With the recent executive order intended to expand access, IVF (in vitro fertilization) has become a hot topic. We don’t talk about this enough in the Church — or about related issues like IUI (intrauterine insemination), birth control, and other fertility-related issues.
We don’t like to talk about these things because they’re emotional. There are a lot of deeply personal feelings surrounding fertility and infertility, so when people question the wisdom of any of these things, there’s an immediate outcry of not being “nice” enough — of “lacking compassion.”
But withholding truth for fear of offense is not real compassion; it’s a counterfeit. Failing to address these issues not only fails to teach the Church to think biblically about these particular issues (and even if you disagree with my, or someone else’s, conclusions about what is biblical, the process of thinking about them biblically is still of utmost importance), it fails to offer to those who are struggling the grace of dealing with the sins these issues highlight.
These are complex topics, and we can get into some of the more common moral/ethical questions later, but I’d like to start by doing something that’s all too rarely done: getting back to the foundation of fruitfulness in marriage.
What is Marriage For?
Scripture tells us two important things about marriage that are relevant to the immediate discussion:
1) Fruitfulness is part of God’s design for marriage (Mal. 2:5)
2) Marriage is designed to image the union between God & the Church (Eph. 5:22-33)
This means that childbearing is ultimately for something. It’s part of the picture of the Bride of Christ at work.
When a man and a woman marry, they enter into a relationship that is set apart from all others, and the Bible tells us they become “one flesh.” As they live together in the unity of that one-flesh relationship, a typical result is that, as God sees fit to provide life in His timing, that relationship bears fruit — in the literal sense of providing offspring.
God Gives the Increase
This matters because this likeness is a representation of the fruitfulness of God’s bride, which is central to the Gospel.
The Church, the Bride of Christ, comes together with Him in a set-apart relationship where they become one. And as they live together as one — members of His Body, just as Eve was “flesh of [Adam’s] flesh” — a typical result is that, as God sees fit to provide spiritual life in His timing, that relationship bears fruit — spiritual offspring.
Importantly, this is not our doing. We participate, by going about our ordinary duties, in the course of our ordinary relationships, but it is God who brings life. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” (1 Cor. 3:6)
Welcoming Fruitfulness
Spiritually speaking, every Christian knows it would be inappropriate to be willfully unfruitful. If the Church were actively seeking to avoid producing disciples, we recognize that She would not be fulfilling Her purpose.
Yet that is exactly the perverted picture we paint of the Household of God when we make our marriages willfully barren.
Practicing Faith
On the flip side, the Church cannot move outside of the Christ/Bride relationship and manufacture disciples in our own strength. We cannot look to the world to provide what the Kingdom did not.
Rather, we’re called to submit ourselves to the Lord, trusting that He will bring the increase at the proper time.
Manufacturing babies in test tubes paints a perverted picture of the Household of God, by portraying the giving of life/production of offspring as something we can do in our own strength and worldly wisdom.
Trust in the Lord
I don’t intend for my frankness to be taken as callousness. Infertility is a painful and difficult thing. At the same time, for some families, pregnancy is scary. These things matter, and we serve a compassionate God.
But the frankness is also necessary because, while we are to weep with those who weep, we also are to build our lives around truth, not our feelings. And fertility and infertility have a tendency to shine a spotlight on the sinful attitudes we’re harboring.
Infertility is not a sin. Wanting a child is not a sin. But wanting a child and being infertile — or, on the flip side, being fertile and not wanting a child — tend to provide opportunity for selfishness, fear, and other sins to show their faces.
All of the things we do to artificially manipulate our fertility are in service of self. They’re often driven by fear, or even by simple rebellion against what God has ordained. They are not in service to furthering God’s plan. They do not stem from humble submission to the Lord.
This is hard; I won’t pretend it isn’t. But God never promised us easy. He told us to be holy (1 Pe. 1:15-16). To submit ourselves to Him (Ja. 4:7). To trust in Him and avoid leaning on our own understanding (Pr. 3:5-6). Hard things help sanctify us. “[C]ount it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (Ja. 1:2-3) These difficult circumstances provide significant opportunities to grow spiritually. To confront our own innate selfishness and fear. To exercise faith. To actively submit ourselves humbly to God.
Further Theological Considerations: God the Giver of Life
The Lord declares to us in Deuteronomy that He kills and He makes alive (Deut. 32:29). He, the Creator, uniquely has the authority to bring about life (and to decide who dies). It is He who has the authority — and the power — to both open and close the womb (e.g. 1 Sam. 1:5).
We do not have the right to usurp this role for ourselves, acting in the place of God.
Further Ethical Considerations: Birth Control
Birth control is, first and foremost, rooted in the same attitude that gives us abortion: that we want children when we want them and not at any other time, and that we are willing to intentionally divorce sex from its natural connection to procreation. While we may stop short of actually murdering our own babies, continuing to foster this attitude enables abortion to remain embedded in our society. (In fact, widespread abortion actually followed a shift in attitudes toward children, which in turn followed the invention of the birth control pill. They may be two different fruits, but they share a root.)
On the other hand, we may not be stopping short of murdering our children at all. Most forms of birth control — including all chemical birth control options and the IUD — not only are forms of willful barrenness, but are actually abortifacient. That means they don’t truly prevent pregnancy, necessarily; they instead make the womb inhospitable so as to kill those babies early.
(Consider once again our foundations. Is it biblical to portray the Church as inhospitable to life and desirous of snuffing it out at the outset?)
Further Ethical Considerations: IVF
In vitro fertilization, or IVF, presents a litany of moral and ethical conundrums, some of which are universal, while others can be worked around.
Perhaps the most obvious ethical difficulty is that of multiple embryos. For those who are unfamiliar, in vitro fertilization is fertilization in a lab. “In vitro” literally means “in the glass” and refers to procedures that are conducted in petri dishes, test tubes, etc. So these are “test tube babies.” They’re fertilized in a lab, outside the context of the marriage bed, and later implanted by way of a medical procedure. But it’s common for these babies to not “take,” so they usually create many more embryos than a woman would be willing to carry to term. They usually also attempt to implant several at a time, assuming most will not take. All of the “extras” in the lab are destroyed or left frozen indefinitely — tiny human babies, murdered or stored in a freezer. If multiples are implanted and they do, in fact, “take,” most of the babies are usually aborted, to bring the number down to an “acceptable” one or two.
This is the conventional procedure. It is possible, of course, to limit the number of embryos created — and placed — so there are not “extras.” Because of the expense, most people don’t act so judiciously, but it can be done.
Depending on the exact circumstances, there may also be additional concerns, such as unfairly withholding critical information from a child about his/her background, or the consequences of mix-ups.
Children Are Not Commodities
Many of these practices also turn children into commodities — products to be bought, sold, traded, and manufactured for the gratification of the adults involved. This treats human life — the part of Creation most directly designed to image God — as cheap, deserving no greater honor or dignity than a car or a house.
So What Do We Do About Infertility?
So how should we address infertility? Must we just…do nothing? My own position — which I believe is biblically informed — is that doing everything we can to support and encourage our bodies’ working as well as possible is good. That is, rebalancing hormones that are out of whack is good. Eating in such a way as to be well-nourished for conception and childbearing is good. Addressing impediments like scar tissue is good.
This is categorically different than trying to force artificially what God has not done organically, moving beyond the boundaries God established for fruitfulness as a product of marital relations, and violating the created order.
On a societal level, we also can — and should — support environmental changes that are good for health and fertility, and oppose those things which harm health and fertility. And we should approach health care in a holistic manner that builds up health. That means, for instance, if periods are rough, we shouldn’t be throwing synthetic hormones at the issue and kicking the can down the road, but looking for the root cause and seeking to restore balance and health. Rather than being content with a culture and lifestyles that tend to produce toxic, out-of-balance, undernourished, and unhealthy bodies, we should be teaching people how to build health and pushing for wise healthcare and a clean food supply. Culturally, we trust in Big Medicine more than we do in God, and that’s something that should dismay Christians, not something we should join in with.
What If My Child Was Conceived Via IVF?
What if your child was conceived via IVF? (Or donor-conceived, or some other less-than-ideal scenario)? Is he “less than”? Of course not!
Every human life is valuable. Every child is an image-bearer of God — regardless of the circumstances of his conception. If a child is conceived by rape, we all recognize that there was sin involved in that conception (on the part of the rapist, not the victim). Yet that doesn’t make the child sin. Rather, the child is a blessing brought about in the midst of sin. Beauty from ashes.
In similar fashion, although I firmly believe Christians should not attempt to circumvent the closing of the womb in their own strength and through the world’s wisdom, those children conceived via IVF are of equal value with those conceived by ordinary means. As someone once said, “your history is not your destiny.”
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