Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
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Become Who You Are
#622 IVF Is Not The Way--The False Promises of Artificial Procreation: With Stacy Trasancos, PH.D.
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Dr. Stacey Trasancos never planned to write a book about IVF, but with President Trump promising to expand access to IVF, she felt compelled to explain why artificial reproduction conflicts with Christian teaching on human dignity and procreation.
The heart of the issue lies in what Trasancos calls the principle of inseparability—anything that divorces "lovemaking" from "life-giving" violates God's design for human reproduction. While contraception suppresses the life-giving aspect, IVF eliminates the lovemaking component. This separation isn't merely theological abstraction but has profound implications for how we understand human relationships and dignity.
Most jarring is the revelation that between one and four million embryonic children are currently frozen in cryogenic storage in the United States alone. These living human beings exist in a state of suspended development, creating ethical dilemmas about their fate.
Ready to understand the deeper implications of reproductive technology? Listen now and discover why the technological ability to create life doesn't automatically grant us the moral authority to do so.
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Yeah, I'd never planned to write a book revisit IVF. You know he is a big proponent of IVF and he had promised to make access easier for families and to lower the cost. And it wasn't a surprise when the executive order was signed on February 18th. The book was well underway by then, just because at Sophia Institute Press the leadership there, all the way up to the president, expected that Donald Trump would keep that promise to revisit IVF. So the executive order wasn't a surprise. That's what started the book getting written.
Speaker 2:Let me pause here just for a moment to welcome you all to the Become who you Are podcast and a very important discussion on IVF is not the way. The false promises of artificial procreation. This was written by a very competent woman a beautiful heart you can tell from the interview and her name is Stacey Tresenkos. She's the executive director of the St Philip Institute of Catechesis and Evangelization in the Diocese of Tyler. She's a fellow for Bishop Robert Barron's Word on Fire Institute and teaches theology at Seton Hall University and science at Holy Apostles College and Seminary.
Speaker 2:She's the author of Particles of Faith, science Was Born of Christianity and 20 Answers Bioethics. She's written articles for all kinds of publications, including the National Catholic Register, catholic World Report and many others. Relevant Radio she's been on Ave Maria Radio, catholic Answers Live. She earned a doctorate in chemistry from Penn State University, worked as a research chemist at DuPont. After becoming Catholic she earned two more degrees, two master degrees, one in dogmatic theology and systematic philosophy, both summa cum laude, from Holy Apostles College and Seminary. She is a wife and a mother of seven children. So back to this very important conversation.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a topic. I've followed human embryonic stem cell research for about 10 years, so that is my connection with this issue, because those embryos come from IVF in vitro fertilization. So back in December they asked me if I would tackle this topic and get a book out that would explain mostly to Catholics but anyone interested in what the Catholic Church teaches why the church is against in vitro fertilization. It's a big argument and it needed to be laid out in a book in a way that a general audience could consume it and hopefully even people around the president or the president himself will read this book and understand that IVF is not the way to solve the problem of population in our country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for that. I wonder before we dive in here. I wonder how JD Vance, as a convert and a Catholic, have you heard what his position is? I haven't heard him, and I'm not surprised that he's not trying to push back against the president right away on this. I mean, this is a new administration just coming in but I haven't heard anything from him. It's a process.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard anything from him either, but what I have noticed the administration is doing is there's a 90-day policy review and the book is going to make it out. It's the fastest I've ever written a book and Sophia Institute did a fantastic job of pulling the team together to get this book out on time. It's going to be out during the 90-day review that the executive order called for. That's all. The executive order called for was a 90-day policy review, but Vice President Vance, he hasn't said anything that I've heard either way as a commitment. But what the administration has done is, I think, in the right direction. Looking at, you know, the $5,000 credit for mothers who have babies, or credits to families who have more than I think it was six children. By focusing on that, they are focusing in the right direction.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard anything come from this 90-day policy review yet, but I'm sure we will and I'm sure there will be more subcommittees doing reviews. So it really is a good time for Catholics to understand this argument and start talking, just talk a lot, bring up conversations and talk about these things with the people that we know, because it's a really wonderful story. But it's not a short argument. You've got to go all the way back to. Why do we even believe in God to make this argument?
Speaker 2:Yes. So now, sophia sent me a copy and so it must be coming off the press, if not already, very soon. And if they can send me a copy, let's get one to the White House Right and get it in their hands. So look at, you've done some incredible work here, stacey, so you've really laid this out. You know, because we have a, you know, we have a, you know, just a window here this morning. I'm going to ask you to see if there's a way to kind of summarize a little bit. If I'm out speaking to people, as I am all the time, how would you start this If you're going to, because, again, the book is unbelievable. I mean unbelievable as far as laying this out so well, but it's still going to come down to, I think, a sacramental sign.
Speaker 2:From a Catholic standpoint, from a religious standpoint I believe in God and it comes down to our bodies are a sacrament, and it's, you know, the beauty of this. In fact, marriage and the family this is the John Paul II pointed out this is the primordial sacrament, this is the sacrament of all sacraments, you know, in the beginning. So we didn't need all kinds of different sacraments or visible signs of God's love in the beginning, right? There was no sin. So it was marriage. It was marriage in the family. And you know, we have to keep that in mind, don't we, when we start out with this, that our bodies, our marriages, our sacramental signs reflecting Trinitarian love in the world. And if we don't get that premise, maybe I'll just do one quick visual for people to try to step into this.
Speaker 2:I always think, you know, when we think about the Trinity, which you point out very well in the book, that we think about the love of the Father flowing to the Son and the Son receiving that love. And it's so beautiful and profound it comes out in the form of a person. Of course, we call that person the love between the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. And I remember Stacey, after my wife delivered our first child, many years ago now, and after my knees stopped shaking, I sat down in the chair and I thought, oh my gosh, nine months before that baby was born, jessica was born.
Speaker 2:I offered my love to my wife. My wife received that love and it was so beautiful and profound. It came out in the form of a person. We call that person Jessica. And so that's that tiny creative. You know, god creates us and brings us into this world to bring his Trinitarian love in the world, and the fullest sign of that is marriage and the union of a man and a woman and this child that flows from that union, a tiny reflection of Trinitarian love in the world, and that's always, for me, that's a good way to kind of start out a conversation like this.
Speaker 1:It is and you know, talking about Trinitarian love is something that people who are not Catholic are really not going to understand. I think even Protestants might have a hard time understanding that because they don't have the rich doctrine of the Holy Trinity the way that we understand it. You know it's a little bit. However, you want to express it in the Protestant world, but there's a very clear teaching, dogmatic theological teaching, in the Catholic Church about what the Trinity is and from that flows the language that Donum Vitae and Dignitas Personae and the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses that anything that separates so it's a principle of inseparability. Anything that separates the unitive and the procreative aspect of the conjugal act, which is what you just explained, is not okay, like anything that separates lovemaking and life-giving. Contraception shuts down the life-giving and IVF shuts down the lovemaking. Anything that separates those two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, say that again. I know people can go back and listen to this, but that's very important, what you just said, and to help us start to kind of put this in a mindset that we can understand. Can you say that again? I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love making and life giving. That's what the church means by unitive and procreative. So the procreative is being open to life. The unitive is the intimacy within marriage. It's not just having sex and it's not just biologically putting a sperm and egg together in a petri dish. It's a body and soul unity. It's an intimacy that is not just bodily, but it has to be bodily, and not just spiritual, but it has to be spiritual also. That is the most perfect union, where two become one, and that's the only fitting and proper situation to work cooperatively with God to bring about the existence of a new human life.
Speaker 1:What we're saying in all of this is that children are that important. Children have a right to being brought into existence that way, not in a petri dish, not in an unwanted situation. They have a right to be brought into existence in that way. Now, so many children aren't, so many of us weren't, but nevertheless, that's what we aim for and that's why the church will never go along with IVF, because it breaks that lovemaking and life-giving and that you can't have that. It's fundamentally opposed to what it takes to strengthen families and marriages and people and children in our society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you go through quite an extensive explanation of what human dignity is. Is that a good place to kind of start to lay more groundwork here, or would you rather do you think there's? I'm going to let you lead this because because we, you know, I want you to be able to get out what you want to get out in a short you know, in a quasi short period of time compared to the work that you've done, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, that's the beauty of writing a book you become, you drink this teaching into your soul. So it's something that I can talk about very easily and I'm hoping the book lays the. It's got a major premise, that being that God exists, and then nine minor premises to build the argument against IVF, and I lay it out that way. And dignity is one of the premises, but I lay it out that way in a succession of if-then statements If God exists, then he's personal, he communicates with us. If he communicates with us, we are made in His image and likeness, and so on. It goes through all of that.
Speaker 2:So we're starting from a beautiful spot really. I mean, we really say, you know, this is no secondary teaching, is it that we're created in the Imago Dei, in the image and likeness of God? And I mean, it's an awe and wonder of that. And I think we have to really realize, in this crazy secular world that wants to throw God out, of course, that we're really wonderfully made, right, beautifully and wonderfully made, and there's a reason for it.
Speaker 1:And you have to understand what it means to be made in the image and likeness of a triune and incarnational God, the God of Christianity, the way we understand from divine revelation. And all of that feeds into dignity. But these are words that in our modern culture, for people that don't understand Catholic teaching, dignity can mean a lot of things to people. The right to life can mean a lot of things to people. Rights themselves can mean a lot of things. Love can mean a lot of things, so I tackle these words. Dignity is one of those words. It's an English word, but it comes from classical Latin and even ancient Greek. So whenever we have a word that comes from antiquity like that, it's an indication that it's a concept we all know. We're made to understand what human dignity is or what dignity itself is. It's written on the heart, so to speak, and we have to strive to clarify that word so that we know what we mean when we talk about dignity. Human dignity flows from the fact that we are made in God's image and likeness. We have a personal dignity because we are persons. That is different from other animals. You know, ivf comes from artificial insemination back in the 1800s. A lot of people. I didn't know this before I started researching it. Back in the 1800s scientists were already talking about using this reproductive procedure they use on cattle. Artificial insemination is used in ag science a lot today. Even where they do put the, they make embryos in the petri dishes with sperm and egg taken from the animals so they can better derive the offspring. You know it's breeding, it's how they do breeding.
Speaker 1:Back in the 80s people were asking if that could be done with humans and the church from that very beginning said no, humans are not cattle. And the church from that very beginning said no, humans are not cattle. We're not going to talk about breeding humans in the same way that we breed cattle because of personal dignity. So it's a matter of understanding that and I really think this conversation, I think there's a lot of opportunities for evangelization around this issue. If you're talking to someone outside the church and you're talking about IVF, it's a perfect opportunity to start talking about human dignity, because what we're saying here is not that babies that might be conceived in the future have a right to be conceived within the loving union, bodily and spiritual, of their parents were saying everyone had that right. You and me, we had a right to be born of that kind of love, and so many times we aren't, but we had that right nevertheless. As human persons, we had a right, have a right to be born into the love of our parents.
Speaker 1:It's really important to understand that right because it helps you figure out where things went wrong. If that right was violated, then fix it. It helps put us back on the right path. So if something went wrong, like I've compared it to a teenage mother, if you have a young woman who becomes pregnant with a beautiful child outside of marriage or maybe when she's too young to it, feels like she's too young to be able to take this on, that happened there. There were other rights violated, but specifically the child's right was violated. That child should not have been conceived in this way.
Speaker 1:Nevertheless, the child was Okay, we have a beautiful child. Now what do we do? We need to set it right, and so that's the reason we help teenage mothers who are unwed. We would hope that the parents would get married and go on to raise their child. We would hope, if not, that then the mother someday the mother has the family around her to supply what that child needs to fill in, the grandparents to fill in as paternal and maternal figures to help that teenage mother. I mean, there's all kinds of ways to set it right and that's what we need to do as a society with this IVF question. We need to be asking the question about how to restore the rights to children they deserve because of their human dignity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really good. That was really good Because, again, having these discussions I know a lot of people, stacey to your point, want to have these discussions but you know, unless you're versed in this they can be difficult, right? You know, the more the I think most of us, as we look around the world and see marriages and families and children born out of wedlock, et cetera, what we see look at I'm outside of Chicago. You know 80% of the inner city kids in Chicago are born out of wedlock and we see the damage that that's done to them, right, abortion's huge right. So we see the damage that that's done. That that's done to them, right, abortion's huge right. So we see the damage that that's done.
Speaker 2:The biggest, hardest thing, I think, when it comes to IVF is that these are people that desperately want to bring a child into the world and it's a very emotional issue. You know, when we face someone like that in our family and again, they've been trying maybe to have a baby for five, six, seven, eight plus years and they can't. And I know in the book you say that you have to discern this. It's just not one answer for all and you're looking for those chances to evangelize. Do you have a couple starting points or things that we might discern when we're approaching this and I know that's kind of an open thing because we don't have that person in front of us that's asking but this is a loving couple that really says okay, jack. The church teaches about the beauty of marriage and the family and children. We do all kinds of medical procedures, etc. Etc. Why can't we do this one?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because of what your children have a right to, and I think it's very important to affirm all the goodness that you hear coming from the other person. I've talked to people who have used IVF and they have children and they now regret it. I've talked to people who don't regret it Wait, wait. They've used IVF and they have children and they now regret it. I've talked to people who don't regret it.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait. They've used IVF to have children, or?
Speaker 1:Yes, and they regret the choice to use IVF. They don't regret the children at all and that's part of the tension, because saying why Stacey?
Speaker 2:why do they say why? In other words, you're describing a couple now that had children through IVF, right, and then they look back and they go they're regretting it Did they explain to you. Yes, they do, and I interviewed anonymously some of those women and you know you have some case studies in the back which I did not get to and I thought, well, I'll get to those later. So if you're describing some, okay, good, good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, what they said was always no one regrets having the children, and that's a best case scenario. The parents love their children very much. They love each other, they love their children. Everything is right there and it's important to affirm that. What they regret, one woman said, was that the children were conceived in this way, where mom and dad were just passive. They weren't part of the conception.
Speaker 1:The man's sperm is collected by masturbation, that is, he's not with his wife, he's got pornography. He's in a closet, you know, or a little room at the hospital just to collect that sample. The woman and this is what the mother said to me when the embryo is produced in the petri dish, because they take the egg out of the woman and the man has the sperm, they put it in the petri dish and the embryos come into life. So the mother was really troubled that her own children came into existence in such a cold laboratory setting. And then you know that's the second part that her husband was off to the side. The children came into existence in a cold laboratory setting and then when the embryos her children were put into her body so that her body could become pregnant and nurture these children, it wasn't her husband that was with her in that moment. It was the doctor who put the embryo in there and she said I just I'll always regret that that is how my children were conceived. You can't go back and fix it. You can't change it. And you know, we all have done things we regret. We can go to confession, we can accept forgiveness, we can go on the right path and that's what a lot of people do, because they didn't know or they were so desperate for children in that moment they weren't thinking straight. And so there's also hope there, then, because even if you've used IVF and you regret that you did that for the reasons I just explained, there's still hope going forward. You're gonna raise your kids, you're gonna be there for them for the rest of their life. You're gonna love them. You're gonna teach them how to love.
Speaker 1:Another mother said to me that it affected her marriage. Like 12 years later she looks back and the choice to do IVF led them also to use another woman's eggs because her eggs weren't healthy. The doctors told her, and so they used another woman's eggs and they've never told the children that she's not actually their biological mother, never told the children that she's not actually their biological mother and so she lives with greater regrets because she's because they made the choice and did that. She said it broke something in her relationship with her husband and for 12 years they've been sort of white knuckling it because they don't know how to have the conversation. They have these children they're getting to be teenagers now.
Speaker 1:They have siblings of these children in cryogenic storage and she and her husband don't know how to talk about it and it has put up a wall, a big wall, in the marriage that she doesn't know how they're going to break down. And they're devout Catholics. It's just that they have a lot of things they've got to talk about. They've got to talk about what to tell their children. They've got to talk about whatever got broken in their relationship and how to restore it after 12 years and they're worried. The mother said to me she's actually worried about what her children think of marriage now because for their whole life they haven't seen the kind of united marriage she wishes they had seen. So she's worried about the next generation not understanding marriage now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really something. You know it's difficult as we all look back on our lives, especially, you know. Look at that. You know I'm a baby boomer and I was born in the late 50s and you know the sexual revolution was alive and well by the time I came in and and, man, we were told a lot of lies. Yes, you know, you mentioned it in the book and I felt the same way. You know, the church teaching is so beautiful and always, looking back it, always I always said see, she knew something I didn't know.
Speaker 2:So there's wisdom coming down through the ages here let's talk a little bit about move away from, you know, just those loving parents to the ways that this technology can be distorted. It's being distorted in many, many ways and maybe, if you don't mind, just talking about a couple of those things. So, people, when they're discussing this, there's a lot of negative things out there. You know, all the way from freezing children. You know too many, they bring too many embryos in and have them. You know all the way from freezing children.
Speaker 2:You know too many, they bring too many embryos in and have them. You know, I mean, you have these babies that are in freezer storage. Basically, you lose babies. So maybe you could talk about a couple of those things that people really need to look at. You know surrogacy, you know, and then you know people in same-sex relationships. Now, you know bringing babies into the world. We don't know the long-term effects this is going to have. When you talk about the individual children that are going to go through life like this, yeah, and I address all of that in different places in the book.
Speaker 1:After I make the argument, the next section just deals with the embryos. I didn't want to start with the embryonic children because that's a consequence of what went wrong with unitive and procreative in the first place. So I want to make that very clear, because it's easy just to start with all the embryos that are in cryogenic storage as an argument against IVF. That's actually a consequence of breaking God's laws in the first place. But it's true this floored me In the United States alone there are between one and four million embryonic children in liquid nitrogen cryogenic tanks.
Speaker 1:They're frozen. They're not dead, they're alive, but frozen, suspended in development in this absurd situation, basically because their parents don't want to raise them yet or they don't want them at all. So why is it one to four million? It's because there's not good data on this and no one really knows how many. There could be more, and that's just the United States. Different nations record this data differently. In Italy you can't even donate the embryos. So somebody at MIT said they're in limbo, they're in a cryogenic limbo indefinitely until they figure out what to do with them. So that's. One consequence is that we live in a society where there are one to four million of us frozen in a tank, and that commoditizes the children. They're either going to be donated to science, which means whatever scientific breakthroughs come about in human development, understanding and medicine could be because of these embryos that are stored in tanks and donated to science and killed in research.
Speaker 2:And if they're not killed in research? I mean, you could think about the most despicable things that science can do, right, you know, bringing these children to life and then using them for organ transplants.
Speaker 1:We're trying, we're trying.
Speaker 2:I'm in Illinois and I call it the belly of the beast, stacey here, because we'll do anything to anybody, right? I mean, it's just this corrupt government that we have. And it's not just the government, right. We're the IVF capital of the world here around the Chicagoland area, right? And so this is very, very, very, very common. But you know, they're pushing these late-term abortions here and stuff, and you know, and underneath some of that is because they want these children to have their organs more fully developed before they take them out of a mother's womb and then use them, you know, and this has been going on for a long, long time. So you get, anyways, the point is we have to be careful with these technologies, and just because we can do something scientifically to your point, it doesn't mean it's right, is it?
Speaker 1:Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And we have to figure out now what to do with these embryos. They're either going to be thawed and allowed to die, they're going to be donated to science and killed, or people are going to try to adopt them. So now there's this whole debate about embryo adoption. Is it morally licit for a woman to adopt, a couple, to adopt an embryo and have that embryo brought to term by a woman who's not the biological mother? It's their surrogacy questions. I've got a story in the book about a woman who was in her 20s, but in her teenage years she had a boyfriend and it turned out that there was a doctor in their town who was using his own sperm with eggs from mothers seeking IVF with their husbands. He was using his own sperm and putting the embryos into these women, and so this town had a lot of half siblings and this woman was telling the story that she had been intimate with her own half brother.
Speaker 1:unknowingly. She was about to marry him or she could have married him, and the trauma that it caused her was that she's terrified to be in a relationship with anyone because she doesn't know who is her half-sibling out there and she's terrified for her own children to get into relationships. And so those are things you don't think about in the beginning of what it does to family life, and that's an extreme story, but still it's because a doctor decided to do that to trick people. That way. It just. It opens up the opportunity for so much commoditization of the children.
Speaker 1:I saw an article yesterday about they can now genetically screen the embryos so well that doctors think they know what risk your embryos are going to have. And the particular article I was reading was a screening for obesity. So parents can. Now they're saying I don't think they really can, but anyway they're saying that parents can screen embryos for the ones that are at risk for obesity and reject those embryos in favor of another embryo that's not at risk for obesity. I mean that's just leading to all kinds of horrible things. I don't think they really know genetically that much, but they're telling patients this. That's not the picture the church has of cooperating with God to welcome the new existence of a human person. That's not how we treat people not our children especially.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you bring out in the book.
Speaker 2:You know the three things we really have to be cognizant of and you know the beginning, the metaphysical, the beginning, our actions and then where we're going.
Speaker 2:You know, kind of in the beginning, where we're at now, what actions we're going to take and keeping your eye on where we're heading right, the beatific vision, and so if we lose sight of that completeness I thought that was a really wonderful way you unpacked that. Stacey, can you talk a little bit about that? Look, we've got maybe you know, 10 minutes left, so it's not like we have a ton of time, but you did it really really well in there. And I think you know just to kind of put a kind of a you know an overview, go above the trees a little bit and just say, hey, guys, you know we have to keep this in mind, otherwise we can get in the weeds on all of this stuff. And I think when I feel like I'm going in the weeds, stacey, that part of your book kind of pulled me back a little bit right as I'm thinking through this and you go yes, keep this in mind, and then we can go down again and go and get more granular.
Speaker 1:That's where our human dignity comes from. We're made in the image and likeness of God, so that we are called to communion with God, and so our origin is God, but our destiny is also God, and the only thing that really matters in this whole life is getting to heaven and doing what God calls you to do to lead other people to heaven as well. And so everybody sins, everybody falls short of perfection, and what our life is is constant readjusting our path, you know, amending our lives so that we sin no more. And so we're called to overlap with other people's lives and help lead them on that right path.
Speaker 1:And IVF is not the way of life. It's not the way to love God and neighbor going on that path in our nation. So we want to stay on the path of life, not the path of death, and so it is a choice to go in that direction. But it's a million little choices in everyday life as well. This is all about IVF, but it's also a good reminder to all of us that when you're in the front yard watering your flower beds and the neighbors walk by, that's a little chance to shine God's love and say hello and wish them a nice day, whatever you're doing in life, whether your children adult children are going through hard times because of their choices that they might come to regret, you're called to be there and to love them and to, like my husband says so well, we're parenting the long game.
Speaker 1:We're there for our kids through all of it. We're there for our kids through all of it and we're there for each other through all of it, and we need to be there as a society and a nation for each other through all of it. And that sounds a little bit flowery, but it is what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 2:Well, it is love, it's the most important thing. Yeah, it is love, and it's love and the truth. And love is always a self-gift, you know, it's always a gift that we have to be a gift, gift of self. You know, I remember John Paul speaking to young people so often. Stacey, you know young people, you know that your life has meaning to the extent that it's given away as a gift to others. In marriage, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 2:I remember a sentence in your book that husbands are this. I'm going to just paraphrase. But this gift, especially in this lovemaking act, as a husband, I gave this gift of really motherhood, in essence, to my wife and my wife gave this gift to me of being a father and we came together for this in a sacrament. You know, so beautiful and so awesome. Love is something we don't see. I mean it's. You know, the baby is what makes this concrete and we see this. You know this fruitful union. But even if a child doesn't come out of this, this love we don't see, you know. But the love is seen through our bodies, through the beauty of this and, like you said, with the neighbor, me saying hi to that neighbor, I'm expressing love, I'm expressing my heart right. When you become cognizant of this, it's so beautiful and this is how we step into the world and, like you said, there's so many ways to go off.
Speaker 2:I would say people that are struggling with IVF or with those issues. You know, first of all, except you know if you've made as many mistakes as I did and you look back and you go, the church was right on all this, especially contraception and all these sexual things. You know, except the church is teaching and they get Stacey's book and really start to do some research and stuff. But in the beginning you got to start with what the church is teaching, because the wisdom is really flowed down through the ages, isn't it Stacey?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's beautiful. I'm a convert, so I know what life is like. I was a chemist.
Speaker 1:I know what it's like to think science has all the answers and then to wake up one day and realize no, it doesn't, and to ask the bigger questions of what God wants us to do. And to ask the bigger questions of what God wants us to do. And I make the point in the book that I'm old enough now, in my feast, to look back, and I understand that some of my greatest blessings came when I followed the hardest teachings, when I opened my heart to God and discerned God's will and did something I didn't want to do or didn't think I could do. I received the greatest blessings.
Speaker 1:And I do want to just say here at the end I dedicated this book to my aunt and uncle, my mother's sister and her husband, aunt Dana and Uncle Kenneth, back in the 50s, when they were newlyweds. They'd been married over 60 years. When they were newlyweds, she lost their first baby and died in the womb. And when they were getting the baby out and cleaning out her uterus, they perforated it and rendered her infertile, and all she ever wanted to be was a mother.
Speaker 1:So my aunt was left infertile through a very tragic situation and it broke her heart and she discerned God's will and she went on. They adopted two kids, but what they also did was become foster parents out in Abilene, texas, and they went on to foster over 100 children in their life and they fostered them in a way that restores that love that these children from broken homes are denied. They fostered them in a way that loves and they kept in touch with these children whenever they were allowed by the adoptive parents. They have so many grandchildren now through those foster children.
Speaker 1:These foster children are grown, now they have their own kids and they stay in touch with my aunt and uncle. They send them Christmas cards, they come visit them. It's multiplying hundreds upon hundreds of children that have them to thank for restoring the love and setting society back on a right path, setting their individual lives back on a right path. My aunt and uncle are not Catholic, but they love Jesus, they love the church, they love Christ, they love God and they love humanity and what they've done is really like a role model for all of us. They were given a very bitter gift of infertility, but they asked God what do you want us to do with this gift and the fruitfulness of the blessings multiplied.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think thank you for that story. You know God is going to take and make good out of, if we allow him to, some way in our life. I mean that's just the way God works. If God is love, he's going to figure out a way to bring it in. But you're right, I mean there are some.
Speaker 2:You know infertility is a tough one and it's not uncommon today. You know people are waiting longer to get married. There's all kinds of reasons for that waiting longer to get married, and there's all kinds of reasons for that. Some, no matter, regardless of when you got married, you're going to be infertile and I meet so many infertile couples today. So they're all asking questions. You know I'll just mention in here too that there are. You know there's natural ways. I you know I just mentioned quickly I've had Dr Hilgers from the Paul VI Institute on a number of times his daughter and Napro Technology.
Speaker 2:You know I mean we have these beautiful ways that they can look and really get to the underlying issues. Because one thing with IVF Stacey, as I'm sure you know very well, they don't get to the underlying issues of what can be going on with a woman. I know in the Chicagoland area. Here women go and they don't even look at their health and what's going on with a woman. I know in the Chicagoland area, here women go and they, you know, they don't even look at their health and what's going on with their body. They're just going to do this artificial method. And there are methods and you're, you know, when you start to look outside and say, okay, well, what else can I do? There are things you know you're not just on your own. You can go to NAPRO doctors and you can get your real system checked out. Right Through things like natural family planning and charting, you can start to understand your own cycles better. And so these are all beautiful teachings that the church brings in.
Speaker 2:And the intimacy between a man and a woman. You know, when you start to talk about these things and really deal with them in prayer, you know God starts to bring some answers into our lives that are just really beautiful. You know we don't just send you, you know, out to be on your own with these types of things. The church has really thought through this in very deep ways. You know so on both sides of the coin. So, hey, god bless you. Thank you so much for being here. Just a quick minute, stacey. You know what brought you into the faith. You're a convert, you're a chemist. I have a daughter that's a doctor and I'll tell you, it's the hardest ones sometimes. Or the ones that have studied so much biology and chemistry that somehow their mindset gets changed a little bit. It's very difficult for many scientists not all of them, but to come into a deeper faith. Sometimes it takes a tragedy. Often, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I needed answers outside of science. I was in my thesis and I asked my husband, who's a cradle Catholic. You know where's the truth. I need to know the answers.
Speaker 1:My life is going by and I thought chemistry was everything and it's not, and I admit that now I just don't know what to do. I didn't know how to talk about love or relationship or bonding in any other context other than electron orbitals and nuclei. I didn't know how to have relationships, and so it's just been a wonderful ride. I love science even more now because I understand that it's the study of God's handiwork, and I no longer work as a chemist because when we started having our children, I made the decision because he told me I'll support you in whatever you want to do. I made the decision to be home with them and raise them. So I work from home now as a writer and an online professor at three different Catholic institutions. But it all started because I wanted to be a mother and be here with my children, and my husband said he'd support me in doing that. So we sort of built our life around that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the heart was made for the truth, wasn't it? And we're made for this, we're made for these answers. Look, this is an awesome book and actually, speaking of that, you know, if people just want to get into their heart, you know what is the philosophical foundation for all this. You know it starts with philosophy, doesn't it? And what Stacey just said, we all have a heart to seek the truth. It's so important. So there's a lot in here. I mean, this is a good book even for people just trying to find out who I am as a person, answering those big questions what's the meaning and purpose of life? You did a lot in here, so kudos to you. You're an accomplished woman, obviously from your background in education and chemistry, and mother and wife. So thank you so much. Thanks for your time. And this is at Sophia Press. I'll make sure I put a link in there. Do you know? Is it actually available today? If it's not, it's going to be very soon. Do we know the date?
Speaker 1:May 20th.
Speaker 2:May 20th, okay, and people certainly should buy the book, and as soon as it's ready, they'll send it out to you. So God bless you, stacey. Thank you so much. Thanks for being a gift. Goodbye everyone. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate your time.