and remarried, so I had a lot of experience with kind of like blended families and the instability that goes with divorce, um, kind of on my dad's side of things. On my mom's side of things, right after the divorce, she repartnered with a woman. So in that world, when I was at her house, I was in the gay and lesbian space. So, like, I that was my context growing up. So as I moved forward as in my relationship with the Lord, like he filled my heart and um I loved him with all my might, but it took me a long time to love God with all my mind, especially as it relates in sort of the realm of marriage and sexuality, because there is what I believe to be a God-given kind of ingrained loyalty to your parents. And it took me a while to say, no, the Lord and what he wants supersedes even my own personal feelings. And thankfully, he navigated that relationship to the point where I still was really close to my mom and dad before the divorce and after the divorce. But um, you know, it didn't grow up in this neat and clean environment. Even after I became a Christian, it was still a lot to navigate in terms of how do I hold fast with what the Lord is requiring, but also fiercely love the people in my family who disagree. Um, ended up getting married after college. My husband became a pastor. We've been doing ministry together 30 years. Um, so like junior high ministry, senior high ministry, college. Ultimately, he became the senior pastor at our church and was there until a couple years ago. So um I was just wanting to be a pastor's wife. I was a stay-at-home mom. I had four kids. The Lord called us to adopt a child from China. I had previously worked at an adoption agency, so I was really comfortable in the adoption space too. And that's all I wanted. I just wanted to read the Bible with people and lift people's face to God. That was all. I never wanted to do anything else, Tim. And then, and then I got pissed off, Tim. I got pissed off because I saw the world victimizing children in this realm of marriage. And I was aware that they were pro-life organizations and I supported them, and I was pro-life, and I was anti-abortion, but I was like, it's it's not my calling, there's plenty of people doing that. But when the gay marriage debate arrived, especially at the shores of Washington state, and the the narrative was, well, kids love having two moms or two dads. They're just fine with two moms or two dads. I was like, hold on a second, because if you're looking at a picture of a child with two moms, you're actually looking at a picture of a child who has lost their father. And I had been working with kids at that point for 20 years in the context of youth ministry, in the context of adoption, with my own kids, with my own adopted child. And I will tell you, I can tell you something confidently after having a lot of close contact with kids, there's one thing that kids care more about than anything else, and that is does my mom and dad love me, and do my mom and dad love each other? That is what every kid cares about the most. And so what I heard the other side saying was this weaponization of a child's greatest wounds to advance this social experiment, and I just lost it, Tim. I got so angry, and I was like, now you're gonna get it. And I furiously started an anonymous blog. So that's kind of how it started.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Well, so yeah, let me let me add some thoughts and unpack it, and you comment on this as well. Because I think this is one of the interesting topics in conversation where a lot of Christians we are taught to love Jesus on an individual level, but but there hasn't been a lot of discipleship in a lot of churches. And I say this knowing, right, your husband being a pastor, you being in a church, y'all have been very involved and on the front lines, uh, especially very recently. But for for most Christians, really it it's it's me and Jesus, and then the world is its own thing. And I love people in the world, but like my faith is really compartmentalized. But I think it's interesting that if if for people that are familiar with the Bible, there there's a place where Jesus says, if you cause one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better that you take this massive rock, tie it to your neck, and go throw yourself in the ocean. That is better than to cause a little one to stumble. And it's interesting because Jesus didn't say that in any other context about any other topic or any other category. It literally was in defense of kids. And in the midst of I think some of the lack of discipleship that's happened in the church, one of the messages that has become very uh prevalent is that, well, hey, we we should be known by love. And then love is defined that, well, love means we accept everybody and every choice and every behavior, and that's what love is. And it's in direct contrast and violation of the principle of defending the vulnerable, where Jesus literally says, like, you might as well go drown yourself rather than do something to harm one of these little ones. And yet the church has been so silent on an issue where the data is overwhelming when kids grow up in a home where there is not a mother and a father present. And this is not to disparage anybody who would be watching or listening to us that that has gone through the brokenness uh relationship and they're, you know, single mom, single dad, navigating and trying to make it work. This is no condemnation on them at all. And probably, I mean, when Jesus, when the Bible tells us that God hates divorce, well, pretty much anybody that's ever gone through divorce will tell you, yes, we hate divorce too. The divorce is not an ambition or a goal, but I say it because this again, not disparaging on people that are having to navigate something hard in their life, but but the data is overwhelming, whether it be the mental health, the emotional stability, the academic performance, whatever it is, it's so much better when there's a mother and father in a home. And now we have a culture and society saying, well, it doesn't really matter, right, if it's two moms or two dads or whatever the case might be, as if we should ignore all of the data and just buy into this secular humanistic anti-Christian worldview, and it doesn't matter, the kids are totally fine.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

We spend a lot of time then before us talking about the stats, the social science, and the stories, the stories of children that have grown up without their mother or father, not because of tragedy, not because their parent died in a car accident or their mother, you know, had a heart attack or something like that. There's not a lot of children that lose their mother or father, you know, under 18 due to tragedy these days. Thank God. You know, things like modern medicine and modern warfare means kids don't lose their mother or father to death as much as they used to. Kids lose their mother and father today because adult desire is prioritized above their rights and needs. And the culture is promoting, endorsing, and incentivizing it. And the church is standing silently by while it happens. The church, the church, God's people who are not only charged with protecting the vulnerable, but defending the fatherless. You've got three dozen explicit scriptures just in the Old Testament alone about how God makes special provision for kids who are not just orphans in or but they don't have a dad, right? If you lose a parent, that is considered to be in the vulnerable bucket. And so you've got very special laws, provisions, and the Lord specifically saying, you touch one of them, I'm gonna deal with you. You you touch them, you deal with me. I mean, his warnings are so severe for those who fail to protect the fatherless. What's happening right now in the world of marriage and family, the way our culture, our law, and our technology are changing is we're not just not defending the fatherless, we are manufacturing the motherless and the fatherless, and we're doing it in the name of progress. Why isn't the church speaking up? Sure, they can say, Well, I just want to be about the gospel. I just want to love God, love people. But let's be honest, you don't want the social cost. You understand that saying something very clearly against gay marriage or against an infertile couple that wants to use surrogacy and wants to purchase a woman to gestate what is very often a curated hand-selected child, you don't want to speak against divorce because it will cost you and you know it will. And that's never been a reason before for Christians to not speak the truth, especially as it relates to defending the most vulnerable. You can look very spiritual and say, I just want to be about the gospel. But you just need to be honest with yourself. You are preferring the acceptance of your adult friends over the protection of children. And that's actually not a decision that an honest Christian is going to be able to make.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Now, now, Katie, and I I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a minute, because I I I know this is what people would say, and and and you actually have heard all of these. And so if I leave something out of like the the accusation of the other side, like fill in the other details where I leave out. But I just hear people going, but Katie, right? It wouldn't it be better for a kid to be in a home where there's actually two parents that love the child? Like, why would you think that we shouldn't have a kid if they have two people that love them? Who cares if it's two moms or two dads? And I'm saying this obviously no Christian should make that argument because the only examples we have of marriage in the Bible, of parents in the Bible, is a mom and dad, right? So as a Christian, already you're not making a biblical case for parenthood if you're making this argument. But I know there are people that identify as Christian or people that are just secular that would go, yeah, but Katie, wouldn't it be better for kids to have two parents even if they're the same gender? Katie, how should we answer that?

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Well, the answer is we actually do have examples of that in scripture. You've got polygamous families where you've got multiple mothers, you've got multiple wives. We actually have played around with God's design already in scripture. And a lot of people say, well, then you should be okay with polygamy because the patriarchs did it. Well, how'd that go? I want you to look at any patriarchal family where there's more adults to love a child, where there's more mothers to share the load. How did it go? Show me one of those families, just one, that's characterized by equality and peace among the family members. You won't find them. There is something specific about God's natural design between one man and one woman for one lifetime that distinctly benefits kids. You can make a biblical case for that, you can make a spiritual case in terms of the parallels between natural marriage and Christ's relationship to the church. I'll just make a sociological case. Okay. I don't need specific revelation. I'll give you general revelation as to why this is the one family structure that distinctly benefits kids. That one man and that one woman gives something to children that no other adults can. That is their biological identity. It is very hard for kids to answer the question, who am I? If they can't answer the question, whose am I? And that is why we've had a radical shift in adoption best practice away from closed adoption, where kids had no knowledge, no connection to their first family, to now domestic adoptions are 95% open. Because adoptees, even if they can't be raised by their first family, they need something from those two adults they can't get from loving, heterosexual, married Christian parents. Like hopefully, like my husband and I for our son. I can't fully compensate for everything my son has lost. He has lost something important, something that matters to him, something that he ultimately, like the vast majority of adoptees and donor-conceived kids, will go on to search for, and that is who is my mother, who is my father. This is a natural, this is not um a fault of adoption. This is an a hallmark of embodiment. We are creatures made in the image of God, and God designed for us to get some of that identity from our mother and father. So that's number one, identity. Number two, we often talk about how biology doesn't matter. Love makes a family, right? We just want kids to be safe and loved. It doesn't matter if it's a mom or a dad or two dads or two moms. We just want safety. And to that, I say if it's true that safety, the biology doesn't matter. That if the adults are happy, the kids will be happy. Well, any two will do. They just need two parents. It doesn't have to be a mom and a dad. To that, I always say, I want you to Google the words mother's boyfriend for me. And like what this podcast right now, pause this podcast and Google the words mother's boyfriend and then come back. How did that go for you? Because when you Googled mother's boyfriend, what you saw was tens of thousands of returns of the worst, most graphic cases of child abuse, child torture, child philosophy that you're gonna find anywhere on the internet. Why is that? Because an unrelated adult, especially a man, sharing living spaces with a child is statistically the most dangerous person in their life. Family structure is often a matter of life and death for children. There is something about a child's own mother and father where, for biological, you know, evolutionary reasons or just sin nature reasons, means those two adults are the most connected to, invested in, and protective of kids. Marriage, monogamy between that one man and woman is God's plan A for child protection. We have never found any other kind of arrangement or metric or vetting process that has come close to granting children that level of safety. And number three, those two adults, if you are united with the two people who gave you life, you get the perfect gender balance in the home on 100% of the time. Like men and women are different, Tim. They are different.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Now, wait a second, because Katie, I saw an email from your organization this week, and and you made the claim that men cannot be mothers. Now, that sounds like a triggering claim to make in this society. I know. How could you say that, Katie?

SPEAKER_02 18:40

We're just living on the edge, Tim. We're just living on the edge. Um, men and women, as anybody that has been a child or near a child, will tell you men do things for children that women don't do. Women do things for children that men don't do. They are what sociologists call distinct but complementary benefits to kids, and kids need both. So I've just laid out a case for you from the perspective of the child in terms of their identity, their safety, and their development that says God's design for the family, one man, one woman, one lifetime, excluding all others, till that do us apart, is statistically the way that we set children up to thrive. Any other family structure is a departure from God's good design and will lead to child victimization.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

And and so to walk through this, just help me if I miss one of these. So the first one, the reason mom and dad matters, and this is again, you said sociological, so this is not we're not making the biblical case or all of the other data points we could, but it's identity coming from mom and dad, it's security coming from mom and dad. And how would you summarize the third one for me one more time?

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Development. Like they develop the child differently.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

So for example, okay, the compliment of mom and dad. The compliment side.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

That's right. So moms are I I always say, well, like when I go speak at places, I'm like, raise your hand if you've ever seen a baby thrown up in the air. And everybody raises their hand. Everybody has seen a baby, right? And then I say, I want you to keep your hand up if the person throwing the baby was a woman. And everybody puts their hand down.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Nope.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Right. Women don't throw babies. Women wear babies. And that's actually one of the most distilled ways to explain the difference between mothers and fathers. Women promote attachment in children. Like you can see it through breastfeeding, you can see it in their higher rates of responsiveness when the baby cries. They're much more attuned with the child's immediate needs. They can read the little goos that the baby says, where the dad's like, uh-uh, I don't know what that means. Mother's like, that means you're patting her on her bat a little too long, and it's time to change position.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Like that's what it means. Like the mother just knows, okay? It's so true because I had no idea what any of those were. And my wife's like, well, here's what we should do. And I'm like, I have no idea. I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

But dads promote separation. So you are the one that is encouraging your kids to run farther, swing, swing harder, you know, swing the hammer, build, build the tree house that's a little too high off the ground for your wife's taste. You're throwing the children in the pool to the point where she's like, oh, oh, closer to the deep end, honey. I'm just a little bit worried, right? Dads are always pushing their kids to separate. And it's so important for kids to have both. If you don't have that, that close nurturing attachment when you're young, it serves as sort of a secure springboard for the child to explore their world. But if there's no dad, the child may not explore. And that is where you get these terrible examples of failure to launch in kids because they don't have somebody saying, you know, I don't care if you don't want to go back to basketball practice, you're going back to basketball practice. I'm sorry. I just I don't care how tired you are or that you're complaining. The answer is we're not quitting and you're going back. Like men and women are different, and there is a developmental age. Symmetry if kids only have fathers in the home or mothers in the home. You know, you might have seen that viral video two weeks ago of the dad who's kind of throwing the baby up in the air and the baby saying mama and the dad goes, no, no, you can have dad, dad, or you can have pop. There is no mama. And the baby goes, Mama, and he goes, no, no, no, dad, dad or pop, and the baby starts crying. Well, part of that is mothers they reflect back and they mimic what the baby says. They're there to affirm and it connects. Dads do challenge, dads do push back, dads do like force their kids to think differently, but not at five months old when the baby desperately needs connection. So even right there, you can see developmentally, this child is being starved of a presence that is going to do something for him in those formative months that even two wealthy, nurturing men will never be able to do.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

So one of the things I, Katie, as uh hopefully there were some people that that followed your suggestion and they paused this and they're like, Man, let me look up real quick, uh, right, mother's boyfriend. And what you realize is, and I'm saying again, because even this example of the the these two homosexuals that adopted a child, it's it's very evident if you go look at some of the horror stories that happen from the brokenness of families or these manufactured families of two moms, two dads, whatever else. And I I feel like on some level, it's a little bit like what happened when some parents found out about some of the hyper-sexualized books that were in like elementary school libraries. And parents are like, What? Our kids are learning what? You're showing them what? And there was this big move, and there needs to be a continued move in a lot of areas and school districts to say we need to remove this inappropriate content from the schools. And some people said, well, just from younger kids, but then logical parents were like, No, none of the kids should be having this inappropriate material, but uh but it took exposure before there was action. Parents had to see there's a problem, and and nobody's solving this. I need to step up and solve it. You obviously saw some of that problem, which is why you felt compelled to step up and try to solve this. And I think there's probably just a lot of parents that have not been exposed, and maybe not even parents, Christians in general. People in church, they don't recognize the severity of the issue. And now it's not just things that are already in place. There are things on the horizon, whether it be with IVF and surrogacy, things that that that we have seen, and you more so could speak to these things. And I think a lot of Americans, a lot of Christians, have no idea some of what is happening in like this baby manufacturing market and and why it is, as a Christian, it should be something that raises us up in arms. I think about the Gospels where Jesus goes into the temple at times. Uh it's in the synoptic gospels. There's one example, there's a different one in John, because the the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he goes in and he overturns the tables in my father's house, the house of prayer, and you made it into thieves. But in John, and there's a reason to think this is actually a different time than the other three, uh, but Jesus sits down and he braids a whip. And he's braiding a whip because he's about to go drive these people out of the temple who have made a mockery what should have been sacred and holy. And one of the things I love pointing out when I was a youth pastor uh talking to kids is like, look, when Jesus takes time to braid a whip, like you know this is serious. This isn't like an impulse, like, what are you doing? No, he's he is premeditating what he's about to do, getting involved to purge the sin he saw in front of him. And I think that a lot of Christians have not been awakened to the reality that there's a lot of wicked happening around us, that we ought to be sitting down and braiding some whips and and and getting ready to get off our rear ends to go try to purge some of this evil. So, can can you walk us through some of what is happening, whether it be IVF, surrogacy, whichever way you want to go first, to help expose some of what the problem is, because it you you can't solve a problem you don't know is a problem. Right. So let's identify a problem and then what are some action steps that people can take? So so walk us through what are some of the problems that you are seeing that are things that probably more people will see in the future, but maybe a lot of people don't know yet.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

You know, I didn't know any of this 15 years ago. I got into this because I was angry about marriage. And I was like, don't you make a mother and father optional so that you can advance your supposed new adult civil right? But once I started talking about the importance of mothers and fathers, people were like, Oh, you think kids need their mothers and fathers? Is that why you're speaking up so much about like sperm donors and like heterosexual couples using sperm donors? And I was like, I don't know anything about sperm donation. And they're like, oh, so you're okay with like adopting, like people buying embryos and sending, I'm like, I didn't, I didn't know that that, I don't know how IVF works. So it's like, I didn't know a lot about this. My drive to protect children forced me to become an expert on reproductive technologies because this is an area that is so close to what we fought a civil war to end that it demanded that I become an expert on it. So, what is happening in the world of IVF and reproductive technologies? Well, instead of the natural embrace between a husband and wife, making generally a baby, people will go into a fertility clinic and they will mass produce babies. The fertility doctors will encourage you, even if you're a sweet Christian heterosexual couple struggling with infertility, they will harvest as many eggs as possible from the woman. They will encourage you to fertilize as many as you can. And sometimes you end up with 25. Maybe you end up with 15, but they want you to have as many as possible. Why? Because they are going to put those embryos through the gauntlet of genetic screening, sex selection, and literally giving them a grade. You will throw out the ones that didn't make the grade or that are the wrong sex or maybe had some kind of possible markers for some kind of genetic problem. You'll keep the 10 that you like. You'll implant two, you'll freeze eight. Maybe one of them is going to take, then you're going to transfer another two, and then both of those are going to take, and one of them is going to twin. And now you have triplets, but you're already 41 years old, and IVF is high risk enough. Triplets is a very high-risk pregnancy, so they will encourage you to selectively reduce. That is, abort one or two of them, because otherwise maybe you're not going to make it through this pregnancy and you're going to lose all three. So now you're at home and you've got a two-year-old and you've got two twins, newborn twins, but you've got six kids left in the freezer. Well, you're going to wait till those kids get to kindergarten, and now you are, what, 54? What happens to those six children? They're going to be stuck there forever, or the industry is going to tell you to thaw and discard them or donate them to research so they can experiment on these little lives, so they can improve fertility treatments in the future to make more designer little lives, or maybe you'll donate them like a used couch. We get letters all the time from Christian couples that were desperate for a child, who were absolutely exploited by big fertility, and now left with this terrible moral decision of we've got these surplus children on ice that we know are just as much our child as the two kids that are eating Cheerios at our breakfast table and we don't know what to do. What should we do? And the answer is, you're cooked. There is no way out. You're too old to carry those babies. Are you going to give them away to somebody? Maybe you can adopt them out, but those kids are going to come back with some pretty devastating questions for you later. So, number one, IVF, given all the different gauntlet that these embryos have to go through, IVF destroys more little lives every year than planned parenthood, probably by a magnitude of four. And you we talk about, you know, the what is now 100,000 children every year born through IVF. That is maybe, maybe 2% of children made in vitro, in glass. The vast majority of these kids are going to be selected out of existence. Maybe 10% will be transferred. But the whole process is so dangerous to embryos. And this is not a natural death. This is deciding who lives or dies. This is eugenics.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Now, Katie, just to clarify, because people are listening going, this is so intense right now. Well, there's a reason. It's intense. So when we when we talk about the sperm and the egg coming together, that this fundamentally, because you because you're you're saying, well, these are, you know, like for your analogy, there were six kids on ice after the mom had three because she selectively removed one, aborted. And and people might go, okay, but like those aren't the same thing as kids. Well, this goes back to a fundamental question of, well, when does life begin? Because if life begins at conception, and and again, like this is a super important question that not enough Christians have contemplated or wrestled with or thought through, because ultimately, if if we're talking about an individual, well, again, when does life begin? We could argue, and I I would contend fertilization, but you can argue different things, but ultimately, well, when does DNA happen? And I'm I'm saying this, so let me throw it to you. So, Katie, for people that are going, wait a second, like I mean, does life really begin in that pea tree dish? Is that really what happened? What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_02 31:35

It's very interesting because when we're talking about abortion, people are pretty clear. Life begins at conception, right? It begins at fertilization when the sperm and egg come together to create that brand new strand of DNA that never before seen, never to see be seen again. And we look at the morning after pill or miphopristone and we're like, this is this is awful. Even if the child's aborted at six weeks, we say, well, that's a human life. But it's interesting. When this gets in the way of something that we want, we start to sort of adopt those abortion talking points. You know, well, it's not really a baby until it's implanted. Well, it's not really a baby if it's outside the womb. No, it's a baby. Yeah, you're right. We've never been able to make children outside of a womb anymore. But the fault lies with us technologically obstructing God's design, not with God's design to make the two one when sperm and egg come together. So unfortunately, this reality that 97% of little lives won't make it through the IVF clinic processes alive is a bit of a wrecking ball for those of us who would like to cling to IVF as some kind of miracle solution for the people in our life that we would desperately like to be able to have a baby. We just, I mean, the are we pro-life? Right. Or are we pro-life when we want to be pro-life?

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

For the sake of the least of these, for the sake of not causing little ones to stumble, we need to be pro-life, even if it upsets some of the adults in our life. So there is no gray area here. IVF destroys more little lives than abortion does. And so if we really believe children have a right to life, we have a two-front war on our hands. And we have to fight the baby-taking industry and the baby-making industry.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

And Katie, can I add something to this? So, one of the things, too, when we uh so at Wallbuilders, we talk a lot about American history, and if you go back to the founding era, um slavery was something that wasn't just practiced in America, it was a universal trade um around the world. There was not a nation that did not participate in slavery and generally speaking, have some level of slave trade uh in their nation to some extent. And it was the founding fathers who recognized, you know what, this is evil and we have to stop it. And it's interesting, there were certainly founding fathers that never owned slaves and fought against slavery their whole life. We would point to people like John Adams or Sam Adams or Roger Sherman, that there's a whole list of guys we can go through that were always against it, but but actually, some of the leading voices that that became presidents of abolition societies or founders of abolition societies and movements, they were people that had had slaves, recognized the evil of it. They freed their slaves and they worked in the institution in America. And I say that because I think there's probably people listening right now that as they're hearing what's going on, I mean, some of them might feel more condemnation than conviction. And what I would encourage, and then I I want to give you a chance to because knowing right that your husband's a pastor, I know like your pastor's heart. How do we help people that have gone through this? Like, what's the answer? But first of all, if we don't identify sin as sin and evil as evil, then we we don't actually know what we should be opposing and how we oppose it. And it was the founding fathers recognizing this is evil and I have to stop, that they had to stop the journey they were on in slavery, and then they actually believe it so strongly, the majority of them start working for the opposition of slavery to in the institution in America and in their states. And so for those that might be listening, um, I I would say as a believer, we know the Bible says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There's a lot of verses you could add, but but what would you say, knowing that there's probably people listening, that whether it be actual abortions at whatever you know period of the pregnancy or maybe IVF and they're man, they're they're can maybe maybe more feeling condemned they than convicted. What what would you say to them? Not that we're saying it's not wrong and we shouldn't stop it, but what would be the pastoral answer for some of them?

SPEAKER_02 35:37

The answer is you guys know what I'm saying is true. Because even if you tried to do this in a way that is pro-life, you probably had to fight your doctor because he didn't want you to keep all your embryos. He didn't want to implant all he wanted you to do the genetic screening. You were encouraged to do this. I know a lot of Christians that went into it thinking, of course we're gonna use all of our embryos. And then the clinic got in their way, or they're so heartsick because after that second pregnancy, she had to have a hysterectomy and they are agonizing over their remaining babies because they cherish these sweet children. Um we have a lot of people that have used IVF that are on board with them before us because they understand that this is a predatory industry. It preys upon especially women who desperately want to have the children that they feel like God is calling them to have. And so we need to have incredible empathy for people struggling with fertility, for those that are on the other side, who have surplus babies. Um, go get them. Go get them. You know, we've got a lot of stories of people that write us that say, well, I was thinking about like donating them or adopting them out, but now I realize those identity issues, they're really, they're real. And the possibility of being raised by an unrelated adult and the drastically increased risk of abuse and neglect, I can't put my children through that, especially because very few of these children are adopted. They're treated as property. Very interesting. You talk about the history that we have with slavery. The very first time the state of Virginia classified one group of people as property since the Civil War was when they passed their commercial surrogacy bill. And that was classifying embryos as property. So it's like when you get a throwback to slavery era language, it probably should make you question the kind of technology that you're using. And you know, too, you talk about how America was not like uniquely bad, but we uniquely woke up to the fact that slavery is bad sooner than the rest of the world. I'd say the inverse is taking place as it relates to fertility right now. There are other countries that are curtailing or curbing the kinds of testing that can be done on embryos. There are certain countries that will not allow you to sex select. You can't display away the boys and you can't throw away the girls. There are countries that won't allow people to use surrogacy at all or won't use allow foreigners to come and use their surrogates and take children home. There are places that only allow you to create the only the a certain number of embryos you're going to immediately implant so they don't have this massive storage problem. Um you'll have countries that won't allow you to genetically screen. Germany won't. Germany says you cannot genetically screen. We've done that before. We're not doing eugenics again. So if you want to use IVF in Germany, you'll implant any child, even if it's not genetically fit, because they're like not going to repeat that. So what do they do? People come to America. They come to America so they can select not just the girl embryos, but the girls with the exact color of blue eyes that they want, and then they'll throw out the rest. They come to America because we don't have any screenings for intended parents. And we'll put your name right on the birth certificate, even if you're a Chinese billionaire, a CCP member, or if you're a pedophile. So you come here to America, we are reproductive tourism central because we have no requirements. In fact, all of the regulations that we have are on the side of the intended parents and the fertility industry. Anything goes here. It is a wild west here. So if you want to make the comparison to slavery, we are the ones that are going wild. And it's a couple countries in Europe and some in Asia that are saying, we're not going to do that anymore because we see how it's drastically victimized women and children.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Well, and that's why I love the strategic choice of the name them before us, because you're shifting the focus on where it should be. Like, guys, as parents, it shouldn't be all about you, right? As adults, it shouldn't be all about us. If we don't think about and care for the rising generation, then we are wasting so much of what we are doing. So whose idea was the name? How strategically thought through was this, and when did this come about? But uh I think it's interesting, and again, this is this is a little broader now, um, but I want to get your take on this. We have seen for decades um uh a lack of fathers in the home, right? We we've talked about in in kind of Christian circles, conservative circles, the fatherless epidemic. And we are now living in a time when you have an increase of young men who are coming back to the faith, who want to read their Bibles. And one of the things that's interesting is they're having a harder time finding young women who are interested in being a spouse and and and raising a family. And I think it's interesting because when I was growing up, I was one of the only boys in the youth group, right? There's all these girls around. It was a good time to be a Christian kid in a youth group back in the day. But it's interesting now, it seems like that there's an epidemic of of motherhood that that we have so cheapened the value of femininity, of real femininity, not like this feminism, whatever wavism movement we're in, but cheapened the the role that God gave for wives and mothers. And so what would you what would you say? Because for anybody listening right now, there could be moms, dads, grandmas, grandpa's, boys, girls, kids, whoever, um, what would you say maybe for for the rising generation that's looking trying to navigate this? And some of them are like, man, Katie, we get it. We the kids need a mom and dad, but maybe to to help answer the question for young women who have bought into some of this cultural stuff that that seems to diminish motherhood, what would be your answer to them?

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Katie, this is so good. So if people want to know more about what you're doing, and if they want to help, if they want to join in, where can they go to find out more and maybe to partner up with you? So, Katie, that the the one question I always ask people that I get to talk to on the American Story podcast is if you could give any piece of advice, uh for anybody listening, and this could be right, their grandparents, their parents, their kids, boys, girls, doesn't matter, what is one piece of advice you think that would be beneficial for anybody listening today? Katie, I'm so grateful for you willingly following where God has led you and being a voice champion on this issue. Thank you for taking time to be with me today. Everybody else, thank you for taking time to join us on the American Word podcast. It was so much thought that I know it could have been a little enterpounding on a curtain. Go to the website and check out what they are doing. The rising generation and the ones who are the most vulnerable at Christians, we have to do our part. Thanks for bringing out today on the American Story Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

Kind of on my dad's side of things. On my mom's side of things, right after the divorce, she repartnered with a woman. So in that world, when I was I was like, I'll feel like it's a lot of people. Before the divorce and after the divorce. With what the Lord is requiring. But also fearfully love the people in my family who disagree.