Rethinking Fertility

What is infertility actually? Is it a disease with a single solution, or the symptom of underlying reproductive health conditions? That distinction changes everything, including whether a one-size-fits-all path is really the best way to help couples. 🎓 Check out the FREE RRM Academy: https://rrmacademy.org 🎁 Includes FREE guides to NaProTechnology, FEMM, and NeoFertility: https://rrmacademy.org/...

Surrogates are paid $45,000–$75,000 just to carry and birth someone else's child — close to the median individual income in the U.S. But almost none of that money buys real protection for the baby, the surrogate, or the truth about what happens when things go wrong. 👇 CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro — A Birth Story vs. Commercial Surrogacy 1:26 Traditional vs. Gestational Surrogacy 2:51 Fetal Microchimer...

We are buying and selling human egg and sperm — full stop. Not "donating." Selling. In this episode, Emma Waters breaks down how the donor conception industry is built to serve adult desire, not the wellbeing of the children it creates — and what the research says about the lasting impact on donor-conceived people. Chapters: 0:00 – Cold open: what children lose in donor conception 0:59 – Today's e...

"Either the Bible is right that children are a blessing, or you're right that children will ruin your life. But you can't both be right." That's what a mentor said to Emma Waters after she broke up with the man who is now her husband because she was convinced children would ruin her life. Three daughters later, she works in reproductive technology policy, and she has a very different explanation f...

15,000 women froze their eggs. Fewer than 300 babies were born. That's a 1.6% outcome rate — and it's the number the fertility industry never puts in the brochure. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently went viral for sharing that she's freezing her eggs, calling it a choice she's making to feel more in control of her life. The pitch behind it is one millions of women have...

"Women, you are not little men with a uterus." Only 5–10% of women actually have the "textbook" 28-day cycle — yet nearly every app, medical form, and cultural assumption is built around it. In this episode, Emma Waters walks through the four phases of the menstrual cycle and why ACOG now calls your cycle the fifth vital sign. In this episode: Why medicine and wellness research...

In almost every U.S. state, a frozen embryo isn't a person — it's property. And a wave of new technology is about to make that answer impossible to defend. Frozen embryos sit in a legal no man's land, not because the science is unclear, but because lawmakers have deliberately avoided the question for decades. In this episode, Emma Waters breaks down what the science actually says, why the courts k...

Commercial surrogacy is banned in China. So Chinese nationals are doing it here instead — and America's permissive surrogacy laws are making it easy. In Episode 3 of Rethinking Fertility, Emma Waters exposes the largely unreported world of international commercial surrogacy in the United States: who is using it, why, how much it costs, and what it means for American children, American sovereig...

IVF creates life... so how is IVF not pro-life? Most of us haven't been given the full picture of how IVF actually works. And you cannot make a faithful, informed decision about something you don't fully understand. So today, we're going to change that. In this episode, Emma Waters walks through exactly how IVF works, what the real success rates are, and the ethical realities that most fertility c...

"They told us motherhood could wait — then they sold it back to us at $12,000 a round." That headline stopped me cold. Because it tells the story of an entire generation of women handed a life script — delay fertility, trust the technology, start your family later. And we followed it. Now America isn't having children, and a $12,000-a-round industry has stepped in to fill the gap. In...

Hosted by Emma Waters, a policy expert in reproductive health, Rethinking Fertility is about navigating reproductive technology, and what it means to be human in an age of limitless medical possibility. The solution to the modern fertility crisis begins with asking the right questions. Subscribe and join this community. 📌 Subscribe for new episodes every week Subscribe so you don't miss what&...