Dr. Stacy Trasancos, author of IVF Is Not the Way, joins Samantha to unpack the hidden costs and ethical challenges of IVF and fertility technology. Drawing on her science background and faith, Stacy reveals why IVF often falls short—and why natural fertility awareness and restorative reproductive medicine offer hope that’s overlooked by mainstream medicine.
We explore how the fertility industry profits from desperation, the ethical dilemmas of embryo freezing and manipulation, and how couples can reclaim control of their fertility through informed, compassionate alternatives.
Links mentioned in the episode:
IVF Is Not the Way by Stacy Trasancos
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TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00]
Samantha: Welcome to Brave New Us, where we explore what it means to be human in the age of biotechnology. Today I'm here with Dr. Stacy Senka, a chemist and theologian who brings a rare, dual perspective to some of the most charged questions in bioethics. She's the author of IVF, is Not The Way a bold and deeply reasoned critique of in vitro fertilization and what it reveals about how we view life, love, and human dignity.
Samantha: What happens when technology takes the place of relationships? What do we risk when children are made instead of begotten? And how can science and faith work together to uphold the dignity of every human life? We spoke last in season two, episode five, where we discussed vaccines derived from fetal tissue and other aspects of embryonic research.
Samantha: I highly recommend revisiting that episode as it [00:01:00] provides a valuable context for today's conversation. Dr. TKOs, welcome back to Brave New Us.
Dr. Trasancos: Hello. Thank you so much for having me back and just for being a voice out there in general, um, in favor of, uh, human dignity and bioethics.
Samantha: Yeah, thank you. Your book IVF is not the way it takes a hard stance in a space filled with heartbreak and hope. What motivated you to write it now?
Dr. Trasancos: President Donald Trump. Um, just to get right to the point, it's the, I'm not a very political person, but, um, we all heard him say during his campaign that he promised to make IVF more available. you know, among conservative circles, that was hailed as a good thing. It was seen as very positive. Um, and it, it occurred to me then that the number of people in the United States who are against IVF is probably far smaller than the number of people who [00:02:00] are against abortion.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): talk about a steep hill to climb. And, uh, so we got, when he won the, the presidency, then um, Sophia Institute press. Talk to me and ask me if I'd be willing to write a book on this issue I hadn't planned to. But, um, yeah, it matters. And so, um, we, we got, I got the book written in a month and they got it turned around and published
Samantha: Um.
Dr. Trasancos (2): the 90 day review period that he called for.
Dr. Trasancos (2): So that is unheard of. That was definitely a feat for the Holy Spirit.
Samantha: Yeah, publishing usually moves at this glacial pace, you know, years to write and then, and then years to get it edited and published and everything. So in a month, my goodness, what a whirlwind.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah, it was fun. I liked doing it that way 'cause I just kind of, uh, told my, I work at home, you know, like a, a lot of, uh, people do these days. And I told my husband I'm, you know, he was behind it. He said, let's do this. So he sort of took on everything [00:03:00] else for the month. He's retired and, um, I started, I just isolated in my office and started writing and, um, plowed through it. And then we went on vacation to Belize for 10 days. The first time in 19 years we've had a vacation, just the two of us. And when I got back from vacation on the plane, they sent me the corrected edits. So I had like a week after that to go through the edits. But it was fun. It was
Samantha: Yeah. It was a good way to celebrate it being done Well, I always say, I have to say I've read it and it does not read like something that was written that quickly. It is so, uh, well researched, so in depth. I mean, you really capture just in, in such a, a great way, like such a human way, but also intellectually all the different facets, um, of this issue.
Samantha: So I wanna hopefully go through some of those in the interview. But if you were advising President Trump right now, [00:04:00] you're called in, what would be your policy recommendations that you would be in there advising him, asking, insisting on?
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah, the number one, I mean, and that's where the title come came from. I would say IVF is not the way
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): the low birth rate problem in the United States. It's not something that's gonna have a big pharma fix to it. this issue is much deeper than hormone injections and assisted reproductive technologies, um, which puts a lot of money in, in my opinion, the wrong people's pockets. Um, this is a solution that gets at the very heart of what it means to be human, what it means to be married, what
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): to be a family, what it means to accept children as gifts, and as a society. We need to get our heads around. What it means to say that children are gifts. We need to view them as gifts, not just in the family, but in the whole society.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And, and that's how you build a better [00:05:00] society. And it, it's gonna take more than executive orders and edicts and changing of funding, but it'll reorient the way we view humanity. And, and of course I would say that money needs to go towards research that, assist in healing infertility, but doesn't replace the conjugal act.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And we can get into what that means.
Samantha: Sure. Yeah. And then we also have an episode out this season with, uh, Grace Stark, the editor of Natural Womanhood, who goes dives deep into restorative reproductive medicine as a real healing alternative to what is being offered. Um, you know, the technological hijacking that's happening, um, in IVF. So how do you respond to those who say that IVF is just another medical advancement, like antibiotics or organ transplants?
Samantha: And why do you think it's fundamentally different?
Dr. Trasancos (2): That is one of the, I mean, first of all, I had the same question, like not just [00:06:00] ask. I know, I know
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): answer to
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I wasn't just asking it like, I seriously had that question, like, because I'm a convert, and I thought, what good grief, what's wrong with that? Um, it, it's bringing more babies into the world.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Um, and, and that is a good question, like how is it different from any other medical technology? It's different because it is about the cooperation with God of bringing a new human into existence. So because we're talking about. Conception, we're talking about the, the beginning of a new human life, because that is so important. And if people don't understand why being human is so important and so unique, it, you missed this point like I did, because we're talking about a baby. We have to insist that that baby be born of the most intimate love possible. I mean, that, that's what the church says. Don't break the most intimate love there is for the baby.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And, and it ha of course it gets broken [00:07:00] all the time, but the church says the child has a right to that.
Samantha: Yeah. So when you say it gets broken all the time, you mean that conception happens, um, outside of those things, but there's a maybe fundamental difference between things that happen, um, unintentionally versus intentionally severing that relationship.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah. And
Samantha: So.
Dr. Trasancos (2): core teaching here is the principle, I call it the principle of inseparability. But what it means is you can't separate the unitive and the procreative aspect of the conjugal act that's theology speak. Um, 'cause it, that hardly even makes sense to a lot of Catholics, much less non-Catholics.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Like what is unitive and procreative And what do you mean by conjugate act? It means that in sex, in marriage, you cannot separate love making and life giving. The life giving of your child has to be done within [00:08:00] the context of your love making. and I, when I started writing a book, I'm like. People who are not Catholic and already know these things, that is gonna be a hard sale. Like good, like again, conservatives who are already against abortion, they're not gonna understand that, that, that the, the child has a right to be born of marital love. So children have a right to be born within marriage, not just within a marriage, but over there in a, in a Petri dish in the lab within marriage that is united body and soul, bodily unity and spiritual unity. And so the church says children have a right to that and therefore the church cannot say it's listed to break that unity. Um, and that, that, I think that is a really hard thing to teach to
Samantha: Yeah. For sure. So why do you say that IVF violates the rights of a child?[00:09:00]
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yes.
Samantha: I.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Um, and that, and that is, actually, it actually says that in the catechism, and it says it in dawn and vitae. Like I had never seized on that point before. But when people say, well, you're against IVF, you must be saying, my child is, is, you know, somehow unworthy or something's wrong with my child because of the way he or she was conceived. No, the, the church is actually speaking to the humanity of that child that that child and all children have a right to be born of. Intimate, um, unity of love, but conjugal love to be born of, they're, they have a right to be conceived in love and by conceived in love, we mean bodily and spiritual. So there have been, even when Donna Vitae came out in the late 1980s, their were theologians in the church who argued that IVF still meets that criteria because even though the couple, like for example, they call it the, the [00:10:00] simple case IVF all the issues about embryos and storage or embryos being killed, or donor embryos and eggs. Just say you have a married couple who's committed. And they are infertile and they want to conceive a child and they're not going to use a donor egg. They're not going to use donor sperm. They're only gonna fertilize one egg. They're only gonna bring one embryo into being IVF and otherwise, spiritually they're united.
Dr. Trasancos (2): They're gonna commit to this child. They have a strong marriage. They otherwise, in this one event, they have a bodily unity in their marriage. It's just this one time. They want to try to conceive that embryo in the lab. The church looked at all of that, removing all the other questions and said, no, still no because that child that's going to be conceived has a right to be conceived of [00:11:00] bodily and spiritual unity. So you can't even do it that one time. Now I wanna just follow that up by saying even if couples do that, 'cause there's a lot of couples I've talked to who didn't know the church said you can't do that, and they decided to do it anyway and have a child anyway. I also wanna emphasize you can have complete unity in your marriage except for that one event.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And it was an event. It doesn't mean your marriage is broken. It doesn't mean you can't go to confession and ask for forgiveness. It doesn't mean you can't raise your child in love. It means that one time of conceiving that child very important. Um, it, the child had a right otherwise. And, and when I said a while ago, that gets, that unity gets broken all the time.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I'm talking about like. Women who conceive out of wedlock, uh, teenage mothers who never marry the father, uh, you know, rape cases. There's all kinds of ways where [00:12:00] people get pregnant, women get pregnant, and, and children are brought into existence where there isn't marital, bodily, and spiritual unity. in all of those cases, hope is not lost.
Dr. Trasancos (2): So that's why I focus on the hope in the book, if you've. If you've denied a child that, that right. The way you fix it, like any other sin in our lives, is you turn back toward the good.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): You admit that it was wrong, it wasn't right, the child had a right. And then you work on restoring those rights and they can be restored. So, um, you know, turning back to toward the good is, is what I'm hoping in this book. So even if people have used IVF, it's not a condemnation, it's a plea to stop saying that it's okay, and don't encourage more people to do it
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): for forgiveness for what you did, but then move on. Move on to focusing on what is good, true, and beautiful.
Samantha: Right. Yeah. And I think, um, something you said that it's important to underscore is that in no way, [00:13:00] uh, by saying that there's a problem with IVF. Are we saying that there is a problem with the children who come out of that? Just like there's all, all those other examples that you gave of, um, being conceived in a way that's sort of less than what, what would be the ideal or the, the best, um, circumstances that doesn't detract from the dignity of the child and it is in fact the dignity of the child that makes the, um, process problematic in the first place.
Samantha: So, oh, did you wanna see?
Dr. Trasancos (2): No, no, no. I.
Samantha: Um, so when, when we're thinking about all of the embryos, 'cause it, it's, it never is that simple case, um, because it's not, uh, it's not efficient or financially, um, expedient to do one at a time. So there are many, many, many embryos. Now, I think, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, there's like over a million in the [00:14:00] United States alone that are quote unquote leftovers or, um, just unused, discarded frozen embryos, um, in, in limbo.
Samantha: How should we be thinking about these embryos?
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah. And, and, and just to go back to to what you said there, it almost never happens that it's the simple case. I have talked to a couple of people who said that is what they did.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): you'll be advised against it because it's 20 to $30,000 per round. So that's why they wanna get multiple embryos. and the i, the co one couple in particular that did it that way, they said it still broke their marriage because it became something that was out of the marital bond and it became difficult to talk about.
Dr. Trasancos (2): It almost became like a point of shame and they didn't wanna talk about it. And so in that way, it did have a lasting impact on the marriage. And that's a real life case there. [00:15:00] Um, but there are, you're right, there are over 1 million, the estimates, I was shocked to learn this, the estimates between one and 4 million.
Samantha: Wow.
Dr. Trasancos (2): a huge range. And I was like, why don't we know better between one and 4 million? And the answer is they just don't keep very good, um, records. The reporting is not required. And as someone put it to me, we keep better genealogies of livestock than we're doing children in our country right now. And, and it's like this in other countries too. But yes, think about that. In our nation, there are some one to 4 million embryonic children. Who are frozen in cryogenic storage, they're still alive, but they're not being allowed to grow and develop normally because honestly, no one wants to raise them. Even the parents who put 'em there, what they're saying is, we don't wanna raise this baby yet.
Dr. Trasancos (2): We might want to later, so we're [00:16:00] gonna put 'em in in the freezer. And I mean, you, all of us know if they were doing that with two year olds,
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): olds are a blessing. But they can be very difficult sometimes.
Samantha: No kidding.
Dr. Trasancos (2): But if anybody was freezing them because they're like, oh, we're just not ready yet. We wanna wait until we can give them the best possible chance. Nobody would agree that's okay. No. Nobody would say, oh, just let's cryogenically store them until you're ready. That's so responsible of you. Nobody would say that. Yet. We do this with embryos. These are embryos who are brought into existence. And they are children. I'm sorry if that upsets some people, I say that on purpose because they are children and then the parents have to make a decision ones they wanna try to implant and raise and which ones they wanna save for later.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And they even, I am sure, you know, they have techniques now where they can help you pick which ones are healthier or have the
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): you want more. And [00:17:00] then you put the others in the cryogenic storage. And they even have contracts I read where the parents can say, well, if we decide we don't want the embryos in five years, you can go ahead and donate 'em to science.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): and you know, and there's lawsuits where the embryos got thought out sooner than the couple wanted, and now the couple's suing for wrongful death of a minor. um, it's, it's a very confused and mixed up issue in our nation right now. And the last thing we need is more of it.
Samantha: Yeah. Um, for listeners who wanna dive deeper into that sort of eugenic selection, we have a good episode with Emma Waters who talks about these, um, these companies that are essentially just eugenics rebranded with different technology, but, uh, as assigning scores to the embryos that are to be implanted.
Samantha: And the people who are promoting these technologies believe that it will be unjust not to [00:18:00] screen and eliminate defective embryos. So that's an episode that listeners might wanna follow up with, um, and then.
Dr. Trasancos (2): is outstanding. I really appreciate the work she does. Yeah.
Samantha: Yeah, it's beautiful. Great interview. Um, as well as everything that she writes. It's just beautiful. Um, and I think, I don't know if you mentioned this already, but uh, I think you put it in the book, one of those complicated cases is custody battles over embryos. So I, I mean, just another way of pointing out that, on the one hand, if the parents feel a certain way, it's wrongful death, custody battle, but, and, and yet they're just a clump of cells.
Samantha: They're just embryos and we can discard them or, um, allow them to be destroyed in the name of, uh, a medical advancement if we feel like we don't want them anymore.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah. And it, and it's horrible. And, and the, the [00:19:00] re you know, I guess, I guess there might be a temptation of people to say, and I'm kind of projecting back to my own days before I was and before I knew about these issues, I, I know there's kind, maybe there's kind of a. A, a to just say, well, you know, whatever.
Dr. Trasancos (2): It's not, it's not that big of a problem and we'll, we'll figure out what to do with those embryos. The reason I got involved in this issue at all, and I think that's where you and I go back was, you know, the fetal tissue
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): also embryonic stem cell research, because in my mind, okay, if we're, if we're gonna say it's wrong to use the body parts of aborted children, how is it any different to donate embryos to science, that that's killing the child for the sake of using, its its entire body or its cells for scientific progress. And a lot of people don't even know this stuff is happening and we're heading towards a future if we're not already there. Where you might be accepting some kind of medicine or treatment [00:20:00] or advancement in medical technology that's based on these practices and you won't even know it.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): So, um, you know, that that's something for us to all care about and be concerned about. Not only that colon, I mean, um, artificial wombs there. use these embryos to try to grow them in the lab. And there's something called the 14 day rule that says, um, you can't grow these embryos in the lab past 14 days, because at that point, their little body starts to differentiate and they start to develop organs and oh, it's just too much like a baby at that point.
Dr. Trasancos (2): But the thing is, they can grow them up to 42 days out. It's possible to do it. um, I fully expect the ethical review boards to say, oh, okay, well let's change it to the 21 day rule. And if they keep moving back that bar, at some point the embryo growing in the lab will have established organs and stuff.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And it, it's more viable then. And artificial wombs and children [00:21:00] being born who were never in a womb at all,
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): over the horizon when we get there. And I, I, I, I know for a fact they're not gonna stop trying until they do everything they can to get there.
Samantha: Yeah, I mean, they have already done this technique with in mammals, so it's just a matter of time. I mean, people will object and say, oh, that's unrealistic. Um, I think it's, I think it's naive to think that it's not coming and probably sooner than, than we expect. Um, thinking about these embryos and one solution that people have proposed is that it might be possible to rescue them out of their frozen state through what is disputable, arguably called either embryo donation or embryo adoption, depending on
Dr. Trasancos (2): Mm-hmm.
Samantha: and who is what kind of moral value you assign to the embryo.
Samantha: People will use both terms. Um, the Vatican has said that. [00:22:00] The situation is a state of injustice that cannot be resolved. Where do you personally land on the ethics of embryo adoption or donation? What do, what do you think, you know, knowing that the Vatican has said
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah,
Samantha: resolved? Um, what do you think?
Dr. Trasancos (2): think people are trying to figure out what exactly they mean because it, it was said to be an unresolvable situation, an absurd fate for these embryos. And, and a lot of people wonder, well, what, you know, what do we do then? What, what is the what is the solution? Can't we just adopt 'em? And the more I dug into this, I'll tell you first of all, when I finished writing this part of the book on embryo adoption, I was righteously angry. I was angry. I was like, you know what? dare people in our nation go out there, use IVF, don't consider if there's another way to [00:23:00] conform their lives to God's will, and they put all these embryos in the storage tank. I feel responsible now as a citizen because I don't wanna live in a country. We're, we're having to ask what to do with these children now. I found it very, um, just disturbing. You know, I'm, I'm in my fifties now. I've got grandchildren. always wanted to fight for these issues. 'cause I, you know, not on my watch. I don't wanna leave this world behind in my kids. I don't wanna leave it behind in my grandkids either.
Samantha: Right.
Dr. Trasancos (2): it infuriated me that we have this situation.
Dr. Trasancos (2): So what does the church say on embryo adoption? They're, they're still trying to figure it out. The best guidance so far is probably gonna seem like a difference without a distinction to some people. But I think it is important, it has to do with intent. So I go into moral decision making. Embryo adoption, per se, on its face is not but the intent of it can make it [00:24:00] immoral.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Um, and so the, the, this is a case where the intent makes all the difference. If the intent is. That a woman says, I want to sa a man and a woman are married and they want to sacrifice themselves to welcome this abandoned embryo and give it life that is morally good. So if a woman says, allow my womb to be used so that this child can live, and the husband and wife say, we'll, raise the child and love it like any other adoption that's morally good. if the intent is, and you see this a lot the internet, especially in Protestant circles, if the intent is to get the baby, if you're just gonna use embryo adoption because you wanna do A IVF, but maybe you don't wanna go through the hormone injections or you don't wanna do, if it's just another way to use IVF to get the baby and try to dominate. Instead of cooperate with God's will through the unity of ative and aspects, um, unitive [00:25:00] aspects of marriage, then it's not okay. So if you're just trying to answer your baby prayer's not okay. If you're sacrificing your body, it is okay. And, and the only person that can ever answer that is the person trying to make the decision. However, there is no way there would be enough people who would step forward with the right moral intent to ever solve this problem. An embryo adoption will not get us there. Um, and so we're still left with the issue of this absurd fate where the ones who aren't adopted, then what do you do with them?
Dr. Trasancos (2): And, and I kind of like the idea where someone said, let's just pull the plug and let 'em all fall and die and baptize 'em. I don't like that idea. So that seems like to clean up the mess. But I don't like the idea because the very next day there's gonna be new embryos in that
Samantha: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Trasancos (2): So I don't know what we do.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Um, that,
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): where I am on it. I, if [00:26:00] somebody ask me, I say, if you're thinking about doing it, you have to discern for yourself what your motives are.
Samantha: Yeah. What, what, um, some other, uh, objections I've heard, even if you could say, okay, it's, it's, um, permissible in and of itself. Your intentions are good, but what about all of the children in the world who are already born and living and, um, suffering
Dr. Trasancos (2): Amen.
Samantha: actively as a result of a lack of a family? And if we're looking at, um.
Samantha: That as a consideration or, uh, about where we can justly allocate our resources or, um, where God is calling us to direct that love and that passion that we have to wanna give a child a home. It seems like it would be more just to direct that energy and attention to a child who's experiencing a great degree of suffering.
Samantha: [00:27:00] Um
Dr. Trasancos (2): definitely see that argument. Yeah. It's, uh, it, um, it, it's a tough one. I mean, my heart kind of breaks about the whole thing, uh, and, and what you're saying right there and the. The arguments that can be made, it gets at what we started talking about in the first place. causes you to think about and reevaluate what we mean by saying a child is a gift.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And it, it highlights how far off course we've gotten as a society that we have all these, you know, an ideal world, there wouldn't even be children that had to be given up for adoption. And I know, we'll, we'll never achieve that ideal. But, um, going down the path of IVF even further just puts us further off the path. And you're right, we, we need to stop going further down the wrong path. Try to fix the path, you know, try to find our way back to the right path. And by, you know, I'm referring to adopting all the children out there who are [00:28:00] already experiencing that pain of loss and try to get back on the track. So, yeah, I'm just totally agreeing with what you said.
Samantha: Yeah, and I guess I could also imagine a possibility where, so it's, it's permissible, the intentions are good and in good conscience, you know, a couple has prayed about it, consulted their priest, and really feel called. Even in light of, you know, that there are, there are many different ways that you could do adoption, even embryo question aside, and really still feel called to that type of rescue.
Samantha: Um, but there's still the question of, well then you are continuing to cooperate with the fertility industry and, and is can we justify that in the name of the good that we're trying to do? Or is there something intrinsic to the [00:29:00] risks to the mother, the risks to the child and, and to the continuing to put money in the pockets of the people who are committing this atrocity?
Samantha: I mean, I, I think that I read, I'm not sure if it was in your book, but, um, somewhere that there are more embryos, um, perishing or frozen from, um, this IVF industry than are aborted every year. I mean, it's that scale is just massive.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Mm-hmm. Yeah. It, it's a mess that we're in. And, um, it raises a lot of questions. I'm, that's why I'm, I'm grateful to be having the conversation. You know, I, I try to, I, I have followed politics for a long time, and, you know, I, I don't, not only have, I never a hundred percent agreed with any politician, I don't think I've ever a hundred percent agreed with any other person in the world.
Dr. Trasancos (2): You know, even my, my husband and I learned to disagree about things
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): and always trying to form [00:30:00] an opinion. I'm glad for the conversation in that respect because I think if Donald Trump continues to push this, it is gonna force us to have this conversation about, um, what, what you're talking about.
Dr. Trasancos (2): There's, you know, look at how many are aborted, look at how many are killed by IVF, restored by IVF. Look at how many children there are who are out there hurting right now, who need someone to love them.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): it, it's a good opportunity show the rest of our nation and the world Catholic teaching was right in the first place. Um, you know, and that takes a lot of delicacy. You can't say, you know, I told you so. Uh, you can't say Mother was always right.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): you, you do have to deal with it with some sensitivity, but it's a great opportunity to point out like, this is what goes wrong. When you don't listen to the church in the first place, there is a reason that human man's laws [00:31:00] should be conformed to God's laws. this is a case if we go down this path, um, we will not be conforming man's law to God's law. We're gonna be messing up and making the, making the, um, the problem even greater for the next generation.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): we could have, we could literally have in the next generation or two people walking around out there who not, not just foster kids who grew out of the system and nobody, nobody ever wanted them all.
Dr. Trasancos (2): You know, I've talked to kids like that. My daughter works with kids like that. They feel in love.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): they? Nobody ever took 'em under their wing and raised them. We could. We could have adults someday walking around who know they were conceived in a lab by no one who loved them at all. Even brought 'em into this world just as a science experiment, raised them to birth, and then stuck them out there in society.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And they're gonna be walking around not knowing where they belong anywhere. And we know from the revelation of the Holy Trinity, the human person is made to belong, to be [00:32:00] loved and known. I really think it's gonna fall to Catholics in that time down the road. To show the rest of the world how to love those people too.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Okay. Here's how we set that, right? Here's how you love someone who never knew what it was like to be loved and save them from self-destruction. um,
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I do think it's a huge problem and a, uh, some kind of government program that increased the, the counts of IVF in our nation would be such a bad decision in so many ways.
Samantha: I think you've really highlighted why it is important to have a national conversation about IVF, that the kinds of things that are troubling are not just troubling for Catholics or Christians more broadly, but are, should trouble us as human beings. Um, would, would you go a little bit more deeply into the, uh, the five principles that you articulate in the book?
Samantha: And [00:33:00] so how can these principles enlighten us as we continue to think about these questions?
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah, I, I like lists of things. I'm very left-brained. Um, they even told me when I'm writing the book like that, that's enough with the philosophy and theology, you need to put some stories and stuff into it. And, you know, I, I do think as a mother, I'm, I'm, I think mothers tend to be at, at doing that kind of thing.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Here's your list, here's your teaching. Now here's how it looks like in real life. But I like this list of five things. And it came from Joseph Boyle in a 1988, that's a year after Don Invitae article in the Linacre Quarterly. Um, and he was, it's a paragraph he has in his article that listed the five main points from Don and Vitae.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And I thought, well, that'd be neat to turn it into five principles
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): we can remember 'em. And they build on each other. So I'll just go through 'em real quick. The principle of existence. is the principle that humans are made in the image and likeness of the one and triune God, and that God grants [00:34:00] the existence of each one of us conception and throughout life. So I, I go through in the book why it's so important to teach people God exists, but not just God, but God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, because it's from that revelation that we came to understand our own human dignity, our spiritual power of intellect and will. Okay? And that that's a very important thing to learn in any bioethical question.
Dr. Trasancos (2): But from that comes the principle of totality. That the human person is one total being of body and rational soul. So we're not just atoms and molecules. We have body and we are body and soul. And from that flows the principle of dignity. The third one, every living human should be treated then with the full respect due a person and not as an object or means to an end. Those embryos as well as anyone else, don't treat people like objects. Treat them with di di dignity because they are body and rational, soul made [00:35:00] in the image and likeness of God. And then from that comes the fourth one, that principle of procreation. Um, that procreation has to be done in conformity with the dignity of the person.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And that means that that procreation takes place only within the integral self-giving of marital intercourse.
Samantha: Mm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): that comes that last principle of inseparability. Lovemaking and life giving can't be artificially dissociated in the act of the spousal union. And, uh, I think if you can just remember those things, those five points, that gives you a way to sort of build through the argument if you're encounter, if you encounter someone who, doesn't know what any of that means.
Dr. Trasancos (2): 'cause we, it is the kind of thing that strikes a chord in your heart when you hear it. You're like, yeah, I'm more than just my particles.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): it, it speaks to all of us. I had a right to be born of that kind of love. I had a right to be loved like that as a child. Um, and it, it changes the way you look at your fellow men then, [00:36:00] too.
Samantha: You know what's interesting about the list of principles is I think that the, the least obvious to us in practice is, is, and maybe a disagree conversation about that, but I think it's number two. Um, I think it's the principle of totality that
Dr. Trasancos (2): Mm-hmm.
Samantha: I don't just have a body, but I am my body. I, I think that. Um, you know, even a Christian who's looking at the list and agrees with everything might be operating implicitly on this idea that we are a soul.
Samantha: Uh, our, our body. We inhabit our body like we could. Um, if it were possible, it would be fine to like freaky Friday ourself into a different body and it wouldn't be sub something substantially different than me because me is my mind and how I think and function and my body is something else. And that's why we have people who think I can do any number of interventions to myself to change my physical appearance or, um, people are talking about uploading [00:37:00] consciousness into humanoid robots and things like that, which obviously very farfetched at this point, at least thank God for that.
Samantha: But the idea of it, um, being potentially a good thing is just this separation that we have. From our bodies. And so why, why does it matter that we have a bodily union to result in the conception of our child? You know, this is just a, another way of making that happen. I think that's how a lot of people think about our bodies these days.
Samantha: They're just, um, I think, uh, Mary Harrington calls it, meet Lego Gnosticism. This idea, rearrange our flesh anyway that we wish, because it's irrelevant to us. Um, is there more to be said about that?
Dr. Trasancos (2): I completely agree. And, and as someone like you that deals with a lot of bioethical issues, I, I've written this somewhere, I can't remember it. It might have been the 20 Question Bioethics that I [00:38:00] did for Catholic Answers, but if you think about it, every bioethical question there is, comes down to that. It
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): to this misunderstanding of what it means to say that we are body and soul united. Um, thank you Descartes and dualism. You know, a lot of people think that, that way don't understand who Descartes is and what dualism is. I got my PhD in chemistry and wasn't Catholic and it, it's taken me years. I still struggle with it not to think of myself as. Um, atoms and molecules not to think of myself as a body, and then, oh, now I'm Catholic and now I, I I know that I have a soul.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Like it's, it's taken me years to understand matter and form
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): um, it, it, it's, it's a, it's not something that's taught in the schools. It's not something that's assumed in chemistry textbooks for junior high students. It's, you know, it, it, it's every level of our society, there is this idea that that body is one thing.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And if you believe [00:39:00] in that kind of stuff,
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): consciousness are another thing.
Samantha: Right.
Dr. Trasancos (2): um, it's really confusing because everybody wants to separate those things until it comes to yourself. And then you're like, oh, wait, I'm, I'm more than my part. I mean, that was for me when I was converting, I had to get my head around that question.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Am am I more, more than particles?
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I'm, what does that, what does that mean? I am, and it, it was a very much a self-discovery kind of path. And I, I want that for other people because it's wonderful when you know those things.
Samantha: Yeah. And there there's sort of two ways to approach it. Like you said, there's the, um, pure materialist, like I am just my particles. I am just an animal. I'm acting out of the processes of evolution, and I'm just my biology. And then there's other people who say, no, you have that, the materialist and then there's the spiritual or consciousness part.
Samantha: It's much harder to apprehend the truth of the situation. With those, those two [00:40:00] things are fused. They're not separable from one another.
Samantha: We've already discussed the simple case, a straightforward example where an intended mother and [00:41:00] father conceive one embryo, and everything is, um, goes according to plan. But you also share in the book a lot of sort of harrowing complex situations that in the not so simple cases, can you, um, explain a little bit about what IVF introduces, uh, that might be problematic for these fundamental relationships of marriage and parenthood?
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah. These stories were, um, were heartbreaking. I mean, they, the, the one I already referenced, um. Where the, the couple said it, it caused problems in their marriage that went beyond just that one act. There's that, but there, there's another woman I talked to, um, she had used a donor egg because she said, what happens when you get in this, when the doctors tell you that you're infertile, there is this assumption then that you're broken and what are the doctors gonna do?
Dr. Trasancos (2): They're gonna fix it. And so you get into this tunnel of IVF and they don't ever stop to ask, is there another [00:42:00] way?
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): they, like you would in fertility care,
Samantha: Right.
Dr. Trasancos (2): say, um, okay, we have to try this. We have to try this. The next treatment. The next treatment. So the doctors told her, um, you need to use a donor egg 'cause your eggs are very weak.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And so she agreed to it thinking I'm doing the next thing the doctor tells me to do without really thinking through what, what that actually means. And so they agreed to use donor eggs. Her husband provided the sperm and you know, if you don't know how that's done, that it's not, it's, it's done sinfully too.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I mean the husband has to masturbate and um, they got the sperm and then they had their children. But she was telling me 12 years later with two children by IVF this way, decision to do that twice, they got the children that they wanted and they love 'em dearly. And so she even feels guilty. She was anonymous because she even feels guilty saying this again, it's not the children, it's that what happened was when they did that, not [00:43:00] only did it cause financial hardship for her and her husband, now they have these two babies. It hit them later. They're gonna have to tell these children that she's not their real biological mother. They need to know that,
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): um, they had embryos in the freezer. They didn't know how to talk about it because, oh, you've got the baby, the baby's in your arms, you're raising the baby. Then it sets in, I have embryos in the freezer.
Dr. Trasancos (2): What do you do now? You know, what do you do with them? And so what happened in her marriage? She said over those 12 years, was it, it was one thing after another. It put a wall up between her and her husband. didn't wanna talk about the donor eggs, they didn't want to talk about the finances. They didn't wanna talk about. The embryos in the freezer. They didn't wanna talk about the masturbation and the egg cycles and all of that. And so it, it was just one thing after another that she said broke their marriage. Um, they white knuckled it, they got through it, they're still together. [00:44:00] But she said, my biggest fear now is that these beautiful children we've raised don't even know what a healthy marriage looks like because they've never seen one and now it's gonna go into the next generation.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And her heart was broken about this, because at the time I'm talking to her, she has no way how she's going. She has no idea how she's gonna get out of this situation. It's
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And you know, I, you know, my husband and I have been married for 22 years. I was a messy convert. I was able to, uh, you know, encourage her that you can get past all of that.
Dr. Trasancos (2): You just have to start talking about it. With therapy there is definitely healing. But she said, um, that the anonymous name she wanted to use was Angela because she wanted it to be a message from the lord, like an angel.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): wants, she wishes somebody had told her these things.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): wishes somebody had given her a bigger picture about what she was doing. And so she's telling her story for that [00:45:00] reason, which I thought was very, very courageous. and, and that's just one story there. There's other stories I got from the literature. Two Catholic sister, they grew up Catholic. They turned away from their faith, used birth control for 10, 20 years in their marriages. Um, you know, they didn't want any kids, uh, what they, what do you call that? Dual incomes and no Yeah. And living the life. Well then they decide for one of the sisters, she decided she wanted to have kids. She wasn't pregnant a few months later, and she, she concluded that she was infertile coming off of birth control after all that time.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Two months later, oh, well I must be infertile. Um, but she wasn't infertile. But anyway, she went through IVF and all the expense, um, multiple trials things, uh, miscarriages
Samantha: I cannot believe a doctor would in good conscience even offer IVF to somebody who had only been trying for two months.
Dr. Trasancos (2): It, it is, [00:46:00] it is bewildering. How, that's why it's so, it's such big pharma. Pharma they pull it into. But this woman, the first sister, she went through all of this to have that one baby. And then she says, because I was so happy with my one baby I conceived A few months later, she started her period right after that child was born.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And they conceived naturally right after that. And so, I mean, yeah. Why didn't the doctor look at her and say, you were never infertile.
Samantha: Yeah, no kidding.
Dr. Trasancos (2): and they have like four children now, so she, she never was infertile. Um, I just don't get it. And it makes me really happy for the fertility care because that of approaching questions about your fertility and anything else, female health, to understand the whole person and to take your time and to try to understand what the body is telling you you make any intervention type decisions.
Dr. Trasancos (2): [00:47:00] And, and, uh, we need more of that.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): there's other stories too. I mean, it, it was, again, I got through all that. Then I got to the embryo adoption part. I was so angry when I finished writing the book. Like, how, how did we get here?
Samantha: Yeah, it's just so hard. Um, I wanna go back to Angela's story because I think that hearing her experience and her voice and that now she, she wishes somebody had shared the truth with her. Um, that provides a really good framework for those of us who are opponents of IVF to think about how do we speak the truth in this area without alienating or shaming people who are are suffering.
Samantha: It's a real loss to be struggling in with infertility. Um. But I al even before we talk about how do we speak the truth, just understanding Angela's story and [00:48:00] knowing why we should be speaking the truth in the first place. Because I think even if you do like the very best of intention, the very best execution, you might still end up alienating or making somebody feel shame.
Samantha: You can't control all of those things. That's more than you're capable of. Um, but I think the fear of that outcome prevents so many people from speaking to the women who, like Angela would desperately have wanted to hear that information, um, and feel, I don't know, betrayed or just sad at a loss, like looking to those of us who have that information to share and thinking, why, why didn't somebody speak up?
Samantha: And that's. That's hugely important. Um, so setting that as our paradigm for thinking about why we need to be doing this. Um, how do we
Dr. Trasancos (2): Yeah.
Samantha: about, you know, what's the best way to talk to people about these issues? I.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And that, and that gets at a [00:49:00] deep question about evangelization in general. Like how do you, you know, we evangelize from a pa a place of love. We want people to be happy. Um, even as a mother, I've, I've got grown children mostly now, and, and I want them to be happy and you have to. Respect their free will, the same way God respects all of our free will, and them go at some point knowing they're ma watching, watching them make mistakes and things they're gonna have to clean up and fix later. I've, I've been doing that for a while now. My oldest is 36 and I've seen so many of my children come back around. But my, my point is I've learned. The chemist in me wants to control things 'cause chemists control atoms and molecules. That's what we do. And if people are just atoms and molecules, you think you can control people and, and I was a control freak for that reason. I've learned to understand why I have that urge to try to control things and just to let go and to do, to be able to [00:50:00] let go. You have to be saying constantly, God, what do you want me to do in this situation? What do you want me to do? You have to constantly be casting that net, trying to conform your will to God's will. So the reason I wrote the book in the way I did, got the logical 10 step argument based on church teaching and theology and philosophy. Rich. It's got list of things. It's got scientific data, it's got all of this stuff that you can take the emotion out and just. that as you need to for people. I also talk in the book about how, what it means to evangelize and meet someone where they are. You're not gonna be successful if you go up to a hurting person who's devastated about infertility and say, let me give you the 10 step argument.
Samantha: Right.
Dr. Trasancos (2): they're not gonna listen, but you need to understand, we have to understand the 10 step argument and the list of principles and, and where the church says what we [00:51:00] need to understand the deeper arguments so that we have the tools in our, in our own intellect that we can. Listen and decide and pick. Moms do this all the time. I'm gonna pick from a bag of tools, the advice that we need right now. And even sometimes it allows you just to listen. Like listening is so powerful and I wasn't always a good listener, but to somebody tell you what they're thinking. I mean, if it's a woman who has an abor, had an abortion, or a woman who used IVF, they need to verbalize what's going on in their heads.
Dr. Trasancos (2): They need to release that. And there's, it's very powerful when someone who has all of this knowledge inside is able just to listen. Because I do believe if you add to that the grace of Christ, because you're praying while the person's talking, you will be given the words that you need to say
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): is gonna put that other person on the path to healing. Um, hose paper [00:52:00] says, at best, he says that you can't force somebody else to practice. Virtue. The only way you can another person to practice virtue and choose the good is to get as close to the inside of that person as you can get as intimate with that person as you can so that you can look out at the world through that person's eyes. And so he doesn't mean crawl inside their body, but he means listen and, and unite body and soul with a friend and, and the spirit of friendship and the spirit of love and willing, the good of the other. So I tried to put that all throughout the book. Um, here's your left brain stuff, but you need to pack that in.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And then you gotta be really right brain when you're, when you're, um, talking to people, if that's the right terminology. That's how I think about it.
Samantha: Yeah, I
Dr. Trasancos (2): when
Samantha: definitely succeeded.
Dr. Trasancos (2): the theology that helped me change my mind.
Samantha: Yeah. I, I think that it is really brilliant, brilliantly laid out in giving people the exact, [00:53:00] um, you know, the, the logic, the theology, and then also making it very human. Um, and just on the point of, you know, going in somebody's door and listening and being with them, I was discerning this. Particular question in my motherhood.
Samantha: And, you know, unsolicited motherhood advice of any kind regard like whether it's IVF or not is hard to receive. Um, and hard, hard to give to another mom gracefully. Um, and so I was sharing this with, uh, a friend and she listened to all, all this stuff, and I was, I was saying, I think this, just, like, this thing is just not working out and whatever else I said.
Samantha: And she said, you know, well maybe there's a reason for that. And that's literally the only thing, the only input she gave. I was like, maybe there's a reason for that. And then I ended up thinking on what she said and, and coming to listening to my own voice, but then her giving me permission to say no to [00:54:00] this thing.
Samantha: Um, and, and she didn't come at me with like, no, you shouldn't be doing it this way, or I did it this way, or anything like that. It was just like the listening and being with me in that question. And then a really, a really gentle. Maybe there's a reason for that. So I, I think you're right. Like the Holy Spirit does give us the words, um, to say, and, and as long as we are present to that and praying for that, it, we can surrender to that too.
Samantha: 'cause I've also had instances where speaking up has, um, has ended friendships, um, not through any intention of my own or, or even any real aggression on my side or anything like that. It's just, uh, you know, relationships are a two way street. And I, I still hope and pray that, you know, as long as life continues that it's not over yet.
Samantha: So perhaps we'll be re reconciled at some point in the future also. So, [00:55:00] all that having been said, I would love to ask you the standard concluding question for all our interviews going forward. Who is one person. Dead or alive, real or fictional, who you believe exemplifies the best of what it means to be human.
Dr. Trasancos (2): Hmm. Who exemplifies the best of what it means to be human? That's a big question.
Samantha: It is.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I, I think I would say my mother, um, trying to, um, trying to get my head around IVF and, you know, the, the whole. Thing where we all had the, we all have the right to be born of perfect love.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): um, trying to, my, my mother, I mean, my mother is not Catholic, but she raised me to love Jesus.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I rebelled against her, um, when I was a dumb and young. And, um, [00:56:00] know, I, I went my own way with chemistry and science and whatever, and she's just taught me over and over again, coming back to just the humble and simple truths,
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Trasancos (2): um, that, you know, she, she is. I've seen her age now. That's, you know, you see a body change throughout lifetime.
Dr. Trasancos (2): I've seen her age up to almost eighties now, and I've, I've watched her do that. So she is clearly more than just her body 'cause her body's changed an awful lot in the time I've known her. um, she's still that person and, and what I see in her now and, and I hope my kids come to see me in the same kind of way. see the pains in her from her childhood that she never could quite find peace with. I see the insecurities that she had as a mother all along and still has as she worries about her children who are now grandparents. And, and I see that, that love in her mother's heart to just keep, always keep trying to show, you know, she'll just [00:57:00] tell me things like family is everything.
Dr. Trasancos (2): And, and for so many years I thought I was so smart with my chemistry and my degrees, but I keep coming back to those things that she said. The family's everything. I mean, that, that is what the Holy Spirit revealed to us.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Trasancos (2): you know, I mean that's what, that's what Christ revealed to us in the Holy Trinity that we're made for that kind of belonging. so, you know, even in my own life, I moved away for many years and she was upset 'cause I went off to college and didn't wanna be home. We moved back to Texas nine years ago and we've been here ever since. You know, as coming home, I was a prodigal child. So, yeah, I would have to say my mother.
Samantha: Yeah. Well that, that simple wisdom, um, it's hard to beat as you think of St. Therese, you know, she's a doctor of the church, but no, no big education. Just knowing that, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in your heart. So thank you. Um, sorry.[00:58:00]
Dr. Trasancos (2): that's a great question.
Samantha: Yeah, it's, it's a hard one to think of on the spot for sure. Um, so where can listeners connect with you, find your work and buy the book?
Dr. Trasancos (2): Okay, well, I used to have a website. I got tired of, uh, paying for it and maintaining it, so I canceled it. And now I just have a substack, which I really like. I know you have one too, and I love your substack. Um, I really like what they're doing, so I put everything into Substack now and
Samantha: Great.
Dr. Trasancos (2): You can find my writing and my books and, uh, where I work as a professor, you, you can find all of that if you even come close to spelling my name, right?
Dr. Trasancos (2): 'cause it's a very unique name. It's hard for people to spell, but it, but I, I have an online presence, so if you just search my name or ask ai, about it, you'll find my substack in the, the books and things that I've written.
Samantha: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for, uh, joining us today. God bless you and your book, and get this message out to the people who need it.[00:59:00]
Dr. Trasancos (2): Bless you.
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