The thing about Brad and Siobhan is that they seem to be an entirely normal couple. OK, they are married and they are fiercely pro-life and Christian (which is normal in the circles I move in!) but in every other way you would just think of them as a normal, loving couple, friendly, generous, good neighbours and working hard to buy their home and raise their children.

When I visited them in November 2025 it was a scene of warm domestic chaos. Two of their four children were visiting grandma, a third was sitting on his father’s knee whilst play-learning on a laptop and the baby was asleep in her mother’s arms.

But Brad and Siobhan don’t just profess their faith – they actually live it. All four of their children were rescued from certain death as byproducts of the murderous IVF trade.

Invitro fertilisation (IVF) must seem like a miracle to many. It is the chance for childless couples to have the family they would not otherwise be able to have. And, assuming you can ignore or don’t have faith in God IVF, coupled with surrogacy, allows single people and homosexual couples the chance to have the child that is otherwise biologically impossible.

But what many do not realise is that the IVF process results in the death of at least eight children per fertilisation cycle. The parents gain one child at the expense of the lives of many others, apparently ignoring the humanity of these other children. The process also results in many, many children being placed in a frozen state in case they are needed for future cycles.

In America the number of children held in a frozen embryonic state as a result of the action of the invitro fertilisation industry number in the millions. In Australia there are hundreds of thousands of these children.

Some biological parents choose to have their ‘excess’ children thawed and then allow them to succumb. Others donate them for scientific research purposes. Still others leave them in the frozen, embryonic state indefinitely.

Most don’t want their children donated to childless couples or others wanting to rescue them because they ‘don’t want people I am related to out there’ but a very small percentage make the decision to save their children’s lives.

Enter Brad and Siobhan. They wanted to do something to help save at least some of these children. So they travelled to America (the rescue system was not available in Australia at the time but it is possible now), again and again, with a budget of $15000 per child. They chose the ‘excess’ frozen embryonic children from the same couple each time so that every child they brought into the world would be a sibling of the others.

This particular donating couple had sixteen children fertilised in the laboratory for their IVF purpose. Of these sixteen children three died immediately and thirteen were successfully frozen. The couple then transferred two to the mother’s womb but they miscarried. A further two were transferred and the process was successful, resulting in two live births.

This left nine children in the frozen, embryonic state. Brad and Siobhan ‘adopted’ all nine and from these nine they have brought four children into the world.

It is a beautiful, loving story. Brad and Siobhan are selfless and Christ-like in their decisions and actions. And they have a beautiful family.

Perhaps not surprisingly, rather than just being content with what they have already done they still worry about the other siblings held in a frozen state in America, ‘but I am 37 now Steve and I am not sure I am physically capable of doing it again’.

The process of rescuing these children is fraught with legal and ethical issues.

No Australian government will so far consider legislation on this issue because ultimately such legislation would need to recognise the child as a human being and that would render abortion illegal. And every Australian government loves abortion and wants it to continue. So children aren’t ‘adopted’ via this process. Rather, ‘ownership’ is transferred and when the child is born, with no other legal options available both adopting ‘owner’ parents are listed as the child’s biological parents.

The Catholic church won’t touch the issue either. They say that it is not ethical to make a woman pregnant via embryonic transfer. Pregnancy must occur via marital relations with her husband. They also say that some children may die in the thawing process and that would be wrong. The Church are also concerned that a contraceptive hormone is used to prevent the woman ovulating during the transfer process and that hormone could cause an abortion if she were to have relations with her husband at that time.

In 2008 Pope Benedict XVI put the Church’s position in this way: ‘… all things considered, it needs to be recognised that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved’.

Brad and Siobhan have rescued four children that would otherwise have been condemned to death. They have done so lovingly and within a committed Christian, heterosexual marriage and using their own resources. They have not acted to deliberately cause the death of any child in the process, although they do mourn the one child who did not survive the thawing process and they do worry about the remaining four still in the frozen state. They argue that they provided the opportunity for life and left it to God to decide the outcome.

In my opinion, Brad and Siobhan are true pro-life, Christian heroes.

Opinion piece written by Steve Klomp, President, Right to Life Association of WA, December 2025