Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Part I

This is Crazy: A 65-Year-Old “New Mother” Arrested for Felony Charges After Trying to Have 15th Baby by IVF

We’re going to be talking about several related issues today, and they’re all going to come back to forms of revolt against creation order when it comes to having children. The first one, well, let’s just get to the headline. “She was ready to have her 15th child then came the felony charges,” that’s a major story that appeared just in the last couple of days in The New York Times. The article’s by David Gauvey Herbert, and it begins this way. “MaryBeth Lewis was shopping for groceries at her local Walmart in suburban Buffalo when she got the word, her surrogate had just been induced. She rushed home and packed a bag for her new twins, a book for baby footprints, matching outfits and beanies, and blankets embroidered with their names. Then she jumped back in the car and raced down Interstate 390 [That’s in New York state] to a small hospital 130 miles away in a rural corner of the state.” 

The article continues, “When MaryBeth arrived at the maternity ward, she found her surrogate in a recovery room, tired but happy after a quick delivery. She asked to see the twins, and a nurse went to go find them. But before she returned, a different woman dressed in scrubs appeared and got in MaryBeth’s face. ‘What you did was terrible,’ the woman said, ‘you will never see these babies.’ MaryBeth tried to talk to her, but the woman refused to listen, a voice over the loudspeaker announced the visiting hours were over, ‘and that means you,’ the woman said.” Okay, so what’s in the background here? Well, we have a woman who is herself an OB/GYN nurse by training, and she’s now well into her late 60s, and she was having babies, well, just a few years ago.

She is the mother, at least in terms of being the birth mother, of 13 children, and they range in all sorts of ages. The story begins by telling us that this woman “Loves children, she always has, she played with dolls as a little girl.” At age 25, she married a pilot, an Air Force pilot, he eventually went to work for FedEx, and they earned a very good living and that was able to sustain them in some very interesting decisions. “The couple had five daughters, when the girls neared adulthood and empty nest syndrome kicked in, MaryBeth wanted more children.” In her late 40s, she used in vitro fertilization to give birth to twin girls, and she wasn’t done. Despite medical mishaps, miscarriages, and raised eyebrows from friends, she kept going, eventually giving birth to her 13th child at the remarkable age of 62. So, that’s 13 children by the time that she’s 62 years old.

But here’s the crux of the story, “To bring this last set of twins into the world, MaryBeth went further. She tricked an IVF clinic, a judge, and even her own husband. These deceptions left MaryBeth, who is now 68, potentially facing a years-long prison sentence. She has lost her job and is barred from her children’s school, she has dropped nearly 70 pounds from the stress, and cries herself to sleep at night, over two years, she has spent more than $500,000 fighting for her freedom and for custody of the twins who she maintains are her 14th and 15th children.” Okay, so the story begins in a very natural way, she and her husband have a good number of kids and then they decide to have more. Okay, so they continued to have kids until at some point they were unable to have children just in terms of the normal process of human reproduction.

But then along came in vitro fertilization, IVF, modern reproductive technologies, and this couple made use of those. And we are told that several embryos were created, and this led to multiple pregnancies, as this woman got older, so did her husband, well, at one point she had many children, and that was both by natural reproduction and then by assisted reproductive technologies, and she wants more. And as a matter of fact, her mother died in 2010, they’ve been very close, that leads her to decide she wants even more. “In 2012, at age 55, she gave birth to twin boys,” her ninth and 10th children, “As she was being sewn up in the delivery room, a nurse rolled the bassinet into the hallway and MaryBeth heard the Lewis girls scream with joy,” that’s the older girls, “As they met their new brothers.” “As more children arrived, she needed help, she leaned on her adult daughters.” And one of the older daughters says, “We can never be 100% sure she was done having kids because she’d say she was done, and then she’d be like, ‘surprise.’”

Okay, so the surprises just get more bizarre, and it eventually comes to the point that she is using the embryos that had been produced by IVF even without her husband’s knowledge. Then, in 2016, she wanted another baby, “but she was out of embryos.” The New York Times then says, “She bought donor sperm and donor eggs and created a fresh batch, the children would not be genetically related to either MaryBeth or Bob, but that didn’t bother her, she would carry them herself and raise them as Lewis’.” We’re then told that she worked in an OB/GYN clinic as a nurse, “That December, MaryBeth gave birth to her third set of twins,” the family’s 11th and 12th children, the new mother was 59. Okay, the story is not over, and we’re also told that only 1200 American women in their 50s gave birth in 2023, so let’s just stop for a minute.

Only 1200 American women gave birth in their 50s in 2023? Clearly, this is not nature at work, this is something that is unnatural, this is not in keeping with creation order, this is in its own way, a revolt against creation order, and the clearest tell or sign for us in this is the use of IVF technology. But the story just gets even more bizarre, you wouldn’t think that it could. We are told that by the time reached the late 50s, “She was pushing the furthest reaches of geriatric motherhood.” All right. Her friends are asking more questions. “For years, they had congratulated her with each new pregnancy, even as their own lives transitioned to doting on grandchildren and preparing to retire.”

One friend said, “That’s what she wanted and that’s what made her happy, but now the curiosity is getting stranger.” “If she’s that staunch of a Catholic, then if God was done having her have babies naturally, why not stop rather than go this route of fertilizing?” Well, then later we are told that on Easter morning in 2019, MaryBeth and Bob, “Gathered 11 of their 12 children in the foyer of their home, MaryBeth handed each of them a plastic egg. The Lewis children ranged in age from two to 35. When they cracked open the plastic, they all found the same note, ‘We’re expecting.'” The next line is precious. “I was really confused,” said one of the daughters. And we are told then that the mother in this case was carrying her 13th child. Another daughter said, “All of us were shocked, the younger ones were excited, us older ones were like, this is not going to end well.”

Another one of the daughters was furious, because after all, they were having to do a lot of the work with these younger siblings, and that’s natural in a natural family, but it’s not natural for this to go on while the parents are in their late 60s. Okay as the article says, the older children, and they were daughters in this case, were upset because the mother had, “Gone and unilaterally signed them all up for another tour of diaper duty.” Okay. Some of them are actually becoming mothers themselves, quite naturally, that’s the normal thing. Okay, things are going to get even more strange. As the husband said, “When MaryBeth knows what she wants, she’s going to get it.” Okay, get this. There’s a new pregnancy, “MaryBeth had gone behind his back and secretly implanted two more embryos with one taking.” All right. So, we’re told that Bob just basically at this point went along with it, whatever Mary Beth wants, you can see Mary Beth gets. But clearly this was a very strange situation.

MaryBeth turned 65 and, “Felt a familiar urge.” Okay, so we are told that the Lewis’ were, “Paying $50 a month to keep their last few embryos frozen at this fertility clinic in Syracuse.” The article states, “If born, those children would not be genetically related to MaryBeth and Bob, but they would be the full siblings of their three youngest children who all came from, ‘The same IVF batch.'” “Even couples who do not believe that an embryo is a human life can be uneasy about its destruction,” this is The New York Times reporting, that’s very significant in moral and worldview terms. Even couples who do not believe that an embryo is a human life can be uneasy about its destruction, as a Christian, what does that tell us? It tells us that they actually know something about the moral status of those embryos.

They may want to deny that they know it, but their actions prove that they do know it. That’s why they’re in, I think the word here is very weak, but it’s still morally telling, they are uneasy. Okay. So, in this case, MaryBeth visited her own OBGYN, asked about implanting two more embryos, and the doctor finally said no. As The New York Times says, “The doctor was adamant, no more babies.” All right, so remember we’re talking about a married couple, MaryBeth and Bob, Bob opposed donating the embryos to another couple, but when it came to MaryBeth, she wanted, “To bring the children into the world by using a surrogate.” She contacted an organization known as Rite, R-I-T-E Options, a surrogacy agency, and that agency located a young woman in the area, in New York state, “Who was interested in being a gestational carrier.” So, you’ll notice the change of vocabulary there, you go from surrogate, which frankly is a pretty straightforward statement, it tells you what the contract’s all about, then you have it dressed up in the euphemism of gestational carrier.

“MaryBeth also hired a New Jersey-based reproductive attorney named Melissa B. Brisman, whose professional letterhead was topped with a silhouette of a crawling baby, she hired the attorney to handle the surrogacy contract.” Okay, this is going to be really expensive. They’re going to pay $49,000 to the surrogate, plus a $7,000 bonus if you have twins, they had to cover the surrogate’s health, life insurance, attorney fees, they also had to pay $3,500 as a hazard bonus, if the surrogate mother required a C-section, they had to pay $200 a week for breast milk. In all we are told the process would cost more than $160,000. Okay. We’re also told they could afford it. In retirement, the retired pilot brings in $200,000 a year, and social security from pensions, MaryBeth still earned $92,000 a year as a nurse practitioner, they had $2 million in a 401K account, and then the story, as I say, hold on, it gets more bizarre.

Bob initially went along with the surrogacy plan, according to MaryBeth, he denies this, “Whatever Bob knew, he soon staked out a definite position, 13 kids were enough.” But she had a different plan, and once she brought out the embryos again, Bob got angry, and said, “I don’t want anything to do with them,” and so she decided to take action. She decided that she was going to avoid the destruction of the embryos by hiring this surrogate, and going without Bob’s knowledge. And so, she actually committed, at least according to this, what can be understood as fraud by posing as her husband as well as herself in order to move forward with this contract. There were other things too, because once you get into this kind of pattern, well, all kinds of things then fall in line. You have to keep the story. And so, as it turns out, it became a very complicated situation. MaryBeth did not tell Bob, her husband, about this situation until an errant bill came to his attention, and then all of a sudden he discovered what was going on.

As you can imagine, he wasn’t happy about it. He contacted the authorities, the authorities then stepped in as soon as the twins were born. MaryBeth, assuming that she was operating on the basis of what she thought was still an operational contract, she went to the hospital basically to pick up the twins. It didn’t quite turn out that way. At some point after the twins were born, there had to be a hearing before a judge. The judge in this case unexpectedly, at least in MaryBeth’s understanding, threw a wrench into the process. This was Judge Chauncey J. Watches, a 19-year veteran of the bench there in New York, and well, he went on to order an investigation.

He said, “I expect him,” meaning the investigator “to do his investigation so we can get a little more information about what’s going on here.” The attorney for MaryBeth asked, “Would you mind if I ask what’s unusual?” And the judge said, “One thing, the ages of the parents, 66 and 67.” MaryBeth interjected, “Well, the fertility clinic had no problem,” the judge said, “I’m not the fertility clinic, I’m the judge.” All right, this is where things really went off the rails. As it turned out, the babies were not given to MaryBeth and Bob, instead, they were given to foster parents, but MaryBeth never gave up trying to get these twins. And even as she eventually I just have to cut this shorter and summarize. She eventually gained the custody of the twins, she’s also facing multiple felony charges for fraud and misrepresentation.

And not only that, was to find at least in one of the charges as attempted kidnapped. Now, one of the recurring issues I come back to on The Briefing over and over again, because I have to, is the decline in the birth rate. The fact that so many modern people are just deciding not to have children. The fall in the birth rate is a clear worldview indicator, it is a huge indicator of a rapidly growing and dominant secularism and it comes with consequences. And so, on the other side of that, someone could argue, well, a woman who wants to be a mother over and over and over again, that’s to be applauded, but not when it runs against nature. Here’s the big thing, as Christians, we are committed to creation order because that is what God revealed to us as his plan for his glory and our good. Creation order means you don’t interfere with having children, at least you are obedient to the command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and then to raise those children in the nurtured admonition of the Lord.

Every single child, every single baby, every single pregnancy is to be greeted with joy, especially when it comes in the context of marriage. There is nothing wrong with that, everything right with that. So, where did things go off the tracks in the case of this couple, and especially in the case of this woman? It is because what you’re looking at here is an obsession that crossed into eventual felony charges. But for Christians, it’s not just the obsession that concerns us. Frankly, there could be many secular people who would think that a Christian couple having multiple children are obsessed. So, it’s not just that that is the problem, it’s where she went with this. There are natural limits to how old a woman can be and conceive and carry a baby to term, there are just natural limits to that process. Clearly this woman was rebelling against those natural limits, and in order to do that, she had to turn to unnatural means.

And here’s where Christians ought to have very deep concerns about IVF just in general, and I talk about this often. But just look at the artificiality that is involved here. You had the creation of human embryos, and these human embryos, some of them were transferred into this mother’s womb, and at incredibly advanced ages, she bore some of them all the way full term until they were born. At some point she could not be the gestational mother in any sense, even by having IVF embryos, that is to say embryos that were produced by IVF technology, and she could not even have those embryos transferred to her, so then you had to have donor sperm, donor eggs, and a surrogate mother. Now, at that point, every alarm bell conceivable should be going off for Christians. And in this case we’re talking about a woman who’s come to national and now international attention because of her unique obsession.

Part II

When Reproductive Technologies Violate Creation Order: Christians Cannot Defy Creation Order to Procure Children

But for Christians, the issue is there are many people whose actions along these lines would never lead to headline news, but they should be very problematic from a Christian worldview perspective. We are to do everything we can to align our lives, particularly as Christians, we’re to do everything we can consciously, with conviction, to align our lives with creation order. But we are to do nothing that defies creation order, and we need to note this, that means we’re to do nothing to interfere with creation order in order just to avoid having children, but we’re also to do nothing that would defy creation order in trying to arrange for say, a 65 or 68-year-old woman to, well, be a mother. And you see the artificiality of that in this story, because it was a shift from natural reproduction, first of all to IVF. And the IVF in this case was both gametes being donated, both the sperm and the eggs.

And then you have the issue of the existence of these “Surplus embryos,” and we agree with this mother that these embryos ought not to be destroyed. But frankly, we also believe they ought not to have been produced by this process, so that they would be in storage, and thus vulnerable. And furthermore, then you have the hiring of a surrogate mother, and now you have gestation by contract, gametes by catalog sale, you ask the question, what could go wrong? Everything has gone wrong. And you also have the legal system unprepared to deal with this, because quite honestly, our legal system was not envisioning the possibility of a 68-year-old woman being mother to children, and a couple at this stage in life being declared to be the parents of these children.

By the way, one of the claims made by defenders of the woman is the fact that there are grandparents who are given custody of children. Yes, but that is due to an emergency, that is not envisioned by society as where the process should start. That’s the least worst option you might say. And I want to honor grandparents who step in in that situation, that is a glorious thing for grandparents to do. But I’ve never met a pair of grandparents at that stage who said, you know, it’s just like we are having children in our 20s. So, from our perspective, the importance in Christian worldview thinking, is all of a sudden, by the shock of this, the bizarre nature of this story, again, headline news in The New York Times no less. It draws our attention to the fact that creation order has to be our commitment and focus and obedience to God, whether you’re talking about having children, not having children, all of it, once it takes on a defiance against creation order, the surprising thing here is just to remind Christians, having children, wanting to have children is a righteous desire.

Wanting to do so in defiance of creation order is not a righteous desire. We also need to look at this as Christians, and understand there’s a big financial issue at stake here. IVF is now big business. There are people, there are corporations, firms, medical practices making a ton of money on IVF, and quite frankly, it’s an industry that subverts human dignity at virtually every stage, and then ironically and tragically in the name of providing hope to couples and having children. But as I often say, if you look at the client list for those organizations, you really can’t with a straight face, suggests that that client base is made up exclusively of married couples.

As we know, when you add surrogacy to it, you end up with the fact that a lot of these firms will acknowledge that it is gay men, gay male couples, or lesbian couples, who after all one of them can conceivably carry the baby, and one or the other might produce the egg, but they can’t do it without the male cell. So, the whole thing just points to the artificiality. And so, it’s a good reminder to us that creation order is creation order, that should be the basis of our understanding here, and Scripture testifies of this very clearly. And I guess it’s good for us to understand, especially when there’s so many controversies about IVF, it takes brave Christian thinking to think through the fog here. And you know what? One of the big lessons for all of us is that it takes an enormous amount of conviction to say “no” when someone is determined to get the answer “yes.” 

As you’re looking at this, it is simply also the case that we’re talking about an artificial moral world. There is no natural moral world in which this woman has any claim to be known as the mother of these children. She’s not biologically related to them, they didn’t gestate within her, it is simply a matter of financial contract. And if that’s what we’re down to, we have abandoned all moral sanity. But at this point it does appear that our legal system is not prepared to handle this, which means this is going to happen again.

Part III

The Christian Paradox of Crime: Louvre Thieves Turn Out to Be a Married Couple with Children Who Were Caught Based on DNA Evidence

Okay, let’s go back to the jewel heist at the Louvre. This has captured a lot of attention, and that fact has captured a lot of attention. Why is it that so many people want to follow that story, and why is it that some people, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, are kind of rooting for the thieves rather than the good guys? Well, that is something that Christians have thought about for a long time, and it is sometimes presented as the Christian paradox of fiction or crime.

Why is it that we are fascinated with this? Now, just for one thing, in terms of let’s just say the detective story, do you realize that in the English-speaking world came out of an explicitly Christian context? It was a group of Christian writers who basically devised in large part the modern detective story. They were actually organized together in such a way that they encouraged one another, included some brand names you would fully recognize. And yet, at the same time, the Christian understanding doesn’t allow glorifying crime, but you know what? I think the biblical worldview does tell us that there’s an allure to it, there’s an attraction to it, there’s a fascination with it. For one thing, let’s put the best Christian understanding applied to it, we have a deep hunger inside us to see good and evil battle it out, and we want good to win.

But you know what? Evil can be very, very interesting, and that’s another biblical truth. Evil can present itself as very attractive, very beautiful, until you begin to look below the surface. So, all right, there’ve been two arrests in the massive jewel heist of the royal jewels from the Louvre, and you know what? Turns out they were caught by DNA evidence. So, you can do everything you think you can do to erase your tracks, but modern DNA investigative techniques and tracking allow just the tiniest sample of DNA to track you down at an airport, where you’re trying to fly out of France and escape. It also turns out that the two who are arrested are a married couple, it also turns out they’re a married couple with children. Not exactly the profile you might expect for some very high-level jewel thieves, but it’s another reminder to us that you can think you have figured evil out and yet you haven’t.

Theologians sometimes refer to the problem of evil as a surd, as an unsolvable problem. It enters the English language as absurd. Now, Christians can’t just find recourse in saying it’s all absurd, we have to explain it as Scripture explains it quite clearly. All sin is a falling short of the glory of God, sin is a direct rebellion, a conscious rebellion against God. It is the breaking of God’s Law, and that’s exactly what we see here. And yet, as we investigate our own hearts, we have to admit it is interesting. Here we are on The Briefing, talking about it again, but we as Christians have to make sure we think about it and talk about it as Christians, we cannot glorify crime or criminals.

We can, however, say a real-life crime story like this does reveal good and evil in the society all around us, and it also tells us that when you have the battle between good and evil, sometimes evil’s going to show up in a very unexpected guise, a married couple with children who by the way, no doubt thought they had pulled off, along with its believed other accomplices, the crime of the century, only because of DNA evidence, which authorities said may have come even in the form of a sneeze. That’ll make you think. 

All right, this is election day in some parts of America, in the states of Virginia and New Jersey, voters are going to be electing new governors, and let’s face it, all eyes right now are on New York City, and the big question is whether or not the voters in that city are actually going to elect a Muslim democratic socialist as the next mayor of America’s largest city.

This will come, as you know, one way or another with big consequences and a lot to talk about. Given the fact that I am a continent and an ocean away, we’re going to have to wait to talk about that on Thursday morning’s edition of The Briefing.  Until then, stay tuned, it’s going to be a big developing story.