Posted on 05/04/2019 6:37:34 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The quiet heartbreak and pain of infertility is well known to many evangelicals, whose aspirations to have a child have been frustrated for reasons they cannot understand or control. It is frequently a secret burden that couples carry, which only emerges into the open as they reveal their struggles to family, friends, and doctors.
The weight of infertility and the value of children has increasingly prompted infertile couples to pursue procreation by every means possible: artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and even surrogacy have all found their way into evangelical communities.
Yet while evangelicals have become increasingly aware of the emotional challenges infertility poses, we have not yet considered the hidden costs of our desperate pursuit of children through artificial reproductive technologies.
For many Christians, Scripture’s silence about IVF means that the only moral question is how we treat embryos created in the process. Such an argument, though, intrinsically undermines the normativity of Genesis 1 and 2 for both sexual ethics and also bioethics—a normativity that Jesus himself ratifies in Matthew 19:4. Genesis 1:26–28 clearly indicates human fertility has been folded by God into the structure of creation and into his providential plan for the earth’s cultivation. And while Genesis 2:22–25 does not mention procreation directly, the interdependence of sex and generation is explicitly presumed.
Aiming for children without sex changes the character of the latter, and with it the rest of our bodily life as well. IVF enshrines in the Christian moral imagination an attitude that, if applied consistently, would radically reconfigure not only our sexual ethics, but medical ethics as well...
(Excerpt) Read more at thegospelcoalition.org ...
And for further reading, even the most conservative Evangelical leaders frequently cite Catholic teachings so ingeniously expounded upon in Paul VI's monumental encyclical, "Humanae Vitae" written in 1968, just after the birth control pill was approved by the FDA. And John Paul II's "Theology of the Body."
Even if the mother is in prison for killing one of her children. Her rights to the other children will not be terminated.
Even if the dad is in prison and has never seen his daughter and has no intention of seeing her his rights will not be terminated.
In these cases it took eight and seven years to get their rights terminated and the children to become adoptable.
By then most were in their teens, having been bounced from foster home to foster home.
Adoption is one of those things that should be promoted and the regulations eased. It will not be because CFS gets money for every foster child they have under their control.
Yes. I suppose it’s easy for me to say because I didn’t have this problem, but IVF seems like vanity. If you just can’t have children, then maybe you’re not supposed to have children. To force the issue through IVF because you NEED to pass on your genes seems wrong to me.
Adoption, on the other hand, is quite a noble thing. You can have children without IVF.
Good article. Thanks for sharing it.
I agree about the vanity. Someone I know was determined to have kids despite a potential terminal illness, had two kids via a surrogate, then had triplets via a surrogate. Now she and her husband are overwhelmed with caring for five young children, begging for help. None of my business, I know, but it is sad that they went down that foolish path since the kids will be motherless in the near future.
If abortion was not legal there would be many more babies available for adoption and people would not feel as pressured to use artificial methods to have a baby.
I’m one of those women who was not blessed with biological children of my own. I trust that God knew what he was doing when he said “no.”
Instead, I became Mom to a ten-year-old step daughter, who I raised, and now I’m Grandma to her four beautiful kids.
Wouldn’t trade it.
Until science can create a baby without a woman were OK
Whether or not this comes under the heading of personal freedom, and subject to individual conscience, the truth is that the further we stray from Natural Law, the more we abet things that are indisputably immoral.
For example, surrogates allow homoerotic persons to indulge the conceit that they are legitimate parents like a heterosexual couple.
Just replace "IVF" with any other run-of-the-mill medical therapy like "kidney transplants" or "bypass operations," and "children" with "the ability to live a half-way normal life," and you'll see just how specious your argument is.
Regards,
The cost of adoption is and has been prohibitive for many, CCG.
The cost of adoption makes me suspicious of why it is so expensive. My daughter, who is having fertility problems wants to adopt. However she tells me it will cost $35,000. Who can afford that?
Not just CFS. The welfare class gets money for foster care too. One scam is for the mom to declare she cannot cope, and put the kid into foster care. Relatives get preference, so the kid goes to grandma, and grandma gets a check.
In New York the basic rate is $605 to $828 per month per child. If the child is deemed "special needs", the rate can go up to $2000 per month per child. Then there's clothing allowance, the kid is eligible for food stamps, etc, etc.
Grandma can make more money as a foster caregiver than she could working a job.
There would be less need for fertility treatments if more women had their kids in their 20’s. Women increasingly have fertility problems after 30, something feminists don’t want to talk about.
Women are designed to have their babies in their youth.
“conservative Evangelical leaders frequently cite Catholic teachings”
Umm...no. Just...no.
“...but IVF seems like vanity. If you just can’t have children, then maybe you’re not supposed to have children.”
....and telling people with depression to “Snap out if it” is a viable cure?
It is a terrible misfortune, when to have life and have it more abundantly cannot include the blessing of having children.
John 10:10
Adoption, like immigration needs some serious reform. Biological parental rights included.
(Adoption) “it will cost $35,000”
Double to triple that quote. And adopting parents have the pleasure of babysitting someone else’s baby (by law of parental rights).
I just wanted the person who was casually saying that there are "millions of children to adopt" to know that it is not that easy.
I have been on both sides of the desk in adoption and it is a complicated mess. Couples who want to become parents are jerked around and so are the foster children.
This is another broken system.
....Yet you had Abraham and Sarah.
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