Bioethics Babe

Millions of couples struggle with infertility, yet few realize that not every fertility treatment is ethically the same. Is IVF the only option? Is IUI morally acceptable? Why does the Catholic Church oppose some reproductive technologies while embracing others? And what happens to the millions of frozen embryos already in storage? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Joe Zalot, PhD,...

Happy Independence Day! As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, we remember the enduring truth proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At Bioethics Babe, our mission is to defend the inherent dignity of every human person...

What happens to a society when it starts killing its elderly? What happens when a doctor offers death to a lonely senior before offering treatment? When a grandchild loses a grandparent not to disease, but to euthanasia? When aging parents begin to wonder whether they're a burden rather than a gift? In Canada, euthanasia now accounts for approximately 1 in 20 deaths, and the program continues to e...

Donor conception is often celebrated as a gift, a miracle, and a pathway to parenthood. But what if your missing parent was missing by design? What if the person who created you intentionally planned for one or both of your biological parents to never be part of your life? What does it mean to intentionally separate a child from one or both of his or her biological parents before birth? Do childre...

Seven miscarriages. Two living children. Countless questions. What does it actually feel like to lose a child through miscarriage? What happens when the pregnancy test line starts fading and you realize you're about to lose another baby? Why do so many women feel completely unprepared for the physical, emotional, and spiritual reality of miscarriage, despite the fact that roughly 1 in 4 pregnancie...

Did the women's movement get hijacked? Former Cosmopolitan writer and Subverted author Sue Ellen Browder says yes, and she says she helped do it. In this eye-opening conversation, Sue shares what she witnessed inside Cosmopolitan during the height of the sexual revolution, how media narratives helped reshape American views on sex, marriage, motherhood, and abortion, and why she believes the women'...

Egg freezing is sold as empowerment. A way to “pause” fertility, focus on career and relationships, and have children later on your own timeline. But what if that promise isn’t as secure as women are being told? In this explosive episode of Bioethics Babe, Jennifer Lahl, founder of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network and director of the documentary Eggsploitation , exposes the risks, real...

What happens when science gains the power not only to heal human life, but to redesign it? Scientists are now creating lab-made embryos from stem cells, experimenting with three-parent embryos, pursuing gene editing technologies like CRISPR, and exploring ways to grow human life outside the womb. What once sounded like science fiction is rapidly becoming reality. In this episode of Bioethics Babe,...

What do you do when doctors tell you there’s “no hope”? When former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his wife Karen received a Trisomy 18 diagnosis for their daughter Bella, they were told she had a condition “incompatible with life.” They were encouraged to prepare for her death. But Bella lived. Now she’s turning 18 years old, something many doctors never expected she wo...

What do you do when the questions never go away? Suicide doesn’t just leave grief in its wake. It leaves silence, confusion, and questions that don’t have clear answers. Could I have done something? Did I miss something? Where was God? In this deeply personal conversation, Dr. Brick Lantz, orthopedic surgeon, bioethicist, and author of Raw Musings: Journaling Following My Son’s Suicide , shares wh...

What happens when parents hear the words, “Something may be wrong with your baby”? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, we sit down with board-certified neonatologist and pediatrician Dr. Robin Pierucci to unpack what really happens after a prenatal diagnosis. From life expectancy predictions and medical uncertainty to the emotional shock families experience, this conversation exposes the hidden pre...

Did feminism actually leave women more vulnerable in birth? Modern medicine says birth has never been safer. So why are more women walking away feeling traumatized, disempowered, and unheard? After a delivery that almost wasn’t a live birth, Leah Jacobson says the biggest lesson wasn’t about control. It was about surrender. In this episode, we ask a deeper question: Did something break in the syst...

What if we have been getting death wrong? For decades, modern medicine has relied on the concept of brain death, the idea that when the brain irreversibly stops functioning, the person has died. But what if that is not true? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Paul Byrne, neonatologist, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, past president of the Catholic Medical Association, and one of the leading cr...

If we’re just matter, why do we matter? Modern bioethics is built on a question most people never stop to ask: What is a human being? Because the answer to that question isn’t abstract, it determines how we treat the most vulnerable people among us. From IVF and embryo selection, to assisted suicide and end-of-life care, to gene editing and transhumanism. We are already making decisions about who...

Did birth control give women freedom or did it fundamentally change feminism itself? Before the 1960s sexual revolution, before the Pill became mainstream, Margaret Sanger was already advancing a radical idea: that women could not be free unless their fertility was controlled. She didn’t just promote contraception, she reframed it as essential to freedom, autonomy, and progress. But what if that i...

Do cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in jeopardy justify abortion? These are the hardest questions in the abortion debate: emotionally charged, deeply tragic, and often used to challenge the pro-life position. But how should we think about these cases from a medical, ethical, and human perspective? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, priest, neu...

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...

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 us...

Is transhumanism the next frontier of progress or a revival of eugenics in a biotech age? In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with attorney, award-winning author, and Humanize podcast host Wesley J. Smith to unpack the growing transhumanist movement, the push to engineer a “post-human” future through AI, gene editing, cognitive enhancement, designer babies, and radical life extension. Fr...

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 eug...

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 m...

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 eno...

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...

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 Dr. 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 Americ...

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. Ton...