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In an age of IVF, embryo selection, and a rapidly expanding fertility industry, couples facing infertility are often given a clear message: if you want a child badly enough, technology can make it happen. But what if that’s not the whole story? What if infertility is not just a medical condition to be solved but a profound personal, relational, and even spiritual trial? And what if a life without biological children can still be deeply meaningful and truly fruitful? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Leigh Snead, author of Infertile but Fruitful, fellow with the Catholic Association, and co-host of the nationally syndicated show Conversations with Consequences to explore the deeper questions surrounding infertility in the Read More ›

Planned Parenthood is having a rougher time than it once did. Fifty or so clinics have closed due to financial difficulties associated with defunding from the government. Not to worry! As reported in the New York Times — a California clinic is offering cosmetic procedures to help keep the doors open. First, the Times‘ reporter Alisha Haridasani Gupta, describes the core mission of PP clinics. Notice what she leaves out: Nationwide, Planned Parenthood, which provides birth control, preventive sexual health screenings, prenatal care and primary care for millions of patients, many of them on Medicaid, is facing enormous challenges. These include significant cuts to Medicaid reimbursements, increased costs of treatments and staffing, and a “hostile political environment,” said Angela Vasquez-Giroux, Read More ›

The usual suspect medical and science journals have featured far fewer columns promoting progressive politics of late. Alas, it couldn’t last forever. The New England Journal of Medicine just published two opinion articles decrying immigration enforcement as inimical to public health.

The first column focuses generally on the adversity the author believes is caused to illegal immigrant communities by enforcing the law:

Current immigration enforcement is disrupting medical follow-up, exacerbating mental health symptoms, causing more patients to skip preventive care, and deepening mistrust in public institutions. In my clinical practice, I have seen sharp increases in anxiety, school absenteeism, deferred visits, and acute psychiatric symptoms after enforcement events. These effects are both predictable and preventable. Clinicians, health systems, and policymakers should recognize immigration enforcement as a social determinant of health currently implicated in a public health crisis and act accordingly. [Citations omitted.]

In other words, don’t enforce the law.

What is death? It’s the moment a human being ceases to exist. But when is that exactly? We tend to think we know the answer, but what if the question is not that simple, especially when it comes to brain death? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, pediatric neurologist Dr. Christopher DeCock examines one of the most important questions in medicine, law, and bioethics: What if the medical criteria used to declare someone brain dead are not actually proving what we think they are proving? Current brain death determinations are largely based on clinical brain death criteria developed by the American Academy of Neurology, including coma, absence of brainstem reflexes, and apnea testing. But do these tests truly demonstrate the Read More ›

As the West lunges toward propagating a right to be made dead, the deleterious societal impacts of being legally “MAIDed” (killed by “medical assistance in dying”) are becoming increasingly clear. A recent professional analysis published in the Psychiatric Times illustrates the lethal influence on mentally ill suicidal people — including youth — in the Netherlands. From “Psychiatric Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Young People, Procedural Medicine, and the Limits of Psychiatry” (citations omitted): Requests for euthanasia on psychiatric grounds have risen sharply, with a disproportionate increase among young adults and, more recently, minors. The Dutch model, once presented internationally as careful and balanced, is now attracting attention for a different reason: growing uncertainty about whether psychiatry has crossed a boundary it Read More ›

Turnabout is fair play, they say. So on this episode of Humanize, Wesley is the guest, interviewed by the “Bioethics Babe,” the podcast of Center on Human Exceptionalism Fellow Arina Grossu Agnew. Arina and Wesley discuss the nature of transhumanism, its philosophical, moral, and political implications, its role as a substitute for religion, its threat to human equality, and whether Read More ›

As I am sure readers know, Ben Sasse is dying from pancreatic cancer. But that doesn’t mean he is through. The former senator has refused to allow illness to push him into a darkened room. Instead, he has continued a very public life and conducted several candid interviews about his circumstances — perhaps most notably with our friend Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge.

Sasse recently also launched a new podcast of his own, called (tongue in cheek) Not Dead Yet, co-hosted with NewsNation’s political pundit Chris Stirewalt. The podcast is aimed at helping listeners live lives “of meaning, hope, and joy,” no matter how long that life might last. (The comedian Conan O’Brien was the most recent guest.) Listening to Sasse, one can’t help but be uplifted by his continuing good humor and undiminished gusto.

Sasse’s sunny public face reminds me of the late Rush Limbaugh’s last year of “excellence in broadcasting.” Fans may remember him announcing on his show that he had terminal lung cancer. But that did not stop him. For about a year, El Rushbo continued on with his program — if anything, with greater energy than before — only taking time off periodically during “treatment week.”

California reprehensibly enacted a law that prohibits school administrators and teachers from informing parents about their child’s gender confusion. It is almost beyond belief that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals quashed a trial court injunction against the law — but then again, it is the Ninth Circuit. Thankfully, in a per curiam emergency-docket ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court just restored the injunction against enforcement. From Mirabelli v. Bonta (citations omitted, my emphasis): California’s policies will likely not survive the strict scrutiny that Mahmoud demands. The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy. But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents. California’s policies also appear to fail Read More ›

IVF was introduced as a way to address infertility, even though it is fraught with ethical problems. But today, it increasingly involves grading embryos, screening genetic traits, and deciding which embryos are chosen. Are we entering an era where reproduction becomes human design? In this episode, Harvard-trained biochemist Tara Sander Lee, Ph.D., explains how modern IVF increasingly involves eugenic practices. We examine: As IVF expands beyond infertility “treatment” and into optimization, urgent questions emerge about human dignity, disability, and the moral limits of reproductive technology. This is a conversation about science, power, and whether medicine is meant to heal people or to redesign them. For Episode Resources, please visit the episode page here. For more information, the latest episodes, and Read More ›

I read John R. Puri’s post urging the U.S. to rejoin the World Health Organization because, 1) it is merely an advisory body and 2), it collects valuable health data. But Puri underplayed the overarching influence WHO exercised on national governments and corporations in enforcing the disastrous Covid-19 policies that caused so much harm, while he also ignored the internationalists’ plan to transform WHO into an organization with actual power to impose policies. Indeed, before Trump’s election, a treaty was being negotiated, known as the “WHO Convention, Agreement or Other International Instrument on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response” — or WHO CA+, for short — intended to transform WHO from a purely advisory organization into one with regulatory power to Read More ›