A Biblical View of In Vitro Fertilization

Why Abortion abolitionists are addressing IVF

Initial statistical analyses estimate that in 2012, in the US alone, 1.2 million children were created from IVF with only 62,000 children born after the procedure. For comparison, Guttmacher reports that in 2011 1.1 million surgical abortions were performed. Further detail will be seen and linked below, but for perspective, that means for every child born as a result of IVF, 19 others were created and either frozen, discarded, donated for scientific experimentation, or died in the IVF process. This scale is massive and is of extreme concern to anyone who would advocate for the defense of the unborn.

Abolitionists understand the necessity of rejecting all ageism without partiality, and protecting the unborn beginning at fertilization. One application of understanding this truth is that we oppose the practice of in vitro fertilization (IVF), as it’s dehumanizing and destructive to the weakest members of our society. The destruction of human life in these practices has been frequently underestimated and is at an absolutely staggering scale. Yes, abortion efforts have historically been associated with opposition to mainly surgical abortion. Many Christians and churches (and even some secular groups) adopt a formal position upholding the “sanctity of human life” and the doctrine of “human rights”, and claim that life must be protected from conception to natural death, yet the vast majority of Americans do not consistently recognize these little human embryos as fellow humans created in the image of God. There are even professing evangelical Christians and conservative pro-lifers who will not condemn IVF but actually encourage it. If there is ever to be an end to legalized child sacrifice in our land we will have to be consistent in our demands for justice: The destruction and dehumanization of our embryonic neighbors by the practice of IVF demands our response and we are compelled to protest it as vehemently as we oppose murder by surgical or medication abortion.

Do we love our children or love ourselves?

IVF has turned the production of children into a consumer industry. This multi-billion dollar industry has made many rich and happy at the expense of millions of tiny, weak, defenseless human embryos. In our desire to have our own biological offspring, we make orphans of our own children. When someone successfully bears a child from IVF, as a general rule they leave at least several of the child's siblings in an icy prison. When that person doesn't want to give birth to any more children, those siblings are abandoned by their parents to be adopted by another family, to thaw out and die, or to be donated to science and used in human experimentation.

Embryonic stem cell research should be utterly rejected regardless of its goals. Human experimentation that destroys a human being is never acceptable under any notion of human rights. These embryos are subjected to tests and even employed in therapies that result in their destruction. This is murder. This is not, as some companies claim, acceptable merely because they are leftover from IVF without anyone to rescue them. Parental consent can not make murder acceptable. This practice is murder and ought to be decried as such. We believe that the practice of IVF needs to be plainly exposed and fiercely opposed in the public sphere, just as one would oppose other modes of abortion.

The Dark Realities of IVF

We understand that direct, strategic opposition to this practice is an uncommon posture even among individuals who believe embryos are image-bearers of God and our neighbors. We recognize that in the past 50 years, most of the Pro-life Movement’s efforts have been focused on regulating surgical abortions, and not even touching the unconscionable and morally reprehensible form of dehumanization and destruction that is IVF. This is a massive failure of the Pro-Life Movement to clearly address the changes in our society’s treatment of the unborn since Roe v Wade. Our approach today must be different than it was in 1973 simply due to the proliferation of technologies that destroy our neighbors. In the same way that it would be absurd to oppose D&C abortions but not saline abortions, we believe that IVF is merely an alternate technique and not fundamentally a different practice. Because of this, we call upon opponents of abortion to respond anew to these technologies and join the charge in this fight.

Yes, there are many children who will not come into existence when IVF becomes illegal. But if we truly believe God when He tells us that He is the one who opens and closes the womb, this is not a fact that should bring us concern. What we have right now before us is a dehumanizing industry that treats tiny humans like chattel and property to be bought, sold, discarded, experimented on, and ignored on a whim. Further, we know what the success rate for IVF is, and it is not good. Even if you only implant one baby at a time, you still have an elevated risk of death. Thus, IVF creates a human being, so as to put him in an intentionally risky situation. Why create children to put them in harm's way, when you could spend that money and effort in adopting children that are already here and in need of parents?

The entire world system is set up to further child sacrifice. It’s one of the devil’s chief tools — he tried to murder baby Moses, tried to murder baby Jesus, in Revelation 12 the dragon tries to eat the Messiah, etc. More than 65 million people have died in this country in 50 years. Whatever you think is an important issue, it pales in comparison to mass child sacrifice, and you ought to be doing something about it.

IVF is a cog in the system and lends an air of respectability to the dehumanization of human beings created in the image of God. If someone participates in IVF they are enriching the people who in all other cases are creating 8 and 10 children, only to freeze 6-8 of them and then abandon them forever. You can tell the doctor to only make one or two, sure, and he may. And he might be honest with you about how many were created in total. But he’ll take your money and use it to create tons of babies for someone else.

There are so many unnatural risks to life for these children who are produced this way. There is the likelihood that many of them will be discarded after being examined under a microscope and have been determined to be unfit to keep. Then out of the ones who do make it through that first weeding process, only 2 or 3 are chosen for transfer into their biological mother’s womb, while the rest are cryogenically frozen and imprisoned. Many of them die just in the initial process of freezing. The parents can later decide if they want to transfer more of their children, donate them to science, put them up for adoption, or simply throw them into the trash. For those who mercifully “donate” them to other parents, those embryonic children must go through a thawing process, in which around 65% of them do not survive. Then because of the freezing process, even after thawing them, a technique called assisted hatching must take place. This is where a laser is used to cut a small slit in the shell around the embryo which formed due to freezing. There is another 5% chance of death in assisted hatching. It costs adoptive parents more than $12,000 to adopt a child whose parents created and abandoned him or her for someone else to pay for rescue (and storage fees). Adoptive mothers must put their bodies through all kinds of abuse in order to save these lives, including hormonal treatments, injections of Lupron, and progesterone. All because of an evil industry that creates children for parents who choose to only care for some of their offspring, when they could have and should have cared for the millions of orphans already in their midst. Even if the couple were only to create as many human lives as they are willing to give a chance to, they are still unnecessarily contributing to an industry that creates and then subsequently destroys millions of human lives all for big money.

Loving your IVF Neighbor:

This booklet from Pastor Deevers covers in detail the stages of the IVF process: the grading, destruction, "reduction," and more. Read a preview of this here. Ask yourself some hard, yet important questions if you have created children through IVF: of the eggs that were collected, how many were fertilized? Of those [embryos], how many made it into the top two grades to continue through the process? [Note: the grading system in IVF facilities can change; it is not set in stone. So an embryo that receives a high grade could later become a lower grade and be discarded or destroyed, donated to science.] Of those that made the top two grades and were frozen, how many survived being thawed and transferred? Of those who survived being thawed and transferred into a woman's uterus, how many implanted into the uterine wall to be able to continue living and growing?