The Table Podcast: Infertility & Pregnancy Loss

Dr. Julie Fuller and I talk with Dr. Darrell Bock about the marital, ethical, spiritual, and emotional challenges of infertility and pregnancy loss.

Hear My Story on the ReStory Podcast Today

Thanks to my friend Mary DeMuth for hosting me on her ReStory podcast. Today I'm telling my story there. Check it out.

An interview with a birth-mom who made an adoption plan: Christine Lindsay

November is Adoption Awareness Month. So I'm featuring here an author who has a book that considers all sides of the adoption triad. 

SG:You are a reunited birth-mom—a woman who made an adoption plan for her baby who has met her biological child as an adult. Was the the day you met your birth-daughter a happy one?

Christine: Sadly, no. It was as painful as the day I said goodbye to Sarah as a three-day-old baby in 1979. In fact, more painful. At least on the former day, I was filled with faith that she and I would be reunited one day when she became an adult. For the next twenty years as she grew up as another couple’s child, I prayed for the time when I would see her again. But on that day, Sarah’s mom and dad were extremely upset by my desire to meet the now-adult Sarah. They couldn’t bear the thought of meeting me nor understand why I would want to meet them. In fact her dad was very much against the whole idea of our meeting.This put a lot of pressure on Sarah, and the day we met again, she came across as very distant to me. This broke my heart, taking away all the faith that I had that she and I could develop a close birth-mother/birth-daughter relationship—one different from what she had with her adoptive parents, but special none the less.

SG:So how did you feel about adoption after you met your birth-daughter?

Christine: For the first twenty years after I said goodbye to Sarah, I considered her and her adoptive parents a package deal—something God had put together. I loved them as much as I loved her, and I wanted a relationship with them as much as I wanted a relationship with Sarah. Discovering that they did not feel the same way about me brought back all the emotional pain of the initial decision.As a birth-mom, I was already struggling with the losses of that, and the delicate but subversive ways my psyche had been affected by making an adoption plan for my child—even though I’d made that sacrifice in her best interests. Seeing my grown birth-daughter and all that I had lost, I believe I realized for the first time the full extent of my choice.The emotional pain brought on a clinical depression that lasted two or three years. I began to look at Sarah’s adoption through fractured lenses. All the joy I’d felt about giving my child a better home life than I could have offered her back then dissolved into bitterness. I suddenly felt hood-winked by God, feeling that He had tricked me into giving Sarah up. I thought He obviously gave Sarah to her adoptive parents because He didn’t consider me good enough to raise Sarah. And if I wasn’t good enough to be Sarah’s mother, I must not be good enough for the children I had with my husband.Naturally this wasn’t the truth, but when we are depressed we don’t see things clearly. At that time, I wished I could turn back the clock and keep my baby.Jealousy grew inside me at a frightening rate. There always had been a tiny bit of jealousy that someone else was raising my child, but it grew into a monster. As a Christian I was turned inside out, hating myself for this jealousy, and yet unable to pull myself out of my emotional tailspin.

SG: Do you still feel that way?

Christine: No, thank God. Depression and emotional trauma do not heal overnight, and we often need professional help. I had a great counselor who helped me move on from those destructive emotions and began to search for the real me. So often traumatic experiences stop people from reaching emotional maturity. My husband was also an amazing help, and one day he brought me a new journal and pen, and said, “Here honey, write your story.”Also, through the verse in Isaiah 49:15, 16 I realized that my crazy love for my children (including Sarah) was nothing compared to the immense love God the Father had and has for me. That was the beginning of healing.It took time, but gradually I began to lighten up on Sarah’s adoptive parents and recognize their right to their private life with Sarah. As I filled up on God’s love for me, I was able to love them again the way I first had when Sarah was a baby.

SG:How do you feel about adoption today?

Christine: I beg pregnant women today to consider adoption as an alternative to abortion. It’s a wonderful choice. But if the pregnant woman is able to keep her baby, I wholeheartedly encourage her to do so. I’ll be honest, making an adoption plan for your baby is one of the hardest sacrifices a woman can make. But I have also found that we can turn to God in our greatest need, and He is there with leagues and leagues of comfort and love, and new joys to replace our sorrows. It wasn’t easy for me, but now I can say, that because I truly love Sarah, I cannot imagine her life without her adoptive parents and brothers.

SG:Will your memoir hurt my feelings as a woman who struggled with infertility?

Christine: Since my book braids the stories of not only birth-moms and birth-families, but also that of adoptive moms and dads, I do not believe anyone will be hurt by this book. All the authors in this memoir tell their own stories in their own words, holding nothing back. So, Sarah’s adoptive mom, Anne, tells it like it was as a woman who could not bear children. She also shares openly that having me in Sarah’s life as her birth-mom is still difficult for her. She adds that if she could, she’d rather that I wasn’t in Sarah’s life at all these day, even admitting that this is selfish.I too, share honestly that I was jealous, angry with her, and selfishly thinking only of my own emotions during the years just after I met Sarah as an adult.Sarah, too, shares her journey both as an adoptee and also as a woman hurting over the loss of eight miscarriages. The pain of infertility is well shared in Finding Sarah, Finding Me.Yet while our honesty is brutal at times, it weaves a bright ribbon of hope throughout for those who might be hurting with the issues of infertility and adoption.

SG:How can your book help the various sides in adoption triads?

Christine: Finding Sarah, Finding Me can help:

• Women who are pregnant, unmarried and afraid, if they want to know the emotional truth about making an adoption plan for their baby—that while it hurts immensely, there can be joy. It is my prayer, that this will encourage more women to consider adoption instead of abortion.

• Infertile people will be encouraged to have their voice recognized.

• Adoptive parents will feel affirmed in their mixed emotions regarding the frightening prospect of adoption reunion. This memoir shows various types of reunions—some that went beautifully well and created unique blended families, and others that did not. People are made up of such different emotional stuff. Not all should go down that road.

SG:You're a fiction writer; why write this memoir now?

Christine: My desire to tell my birth-mother story got me started writing in the first place. But the timing wasn’t right after I met Sarah as an adult in 1999. It took seventeen years for the Lord to work on everyone’s heart, to heal old emotional pain, so that the memoir could be published and no one be hurt by it. During those years of healing however, the Lord encourage me to tell my story in Christian fiction, which has won numerous awards.All the spiritual depth of my heartache and depression are in my novels, in the hope of encouraging others. Life is not easy. 

Book info: Sometimes it is only through giving up our hearts that we learn to trust the Lord.Adoption. It’s something that touches one in three people today, a word that will conjure different emotions in those people touched by it. A word that might represent the greatest hope…the greatest question…the greatest sacrifice. But most of all, it’s a word that represents God’s immense love for his people.Join birth mother Christine Lindsay as she shares the heartaches, hopes, and epiphanies of her journey to reunion with the daughter she gave up—and to understanding her true identity in Christ along the way.Through her story and glimpses into the lives of other families in the adoption triad, readers see the beauty of our broken families, broken hearts, and broken dreams when we entrust them to our loving God.Read Chapter One of Finding, Sarah Finding Me: Click HERE

Author info:Christine Lindsay is the author of multi-award-winning Christian fiction with complex emotional and psychological truth. Tales of her Irish ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in Colonial India inspired her multi-award-winning series Twilight of the British Raj, Book 1 Shadowed in Silk, Book 2 Captured by Moonlight, and explosive finale Veiled at Midnight.Christine’s Irish wit and use of setting as a character is evident in her contemporary and historical romances Londonderry Dreaming and Sofi’s Bridge.A writer and speaker, Christine, along her husband, lives on the west coast of Canada, and she has just released her non-fiction book Finding Sarah, Finding Me: A Birthmother’s Story.Drop by Christine’s website www.ChristineLindsay.org or follow her on Amazon on Twitter. Subscribe to her quarterly newsletter, and be her friend on Pinterest , Facebook, and  Goodreads Purchase links:Amazon (Paperback and Kindle)Barnes and Noble

In the Near Future: Uterus Transplants

The New York Times November 13 print edition ran an article by Denise Grady that announced "Uterus Transplants May Soon Help Some Infertile Women in the U.S. Become Pregnant." The Times considered the news so big that a press release came to my in-box. It's all going down at The Cleveland Clinic, where doctors expect to become the first in the US  to transplant a uterus into a woman who lacks one—whether due to congenital factors, injury, or illness. The procedure would eliminate the need for a gestational surrogate.After giving birth to one or two children—by C-section—the woman receiving the transplanted uterus would have it removed so she can quit taking anti-rejection meds. An estimated 50,000 women in the United States might be candidates. Currently, eight have begun the screening process.The transplant team would remove the uterus, cervix, and part of the vagina from a recently deceased organ donor. (The uterus, if kept cold, can survive outside of the human body for six to eight hours.) The recipient's ovaries and fallopian tubes would be left in place, and after one year of healing, she would undergo an IVF/embryo transfer procedure.Sweden is the only place where doctors have already successfully completed uterine transplants. Nine recipients have delivered four babies. Another is due January 2016. Two failed and had to be removed—one, due to a blood clot; the other, due to infection. The Cleveland doctors plan to use deceased donors, so they won't put healthy women at risk. For a live donor, the operation takes seven to eleven hours and requires working near vital organs.Recipients must have ovaries. But because the fallopian tubes won't be connected to the transplanted uterus, a natural pregnancy will be impossible. 

When Mother's Day Never Comes

Often the worst day of the year for an infertile woman is Mother’s Day. On this holiday going to a house of worship can feel more like going to the house of mourning.During the decade when my husband and I experienced infertility treatment, lost multiple pregnancies, and endured three failed adoptions, I found it difficult enough to see all the corsages on M-Day. But then the pastor asked mothers  to stand, and I remained conspicuously seated. Some years the worship leader would even call for the youngest mother to stand, and then he smiled awkwardly as a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old unmarried teen got to her feet. On such occasions I would sit wondering about God’s mysterious ways of supply and demand. Following most such services, each mother would receive a carnation as she headed out the door. But to exit she first had to answer “yes” to the question, “Are you a mother?”On a number of occasions, however, I experienced Mothers’ Day as a day of grace. On the one following my first miscarriage, a message in the church bulletin said, “The altar flowers today are given with love and acknowledgement of all the babies of this church who were conceived on earth but born in heaven and for all who have experienced this loss.” The couple who dedicated these flowers had six children, and through their validation of our pain, we caught a glimpse of the one who is acquainted with grief. The husband crossed the aisle and stood by my husband during the music. And with tears streaming down our faces, we found new strength to bring our sacrifice of praise.On several Mother’s Days, a pastoral prayer has included requests that on this special day God would bless the motherless children, those bereft of mothers, mothers estranged from their children, infertile women, and those who wish to become mothers but must wait on God’s timing. Apparently someone figured out that about half the church was mourning along with the celebration. On such occasions I felt like I belonged.One year during Mothers’ Day, I was with a mission team in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico. A man stood at the door after the service handing out carnations to all the mothers. Having heard that my husband and I had just experienced another pregnancy loss, he looked at me through misty eyes and thrust his entire bouquet in my hands.My niece, who is married without children, calls the holiday “mothering day.” In this way she broadens the meaning, making it inclusive enough to include all who nurture. And this seems a fitting practice for the church. We are family. The one without a mother finds mothers in Christ. The parent without children finds children in Christ. Families of one and of twenty all find a broader family in Christ.My mourning on M-Day was not because I wished in any way to diminish our practice of honoring mothers for the thankless work they do. (I myself have one of the best moms on the planet, and it is a joy to honor her.) I wished only for the Body of Christ to find ways to acknowledge our mothers’ sacrifices without inflicting unnecessary pain on those who mourn.This Sunday, we have the opportunity once again to minister grace both to the one in six couples who experience infertility and to the rest of those who experience Mother’s Day as a day of grief. May we rise to the occasion. Because while the preacher in Ecclesiastes tells us it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting (Eccl. 7:2), it is also better if that house of mourning is full of empathic family members. As they reach out with the arms and tear ducts of Christ, we remember what will always be true about us: We are not alone.

Infertility: One Couple's Story

On and off for the past 20 years or so, I've talked with Jeff Baxter, executive producer of Day of Discovery, about doing a show devoted to infertility. Last week, this arrived in my mail box with a note that said, "I think this program will resonate with you." It did and does. But it's not just for those experiencing infertility. It's for anyone who has wrestled with longings and unanswered prayer.

Embryo Adoption

Thanks to my friend Shannon B for bringing this to my attention: People magazine is running a series on embryo adoption (part I  and part 2), and so far it's been quite good. Check it out!

Infertility: A Guy's Perspective

The bestselling author of Chasing the Dead tells of his and his wife's infertility and pregnancy loss experience. Thanks, Rhonda, for bringing this to my attention.

Time and the Digital Now

I returned late Saturday night from an overnight trip to Nashville (though my bag took a detour on Delta and stayed gone the entire weekend). Why Nashville? My agent, Chip MacGregor, gathers all his authors annually and provides us with an industry update. He also offers info about how to market our books. We authors cover our travel and lodging expenses, and he covers the conference room and the content. Last year, Chicago; this year, Nashville. It’s always a great time to network with his other authors. And Chip could be a stand-up comic, so the time passes quickly.

Before the Saturday conference, I spent Friday night with a husband-wife team with whom I have long shared the infertility journey. They picked me up from my hotel, and for the first time I was able to meet their four-year-old twins conceived via IVF. Yay! What a joy to see their happy ending(s). The couple are also both my former writing students—one is a photographer, and both had terrific non-fiction book ideas. So the twins went to dinner with their grandmother, and the grown-ups cooked for me while we talked about life and art and writing and next steps for them. The time flew. And our fellowship reminded me why I do what I do.

Speaking of time (too little of it!), another highlight of my weekend was a delightful conversation with Abha Dawesar, whom I met for the first time. She did the TED Talk featured below, "Life in the Digital Now," which has garnered nearly a million hits.

According to the TED Talk description, Ms. Dawesar began her writing career as an attempt to understand herself—at age 7. (Just like me.) Understanding herself is a goal that remains at the center of her work. Sensorium, her most recent novel, explores the nature of time, self, and uncertainty, using Hindu mythology and modern science as prisms.

“At a very basic level, writing was always my way of apprehending the world,” she has said.She told me she moved from India to the United States to study at Harvard, and apparently Delhi appears at the center of her novels Family Values and Babyji. But the oversimplified genres of immigrant fiction or ethnic fiction do not appeal to her. “Those looking for a constant South Asian theme or Diaspora theme or immigrant theme will just be disappointed in the long run from my work,” she has said. “The only label I can put up with is that of a writer. And my ideas come from everywhere.”

 In the days to come, you will probably hear from me about book marketing. But today I give you Abha Dawesar and something more foundational to living well. If you're anything like me, you will fall in love with her grandparents.

Is Your State Infertility-Friendly?

Follow the link to see an infographic about what states have the best policies relating to infertility.

In Which I Talk with Good News Radio about Infertility

The Good News with Angie Austin

Follow the link. The segment with me starts at 20:18.  

A Man and Miscarriage

Christianity Today ran an interesting first-person piece by a man whose wife had a miscarriage. I'm not sure he can speak for all guys, as he seemed to do, and I wasn't crazy about his conclusion—seemed sort of vague. But I appreciated how he articulated his experience. See if you agree.

Olympian Scott Hamilton: I Am Second

Scott Hamilton is an excellent athlete, a terrific commentator, and a wonderful human being. He has known the highest heights and the lowest depths. Top-of-the world success. Cancer. Infertility. Faith. Here he tells his story for "I Am Second."

Bioethics in the News

Most of these news items are adapted from a list provided weekly by the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity: 

Offsprings' rights: The neglected factor in third-party reproduction. If you read nothing else on the following list, read this powerful piece titled “What Are the Rights ofDonor-Conceived People?” It looks at third-party reproduction from theperspective of a donor-conceived person. (The Public Discourse)

Killer foot cream. 
A common nail fungus drug is eradicating HIV. And the virus isn’tbouncing back when the drug is withheld. So it may not require a lifetime ofuse to keep HIV at bay. This is great news, people! (ScientificAmerican)

Should surrogacy qualify one formaternity leave? An Irishteacher claims she was denied unfairly her paidadoption or maternity leave following the birth of her child via a surrogate.The court was to decide on that one today. (Irish Times)

A brain controls a bionic leg. A team of software and biomedical engineers, neuroscientists,surgeons and prosthetists has designed a prosthetic limb that can reproduce afull repertoire of ambulatory tricks by communicating seamlessly with a humanbrain. (Los AngelesTimes)

SARS doctor pleads for assisted suicide.
The infectious disease doc who helped Toronto through the SARScrisis ten years ago made a video before his death pleading for Canada tolegalize assisted. (The ChronicleHerald)

Number of Dutch killed by physicianassisted suicide rises by 13 per cent.
Voluntaryeuthanasia, where a doctor is present while a patient kills him- or herself (usuallyby drinking a strong barbiturate potion) has been legal in the Netherlands foreleven years. Requests have risen steadily since then. (The Telegraph)

Cancer: More Good news.  National CancerInstitute statistics show that in the U.S. an overall five-year cancer survivalrate for children under 19 with cancer has increased from 62 percent in themid-1970s to 84 percent today. For the most common type of childhood cancer,acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the cure rate is now over 90 percent. Woohoo! (ABC News)

Gene therapy offers hope forpatients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Scientistssay the technique or related ones might also point the way to treatments forother inherited diseases, including Huntington’s. (New York Times)

Male Infertility: How You Can Help

Check out my article on male infertility in More to Life magazine. "When Father's Day Never Comes" includes ways you can help.

Bioethics in the News

U.S. measles cases in 2013 may be most in 17 years

The CDC says this year may be the worst for measles in more than a decade. Health officials blame people who refuse to vaccinate their children. (CNN)

Selling the Fantasy of Fertility 

Two former fertility patients tackle the hype related to IVF advertising. The success rates still aren't all that great, even after years of finessing process. (Op-ed, New York TImes) 

Childhood death rates down by 50% since 1990

Still, a staggering 6.6 million children under the age of 5 still died last year, according to UNICEF. A report said nearly half of these were in five countries: Nigeria, Congo, India, Pakistan and China. (Associated Press)

Sex-selection abortions cause of missing girls in India

The U.S. created sex-selection abortions as a population-control strategy, and the result is millions of missing girls in India, China and elsewhere, says a Congressional human rights panel. (Business Standard)

Most doctors oppose physician-assisted suicide, poll finds
A New England Journal of Medicine poll questioned readers about a hypothetical case of physician-assisted suicide and received more than 2,000 valid responses. Roughly two-thirds worldwide, —including 67 percent of replies from the U.S., —said they disapprove of physician-assisted suicide. (Medical Xpress)

Faulty stem cell regulation may contribute to cognitive deficits associated with Down syndrome
The learning and physical disabilities that affect people with Down syndrome may be due at least in part to defective stem cell regulation throughout the body, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.  (Medical Xpress)

Stem cells: Living adult tissue transformed back into embryo state

The living tissue inside an animal has been regressed back into an embryonic state for the first time, Spanish researchers say. But the journal Nature showed the technique led to tumors in mice. (BBC)

Physicians push off-label ketamine as rapid depression treatment, part 1
Ketamine, the anesthetic and illegal club drug, is now being repurposed as the first rapid-acting antidepressant drug and has been lauded as possibly the biggest advance in the treatment of depression in 50 years. (Scientific American)

Stem-cell bank reach for fountain of youth
Got $63,000 to spare? Maybe you want to freeze a backup of your adult self for potential use decades later. (Vancouver Sun)

Nanotechnology solutions to combat superbugs
The emergence of superbugs has made it imperative to search for novel methods, which can combat the microbial resistance. Thus, application of nanotechnology in pharmaceuticals and microbiology is gaining importance to prevent the catastrophic consequences of antibiotic resistance.  (Nanowerk)

The next step for end-of-life care
The hourly revenue generated by a physician discussing plans for care is $87. That same physician, when conducting a procedure such as a colonoscopy or a cataract extraction, will make more than $300 per hour. Renewed support for a bill that would better compensate U.S. doctors for providing end-of-life counseling highlights the value of these conversations; for patients, physicians, and the healthcare system. (The Atlantic)

Researchers uncover genetic cause of childhood leukemia
A genetic link specific to risk of childhood leukemia has now been identified, according to a team at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and other institutions. The discovery was reported online today in the journal Nature Genetics. (Medical Xpress)

Abortion: A decision that doesn’t serve the public interest 

A decision not to prosecute two abortion doctors who offered gender-specific terminations raises a host of questions about sexism. (The Telegraph)

Samaritan Woman: Stay Away from Me?

My Tapestry post for the week: 

Ireceived a question this week from a former student, Vernita, about theSamaritan woman, whose story John records in the fourth chapter of his Gospel.

Vernita:I'm looking for any credible historical data to support the statements I'veread in some commentaries which suggest the Samaritan woman was an outcast inher society and came to the well later in the day than most women in order toavoid the scorn of that crowd. Are you aware of any writings that specificallyand definitively state that, or would that be speculation based on what we knowabout that society?

Me:English translations tell us, "It was about noon" (Jn.4:6). The Greek says it was the sixth hour. Some take that to meanfrom midnight—that is, 6 a.m. But because John elsewhere gives the time ofJesus's death as being about the sixth hour (19:14), or noon, making itcorrespond with the time Passover lambs began to be sacrificed, it is morelikely that in the John 4:6 reference he also means noon. Butknow there is some discussion about whether it is actually noon in the firstplace. 

Nowthen, much meaning has been read into this time detail. Sure, it is possiblethe Samaritan woman was at the well alone because she was a moraloutcast. 

Butit’s also possible she was there because she was infertile and poor–thus, sheherself went instead of sending one of her children. Some of our Africanfriends have this expression: “An infertile woman sends her own thigh.” Sincethe Samaritan woman had no one else to send, she had to go herself.

Manyassume women drew water only once a day. But if we look at the developing worldtoday, women may go to haul water three times a day or even more–depending onhow much water they need and how much they can carry in one trip. So weprobably should not assume there was only one set time for most to gather.

Ourknowledge of more agrarian cultures can help us here. And based on what I’veseen in the developing world, I suspect this woman was actuallynot anadulteress or a fornicator. Rather, she had endured the loss of six husbands.Some of them may have died. And some (most) might have left her. Infertilitycould have been a key reason. Women in Samaria typically could not just up anddivorce their husbands. Especially not five of them. How would they eat if theydid that? No, it was the men who typically initiated divorce. So she hadprobably been dumped and/or bereaved of her man five times.

Thesixth time, she had to settle for a polygamous arrangement to keep fromstarving. If so, she would have been the wife who got stuck doing the workbecause she could not bear children. This scenario better fits a society wherewomen were treated as chattel (they were in first-century Samaria), and itaccounts for why a grown woman would be fetching water. It also better fits acontext in which women did not typically initiate divorce, and where women whowere infertile were often abandoned. 

Noticein Luke’s story about Elizabeth and Zechariah that when the formerly infertileElizabeth conceives, she rejoices that she no longer feels shame in thesight of the people (Luke 1:25, emphasis mine). It was “shameful”for a woman in first-century Palestine to be infertile. If the Samaritan womanwas actually avoiding other women, infertility is the more likely factor. 

If suchis the case, imagine the impact of Jesus's words: "Go call yourhusband."

"Idon't have one."

"You'reright. You've had five five, and you have to share the one you have now."Said with compassion. And concern for the grief and injustice. (Not facing herabout her sin.)

"You'rea prophet! (How else could you know all that?) We're hoping forMessiah!" 

"IAM."

Jesus,who usually talks in enigmatic statements about his identity, comes right outand tells this woman longing for Messiah that he’s the one! And suddenly thesocial hider is running to make a public announcement.

Throughthe centuries, we have tended to see sexual sin lurking in the closets of mostwomen in the Bible. Certainly Jesus saves sinners. But in light of what we knowof cultural background, especially in this case, I think we need another look.

If, indeed,Jesus was not confronting this woman about her sexual failures, but was showingempathy, what might that tell us about the wisdom of beginning our evangelismconversations with confrontations about sin?  

Hear Me on KCBI: Infertility, Pregnancy Loss, and Adoption

Tune in to KCBI 90.9 FM tonight at 6:30 or 10:30 PM Central for a continuation of last week's conversation lwith Dr. David Henderson about infertility,  pregnancy loss, and adoption. 

You can also listen to the broadcasts about a week after they air by going to the Criswell website at www.forchristandculture.com . Click on the “on air” tab and scroll down to the date of the programs, May 23 and 30 .

Listen: Radio Show on Infertility

Tune in to KCBI 90.9 FM tonight at 6:30 or 10:30 PM Central (and next Thursday at the same time) to hear me talking with Dr. David Henderson about infertility, pregnancy loss, and adoption. 

You can also listen to the broadcasts about a week after they air by going to the Criswell website at www.forchristandculture.com . Click on the “on air” tab and scroll down to the dates of the programs, May 23 and 30.

Human Embryos: Not CAN We But Should We?

USA Today's Dan Vergano reports that the Oregon Health and Science University has cloned human embryos. Why? For stem cell biology. Private funding made this possible, as the US government under President George W. Bush prohibited the use of taxpayers' dollars for such experimentation. You can read more about this sobering moment in our ethical history by going here.