The chief ethicist for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination wants the federal government to clamp down on in-vitro fertilization, saying it causes harm to children and their mothers.
Many infertile couples who undergo IVF treatment are unaware of the moral danger it poses, Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, wrote in a letter to the U.S. Senate last week.
“We urge legislators to develop and implement a system of federal oversight that protects and informs women and ensures embryos are treated with care, even as we oppose the general practice of IVF,” Leatherwood wrote.
Earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court made national headlines with a ruling that frozen embryos created during IVF were protected by the state’s wrongful death law. The state’s chief justice went even further, saying in a concurring opinion that “embryos cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”
That ruling, in a case where embryos were destroyed in a freak accident, shut down Alabama’s fertility clinics, leading Kay Ivey, the state’s Southern Baptist governor, to quickly sign a new law protecting clinics by limiting their liability.
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“I am pleased to sign this important, short-term measure into law so that couples in Alabama hoping and praying to be parents can grow their families through IVF,” Ivey said at the time.
During the IVF process, doctors often fertilize more eggs than can be implanted at one time. The excess embryos are vitrified — a freezing process that turns them glass-like — and stored in liquid nitrogen for future IVF attempts. By some estimates, more than a million embryos are currently frozen in storage.
While conservative Christian groups like the SBC have long opposed abortion, saying life begins at conception, they’ve been largely quiet about IVF itself. Any criticism of the process has been limited to concerns about the fate of frozen embryos created during IVF, especially if those leftover embryos were used for research or discarded.
That’s in part because of what Dena Davis, an emerita professor of religion at Lehigh University who taught bioethics, calls the “IVF problem.”
Unlike abortion, which is intended to end a pregnancy, the goal of IVF is for more children to be born — something religious people generally approve of, Davis told media in an interview earlier this year.
“That is at the heart of conservative religious understanding of how the world works,” she said. “You get married, you have kids.”
Davis also suspects abortion foes are more likely to know someone who needs help conceiving and are likely more empathetic with someone using IVF than they are with someone who chooses abortion.
Southern Baptists passed a series of resolutions, starting in 1999, opposing the use of embryos for research, genetic editing of embryos, cloning or other technology that would involve destroying embryos — for the same reasons Southern Baptists oppose abortion, believing life has already begun in the frozen embryo stage.
While Southern Baptists have raised ethical concerns about IVF in the past, the denomination’s leaders have not opposed the practice.
That appears to be changing. Along with Leatherwood’s letter to federal regulators, the ERLC published a resource against IVF, arguing the practice separates conception from sex between a man and a woman and turns children into products. It’s a position that echoes Roman Catholic teaching on IVF.
“Though we should be hesitant to call it sin, it is morally ambiguous enough to be problematic and should be discouraged as a matter of wisdom and prudence,” according to the ERLC’s resource.
The ERLC’s position on IVF falls short of Roman Catholic teaching that contraception is immoral — however, it does say “it is theologically problematic to separate procreation from the sexual union of the man and woman in the marriage covenant.”
In 1934, the SBC did pass a resolution opposing a proposed federal law that would have made it legal to publish information about birth control, saying such a law “would be vicious in character and would prove seriously detrimental to the morals of our nation.”
During their annual meeting in Indianapolis next week, Southern Baptists will likely vote on a proposed resolution that raises ethical concerns about IVF but falls short of condemning it. Instead, the resolution encourages Southern Baptists to adopt leftover embryos and to think about the ethics of IVF.
The proposed resolution, written by Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Southern professor Andrew Walker, instead encourages infertile couples to consider “the ethical implications of assisted reproductive technologies as they look to God for hope, grace, and wisdom amid suffering.”
Bob Smietana is a national reporter for Religion News Service.
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21 Responses
“While conservative Christian groups like the SBC have long opposed abortion, saying life begins at conception, they’ve been largely quiet about IVF itself.”
The first successful IVF treatment took place in 1978. So, for the SBC to come out 45+ years later with what they determine as their comprehensive ethical view on the matter, seems to me to be suspiciously odd, and yet also calculated, for some reason.
I hope SBC back this up by dedicating significant funds to purchase blankets for millions of frozen embryos languishing in cold dark freezers separated from their families.
Or, should any building that houses frozen embryos ever catch fire, they’ll commit to being the first to race into the burning building to rescue the embryos.
“. . .the resolution encourages Southern Baptists to adopt frozen embryos . . .”. How sad, when you consider all the living, breathing children praying for forever homes.
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I guess I’m confused about why they say IVF “causes harm to children and mothers.” The article mentions possible languishing of frozen embryos, but if that problem could be alleviated (maybe Christian couples pledge to implant or adopt out all created embryos at some point?), what would be the problem? It’s just because they want sex to be the only way an embryo gets implanted? Seems a little silly.
I agree.
If every fertile Southern Baptist woman would agree to have these embryos implanted in them, think how many lives could be saved.
There are millions of embryos discarded every year. Make it happen SBC.
https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/17-million-human-embryos-created-ivf-thrown-away
“If every fertile Southern Baptist woman would agree to have these embryos implanted in them, think how many lives could be saved.”
Reminds me of a short series of space-opera SF novels back in the Eighties that had a distinct vibe of “Star Trek with Rosaries”. In that milieu, the future Catholic Church had a specific order of nuns whose vocation was to do exactly that, giving the gift of birth and life to the otherwise-rejected IVF embryos.
This is all political, pure and simple. What’s next? The SBC going full Roman Catholic to be against artificial birth control and insist that every sperm is sacred (HT: Monty Python)?
Republicans are definitely coming for birth control. Clarence Thomas says the Supreme Court should revisit Griswald. State legislators in Michigan, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Missouri and many other states have been proposing banning the Pill.
The internet TheoBros (the online John MacArthur wannabes) have been going after hormonal birth control, as have speakers at CPAC, TPUSA and even including Charlie Kirk himself.
Their main argument is that there should be consequences for sex. In other words, they want to use pregnancy as punishment. And of course, it is the woman who is punished.
I can appreciate that there may be reactions against anything the SBC says. Understandable reactions given the usual constituency of TRR.
However, the practice of IVF is worth discerning from within the frame work of a Christian pro-life ethic.
The Roman Catholic church has very involved reasoning as to why Christians ought not participate in IVF. Some of the rationale I find compelling.
Matthew Lee Anderson is a Protestant ethicist who has written about IVF and its implications. An online search of his name will bring anyone to a number of articles and essays.
Agree or disagree, there are carefully reasoned arguments against IVF. Because there is no quick ‘proof text’ against it in Scripture (how could there be?), many Christians have simply not thought it through. I myself am not completely settled on all the arguments both for and against.
I’m sure there are good arguments. It’s just that either this article doesn’t explain the ERLC’s position well or the ERLC itself hasn’t explained it well.
Meanwhile…the SBC Abuse Reform Task Force ends with no action. No database. No plans.
Maybe they will deal with the master manipulators/abusers filling their pulpits in 45 years or so.
According to the NIH, IVF can lead to 70% embryo destruction.
Since evangelicals believe life begins at conception it makes sense that the SBC would state that IVF should not be performed.
Though, they have to tell the Democratic and Republican parties that evangelicals do not support IVF.
Good luck with that …. so much for the Life and Family parties….
What is not discussed is that there are at least 1 million miscarriages in the US every year, with most occurring before 12 weeks. For women who know they’re pregnant, about 10 to 20 in 100 pregnancies (10 to 20 percent) end in miscarriage. Some research suggests that more than 30 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and many end before a person even knows they’re pregnant.
Second, the reason many embryos are not used is because Pre-Implantation Genetic Testing has revealed missing chromosomes (the test looks for the number of chromosomes) which if this was conceived the old fashioned way would result in a miscarriage (as 70% of all miscarriages are due to the fact the there is the wrong number of chromosomes). In other words, the IVF embryo would be discarded the same way the woman’s body discards the embryo through miscarriage. Implanting an embryo via IVF with the wrong number of chromosomes would result in a miscarriage, just like would occur naturally.
But then most Evangelicals think the bible is a book on science, geology, astrophysics, mathematics, political theory, and so on.
If the SBC hadn’t blown their credibility outside the bubble with all the sex scandals and Christians(TM) in general hadn’t blown their credibility with Young Earth Creationism Uber Alles, they might have actually been taken seriously and have some input on the problem.
But that ship sailed a long, long time ago.
Strain out a knat but swallow a camel. Heavy cumbersome loads on shoulders. What does this really have to do with a personal relationship with loving God as best you can, and loving your neighbor as yourself?? Simplicity of God somehow escapes man…
YHWH sets boundaries for mankind. And for Yerushalayim, as well as the future New Yerushalayim. And the ocean. The First Couple exceeded those boundaries just 6000 years ago, tainting the blood of mankind with poison; curable only by the pure Blood of the Father passed on to His Son, Yahshua, the Aurim and the Thummim of our High Priest: shed Blood and broken Body. Human beings yet attempt to go beyond what YHWH has ordained. Soon, our Bridegroom will arrive with His Rod of Authority as Head of the Home: MalchiZadak: our Righteous King. The killing/torture/plundering/raping/lying/pilfering of one another’s possessions and lives will cease.
“This is the Law of the House: Upon the top of the mountain the whole limit thereof round about shall be most Q’Dosh. Behold: This is the Law of the House.” Ezekiel 43:12
What does that have to do with IVF? The eggs and sperm are removed from the woman and man with their consent (and the fertilization occurs with their consent).
Second, we do not know what those “boundaries” are (at least in terms of technological advancement, science breakthroughs, advances in knowledge, etc.). The problem is throughout history, churches, religions and their leaders have tried to say what those boundaries are and read their own opinions/beliefs into Scriptures (and especially if they are silent on the issue).
I will grant that in some cases, the ethical aspects and questions about the use of technology have lagged behind the development of said technology, but that is a much broader discussion than simply a theological or biblical one. Technology itself is neither good nor evil.
I’m sure many of us know couples who have been very blessed to become parents through IVF. I personally believe God has really blessed medical professionals to make IVF possible (along with many other advancements in science and medicine).
Seems that there are a lot of assumptions about the viability, health, care and destruction of embryos that could be solved by speaking with doctors and IVF patients about their unique circumstances versus making such overreaching generalizations about the practice of IVF.
You know, like abortion. Not every case is the same. We lose the ear of so many by making assumptions rooted in generalizations.
I think this group has gone too far. Where is it written in the Bible?