Posted on 08/08/2024 3:08:20 PM PDT by Morgana
“We are really struggling with infertility… We have spent the better part of our married life trying to conceive. We prayed and prayed. We have paid close attention to ovulation cycles. We have gotten our hopes us time and time again only to have the pregnancy test shatter our hopes with a negative result. We feel like we have exhausted all our options. We know that the Lord calls children a blessing and a heritage, we know that our desire for children is a good and godly desire. We are going to go to a reproductive specialist this week, and are considering IVF. Is there anything that we should be thinking about as we consider this?”
This conversation isn’t an unusual one in our day. I recall having this conversation with my own parents and friends as my wife and I went to our second appointment with a reproductive specialist. In my first examination of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), I recall thinking that this was a miracle of science that solved the problem of infertility for so many couples, and would perhaps do the same for my wife and me. Make no mistake, it is an incredible scientific feat. But there several considerations which show that this miracle of science is in fact far more sinister.
First, there is the potential loss of life in the process itself. Normally the whole process of IVF starts with ruling out the possibility of natural conception. Scans and tests are run to diagnose the issues preventing conception, after which the doctor suggests In Vitro Fertilization. Assuming that the couple decides to go this route the process is as follows: The doctor takes eggs from the woman’s ovaries and then the doctor fertilizes those eggs with donated sperm, normally ten to twelve eggs will be fertilized. After this they will wait to see how those fertilized eggs develop, generally only those that develop appropriately will be candidates for implantation. They then will inject 2-3 eggs at a time into the woman’s uterus with the hopes that one or both would implant. Assuming that the implantation is successful, the child implanted will be brought to term and born.
Can this be done ethically? There are a number of arguments on how to use IVF while upholding biblical standards of morality. The most common argument is that the couple will only fertilize the eggs that they are committed to bringing to term. While this is a noble answer to the question, I believe that it also assumes too much. It either assumes that every child conceived will make it past the five days of development, or that the children who don’t make it through those five days would not have made it if they were conceived of natural means and were permitted to grow in the natural environment of their mother’s womb. Regardless of the noble intention to use IVF in biblically responsible way, the reality is that the successful use of IVF will cost the life of several children.
This leads us to the second consideration, namely price. In general, the financial toll of IVF is somewhere between $15,000 - $30,000 a cycle. This is an expensive process, but as an adoptive parent I can say that it is no more expensive than domestic adoption which has a price tag of $25,000 - $40,000 depending on the state in which you reside and the adoption agency you choose. The financial burden is problematic but for most people who desire children it is no real issue. The real cost of IVF is blood. In case you think I’m exaggerating here is a real-world example. A woman had fourteen eggs harvested, thirteen of those eggs were fertilized, eight were viable for implantation after five days, after genetic testing that number fell to four, after four attempts at implantation one child was born. Since life begins at conception, this means that twelve children died so that one could be born. And that is a low body count. One example that I found had thirty-two children conceived and out of that thirty-two, two would be born. In short, you need to ask yourself the question: how many of my children am I willing to permit to die so that I can hold one in my arms?
IVF is a house of mirrors where the only reflection seen is that of a child in the arms of a longing mother, while hiding the reality that for every one child born there are many that have perished and some that will remain in cryostasis indefinitely. Do not believe for a moment that IVF doesn’t have a unique cost to it. The financial cost is high, but the blood cost is far higher. I don’t mean to overstate my case, but I am hard pressed to find a greater example of child sacrifice in our day than that of IVF and I’m including abortion in my assessment. Moloch lives, and he offers you one child at the expense of 8.
The third consideration is the alternative. I want to pause and recognize that this is a sensitive issue with real people who are truly wounded by the burden of barrenness. My wife and I are some of those people. Infertility hurts but God has already provided a glorious solution to barrenness: adoption.
Unfortunately adoption has often become the very last option for the barren. This is not because it is the most expensive option, nor the most difficult, but because we have forgotten that God’s solutions are the best solutions. His answers are clean and bear in them testimonies of the glory of the gospel of Christ. There is a beauty about it that no other solution can match.
Consider for a moment the cost of adoption: it is a bloodless endeavor. Not a single child needs ever be put at risk. Instead, adoption takes children who are at risk and provides for them a place of safety and security. Adoption considers the orphan and the barren and binds them together making the orphan an heir and the barren a fruitful garden.
More so than that, the true beauty is in the gospel proclamation attached to it. In adoption the orphan is welcomed as a child, granted the rights and rewards of an heir, and shall spend the whole of their life in the home and at the table of the adoptive parents. This is what God has done for us! He has taken us, naked, pitiable, and poor, and brought us into His family, bestowed upon us His name, made us an heir with Christ and seated us at His table. What great distinction between Moloch’s methods and God’s.
In conclusion, the process of IVF is too dangerous, and the price of IVF is too bloody, and the alternative of IVF is too glorious to take such a tumultuous road. Thankfully, God has paved the road of adoption with the very gospel of Christ, we need only follow Him down that beautiful road to see barrenness obliterated and broken heartedness turned joy.
That is literally the same argument the pro choice movement makes in favor of abortion.
Sorry. No sale. Babies are born that would not have been born. Fertilized embryos that are above the couples needs are able to be adopted.
Those putative siblings had a chance at life that they never would have had. Also in many cases only one embryo is implanted at a time. That is a parental decision.
Are they still using firehoses?
“How is it God’s will via a miscarriage as opposed to IVF”
You are describing death by natural causes versus death by human intent.
I say there is such a thing as murder. All causes of death are not equal.
On the contrary, very few miscarriages can be attributed to any action of the mother. Most miscarriages are caused by a lethal genetic defect; others by immunological, hormonal or clotting problems, unknown to the mother, not in her control, although perhaps treatable after careful diagnosis.
Grieving mothers already blame themselves for failing their babies, without cause.
Please don’t add to their grief by opining that they may have made poor choices.
Miscarriage through alcoholism is absolutly a deliberate action. If you are going to outright condemn IVF fir such a thing you must be morally consistent and find a persons choices that lead to a miss-carriage equally wrong.
I struggle greatly with the concept of IVF but I can not find it as an absolute evil like some are presenting it.
Terminating a pregnancy willfully is different from trying to have a pregnancy.
You are wildly wrong, my wife is an addiction nurse, the number of miscarriages through addiction is horrifying.
No, I was describing miscarriages of those who’s actions result jin a miscarriage.
To be clear I am vehemently opposed to abortions, I see IVF as something much less clearly understood.
A bit out of left field but take suicide, Samson committed suicide but was God’s agent, even something like suicide is not as morally absolute as some with think.
Trying to have a pregnancy knowingly at the expense of the death others is an absolute evil.
It's a shame you don't see that.
If you are talking about addiction that is one thing, and one particular population
But plenty of women who don’t smoke, drink, take drugs, still have miscarriages. The great majority of pregnant women are not substance abusers; the great majority of miscarriages do not occur because of substance abuse. Roughly 20% of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriages, more as maternal age increases.
You also mentionned too much exercise, so it really does seem that you attribute miscarriages to the mother’s actions
I almost considered just ignoring your comment as it is wrong in the extreme. I am making no argument to justify the willful death of anyone. I am making the argument that IVF might not be so clearly defined morally. At no point would I agree with a willfull self serving attempt to an individuals comfort that results in the death of another.
No not in general, my point was using the exception to test the logical conclusion. Basically how do we say IVF is an inherent evil and not say any action a mother performs knowingly that results in a miscarriage is not also an inherent evil?
The mother knows IVF can result in dead embryos, well what of a mother who does something they know could cause a miscarriage, would that not be equally wrong? Abortion is clearly is willful with the intent to kill, IVF has a different intent / motive and to me is not so clearly defined morally.
This always reminds me of an acquaintance who had had cancer, but was obsessed with having children. She and her husband went through the IVF process and had two children. Then, knowing that she had cancer again and was terminal, she got three more children from the original lot, leaving those for the poor husband to care for after she passed away
Having a drink while pregnant, smoking a cigarette or any other action that may lead to a miscarriage is equally an absolute evil as well then. My what a perfect life you must lead, I am still a struggling sinner, maybe one day I will be as saintly perfect as you.
“… We are going to go to a reproductive specialist this week, and are considering IVF. Is there anything that we should be thinking about as we consider this?….”
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There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING UNGODLY OR IMMORAL about IVF. If an infertile couple want to have children this way they should do it and ignore any disparaging busybodies and ‘Karen’s’. And God bless them and any child that is given life through this means.
That’s the one thing about Chritianity...there is constant guilt and virtue shaming....
While God’s law is absolute there are unfortunately those who take up the Christian mantle and desire to put out their own imperfect understanding as an absolute interpretation of God’s word.
Some just cannot accept issues can be grey at times, not God’s law, just our understanding of it.
I’m not talking about any of that.
Having a child at the expense of the deaths of other children is an absolute evil; no matter how healthy of lifestyle the mother lives.
Struggling sinners, like you, need not promote and defend the deliberate death of unborn children.
A woman naturally pregnant at 40 has a 40% chance of miscarriage; at 45 the chance of loss is 2/3. Are she and her husband wrong to conceive so late?
A woman (couple) who has difficulty conceiving also has greater difficulty carrying to term, cruel irony.
A couple who have so much difficulty conceiving that they resort to IVF will have a higher chance of embryos not maturing properly before implantation AND of losing a resulting pregnancy.
It’s not probabilities alone that can determine the morality of conceiving naturally or with assistance.
After all, when child mortality is 50% before the age of five, it is still moral to conceive. The human race has done that for millennia.
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