Arina Grossu Agnew

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 ›

Has modern feminism liberated women or has it quietly turned women against their own motherhood? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Kimberly Cook, author of Motherhood Redeemed: How Radical Feminism Betrayed Maternal Love, to examine one of the most controversial questions of our time: Has feminism betrayed motherhood? Kimberly shares her powerful personal journey from embracing modern feminist ideology to rediscovering the beauty of femininity, fertility, and maternal love through her Christian conversion. Together, we explore: This conversation goes beyond politics. It confronts the deeper spiritual question: What happens when women are taught to see their fertility as a curse rather than a gift? From birth control and abortion to the breakdown of the family and Read More ›

Is love really all you need to make something ethical? In a culture that treats good intentions as the highest moral standard, this episode asks a harder and more important question: Can love be ethical without truth? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I’m joined by Fr. James Dominic Brent, OP, a Dominican priest and philosopher in the Thomistic tradition, to examine why sincerity alone isn’t enough in moral decision-making, especially in medicine, relationships, and family life. Drawing on Catholic moral theology and the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Brent explains: From IVF to euthanasia to sexual ethics, consent, and modern ideas of affirmation, this conversation challenges the assumption that “if it’s done out of love, it can’t be Read More ›

What happens after killing is legalized? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, to examine what Canada’s euthanasia regime reveals about medicine, consent, and human dignity. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are often framed as compassion about choice, autonomy, and relief from suffering. But as Canada’s MAiD system shows, once killing becomes legal, safeguards collapse, definitions expand, and the most vulnerable people are placed at risk. In this conversation, we discuss: This is a difficult conversation, but a necessary one. If we redefine care as killing, what happens to medicine, trust, and our responsibility to protect one another? For Episode Resources, please visit the episode page here. For more Read More ›

Approximately 10-15% of U.S. couples of reproductive age experience infertility. One response is to pursue in vitro fertilization (IVF), which is fraught with many negative ethical and practical implications. Another way is to get to the root cause of infertility. Shouldn’t that be the MAHA way? President Trump expanded access to IVF with his February 2025 executive order. In October, he lowered costs for IVF and other fertility treatments. While IVF does indeed “create” more babies, it comes at a steep physical, emotional, and ethical cost for couples (for an in-depth discussion of these and other issues relating to IVF, please see my podcast episode with Emma Waters on Bioethics Babe). At its heart, IVF circumvents infertility by moving procreation Read More ›

In a post-COVID world, families are asking harder questions about vaccines and those questions deserve serious, ethical answers. In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I’m joined by Jay Richards, Vice President of Social and Domestic Policy and the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where he also chairs the Restoring American Wellness initiative. He is also a senior fellow at Discovery Institute. We explore how families can think clearly and ethically about vaccines after COVID. This conversation covers informed consent, risk-benefit analysis, parental responsibility, the updated CDC childhood immunization schedule, and the growing crisis of trust in public health institutions. This episode is for parents, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and anyone Read More ›

What is the real human cost of abortion—especially chemical abortion? In this powerful and deeply personal conversation, Toni McFadden shares her abortion story with unflinching honesty. As a teenager facing an unplanned pregnancy, Toni had a chemical abortion believing it was the only way out. What followed wasn’t relief—but years of silence, trauma, emotional grief, and spiritual brokenness. Toni recounts what the abortion pill experience was really like, the isolation she felt, the long road of unhealed pain, and how abortion affected not only her—but also the child’s father, her future marriage, and her family. She also shares how a slow, unexpected encounter with faith led to real post-abortion healing, forgiveness, and redemption. This episode confronts the human cost of Read More ›

What do surgical interventions on people with sexual identity disorder actually do to the human body and are any of them reversible? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, host Arina Grossu Agnew sits down with Dr. Patrick Lappert, a twice board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon, former U.S. Navy Captain, and former Chief of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. Dr. Lappert spent more than 30 years in the operating room, including decades rebuilding bodies damaged by trauma, cancer, congenital deformities, and combat injuries. In this conversation, he explains in precise medical detail why surgical interventions on people with sexual identity disorder are cosmetic, irreversible, and ethically incompatible with basic principles of surgery, especially when performed on minors. In Read More ›

What happens when influence is exercised without restraint and conspiracy replaces evidence? In today’s episode of Bioethics Babe, I’m joined by Simone Rizkalla, Catholic educator, speaker, writer, and host of the Beyond Rome podcast to examine the controversy surrounding Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, not as internet drama, but as a serious ethical case study. This conversation explores the cost of conspiracy thinking, the moral responsibilities that come with large platforms, and how misinformation, reputational harm, and reckless speculation threaten human dignity, truth, and community trust in the digital age. We ask hard questions: This episode goes beyond the culture war to examine the bioethics of influence, the psychology of conspiracy narratives, and what justice, accountability, and repentance look like Read More ›

What’s really happening to women and girls in China? In this episode, I sit down with Reggie Littlejohn, Yale-trained attorney and founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, to expose what many experts call the greatest crime against women in the world. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers is a global coalition fighting to end forced abortion, gendercide, and sexual slavery in China. Reggie is widely recognized as an international expert on China’s One-Child Policy—now the Three-Child Policy. Reggie is also the founder and president of the Anti-Globalist Alliance, an international counterforce to the Great Reset, and the co-founder of the Sovereignty Coalition, a non-partisan movement dedicated to defending U.S. national sovereignty and personal medical freedom against threats both foreign and domestic. For Read More ›