On this episode, Chris is joined by Katy Faust, Founder and Director of Them Before Us, an organization formed to advance and defend the primacy of children’s rights above adult desires. Chris and Katy unpack the issue of surrogacy, a process by which a child is deliberately subjected to mother-loss. Katy shares that only 7% of children created in vitro will survive — the rest die, are destroyed, or are indefinitely frozen. Unlike adoption, in which mother-loss sadly occurs as a result of a broken situation, surrogacy deliberately manufactures mother-loss as a feature of the contract. Industry advocates want you to believe “the kids will be fine,” but Katy knows the kids aren’t “fine.” By their own testimony, later in life the kids express feelings of genealogical bewilderment, commodification, and guilt surrounding the financial and eugenic aspects of their creation.
