Project 2025 partner event called surrogacy and IVF a “crime,” “evil,” and “the most rotten thing a society can possibly do to children”

Speaker Michael Knowles also attacked parents who have children through IVF: “Good ends do not justify evil means.”

Special Programs Abortion Rights & Reproductive Health

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published

Young America’s Foundation, a right-wing group involved with Project 2025, hosted an event last December featuring anti-surrogacy and anti-IVF commentator Michael Knowles. During his speech, Knowles called surrogacy and IVF a “crime,” a “growing evil,” “ghastly,” “absolutely horrific,” and “just about the most rotten thing a society can possibly do to children.” 

Young America's Foundation is an organization which claims to “help students like you find support, promote your conservative views and take action.” It is an advisory board partner for  Project 2025, the Trump-connected extremist plan to guide staffing and policy priorities for the next Republican administration. 

Media Matters has documented how Project 2025’s proposals would significantly diminish reproductive rights, with possible implications for surrogacy and IVF. 

Kevin Roberts, the Project 2025 architect and president of the Heritage Foundation, wrote a forthcoming book (with a foreword by Trump running mate JD Vance) which attacked IVF. 

Roberts told Knowles (“my friend”) on Roberts' own program last month that he “is one of the most important messengers, thinkers, communicators, not just about conservatism, not just about Christianity, but about the future of America.” 

Young America's Foundation has ties to right-wing media, including Fox News. In August 2023, YAF partnered with Fox News to host a Republican primary debate where the network chose a YAF representative to ask a question. 

The organization is also closely tied to Knowles, a right-wing host for Daily Wire with a history of vitriolic rhetoric. He has said that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,” “divorce should basically be outlawed,” and “I support Christian nationalism.” He has also attacked surrogacy and IVF on his program. 

YAF hosted Knowles for a speech lasting more than an hour on December 6, 2023, at Clemson University in South Carolina. Knowles' talk was devoted to attacking surrogacy, IVF, and the parents who chose to have children through those means. 

Knowles on “homosexual men purchasing children through surrogacy”: “It's ghastly. It's absolutely horrific. It is just about the most rotten thing a society can possibly do to children.” Knowles attacked gay men for becoming parents through surrogacy and IVF, stating: “The case of homosexual men purchasing children through surrogacy is particularly and most obviously egregious because it involves creating babies with the express intent of denying them their mothers.”

He later added that surrogacy and IVF are “absolutely horrific,” a “crime,” a “growing evil,” and “the most rotten thing a society can possibly do to children.” 

From a December 6, 2023, speech by Michael Knowles

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It's ghastly. It's absolutely horrific. It is just about the most rotten thing a society can possibly do to children.

But many, many who have opined on this issue, want to place blame just in one corner, and I, unlike them, do not. I do not even really blame the homosexuals. It's very easy to look at the situation and accuse these adult men of selfishness. And they are selfish, obviously. They put their own desires, their natural desire for children, along with their disordered desire to exclude women from that process ahead of the rights and interests of their prospective children. But I suspect that most of them don't know that. In their defense, these men have been told by the entire culture for about 60 years now that men and women really aren't different. And if men and women really aren't different, then moms and dads really aren't different. And if moms and dads really aren't different, then why would anyone need or even want to have both of them? What's the difference between a family and a couple of fellas if that premise is true? 

I don't mention these harsh truths to make the men who have fallen for this lie and temptation feel bad about themselves. I don't suggest that we take away their children, that we might endeavor as best we can to introduce these children to their mothers. This is a fallen world. There is no way to undo the terrible crime that has been perpetrated on many people. The children most of all, of course, but even the men who were told that they were doing nothing wrong. The men who sincerely believed that, and who might now be listening to this speech thinking in horror, wondering, what have I done? It's a terrible feeling. We've all made mistakes, some more egregious than others. But there is no sense in trying to undo the past.

There is no sense in dwelling on past sins after we've seen the error of our ways. The reason I mention all of this is to stop the crime from spreading to prevent this from happening again in the future. I do not primarily blame the homosexual men for the growing evil of surrogacy and IVF. I don't blame the women either. We all know the statistics about children who grow up in fatherless households.

Knowles on “married couples” who “struggle with fertility": “It is incredibly painful. It is a terribly difficult cross to bear. But the alternative to that cross is even more terrible.” Knowles stated: 

From a December 6, 2023, speech by Michael Knowles

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Many married couples struggle with fertility, and it is incredibly painful. It is a terribly difficult cross to bear. But the alternative to that cross is even more terrible. And that is the treating of children as property to be bought and sold, rather than as people with rights. In the matter of procreation, the only person who possesses genuine rights is the child.

Knowles also attacked parents who have children through IVF: “Good ends do not justify evil means.” Knowles later attacked parents who have had children through IVF, telling them: “But good ends do not justify evil means. No end, no matter how good, justifies immoral means.” He later said, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Modern technology can dazzle us. Ideological fads can hypnotize us, but eternal truths remain, whether we wish to acknowledge them or not.” 

From a December 6, 2023, speech by Michael Knowles

MICHAEL KNOWLES: A number of my friends and many of my acquaintances have done it. And what those parents instinctively say to any criticism of IVF and surrogacy, any look that's a little bit too close into the details, is they will say, without IVF and surrogacy, my kids wouldn't exist. So damn your arguments, damn your bioethics. I don't care where your reasoning leads you, I support IVF. That's what they say, and it's completely understandable.

That is a totally natural reaction, because kids are good. Kids conceived through IVF are just as good and have just as much a right to life as kids conceived the old fashioned way. Of course. But good ends do not justify evil means. No end, no matter how good, justifies immoral means. A child conceived in rape is just as good as children conceived in marital love. Of course.

He has just as much a right to life as a child conceived in any other way. But his goodness and his right to life do not therefore justify rape. We still discourage rape. We outlaw rape. Without rape, that child would not exist. And the child is a blessing.

But rape is obviously wrong, so we outlaw it. There is no contradiction in that sentence. A friend of mine is fond of observing that facts do not care about one's feelings. You may know this friend. Now, I have pointed out to this friend of mine that while facts might not care about feelings, politics almost exclusively cares about feelings.

And we are feeling creatures. That's part of what makes us human. But our feelings can deceive us. I am not the first to observe that the imagination of man's heart is prone to evil from his youth. Even the best of intentions detached from the rigors of logic and the constraints of morality can go terribly wrong.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Modern technology can dazzle us. Ideological fads can hypnotize us. But eternal truths remain, whether we wish to acknowledge them or not. People have rights, which means that people are not property, which means that kids are not commodities.