President Donald Trump
claims he is the “most pro-life president” in American history. But is he?
This week, Trump
signed a new executive order protecting and promoting in-vitro fertilization. Practically speaking, the EO has few immediate implications. While the EO recognizes “the importance of family formation” and acknowledges that American “public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children,” the EO also requests “policy recommendations to protect IVF access.”
The goal to “protect IVF access” raises an important question: From whom, exactly?
It makes sense that in a society battling a growing infertility problem and a declining birth rate, IVF is celebrated as a technological achievement. So why shouldn’t we use technology to assist those struggling to conceive children naturally? After all, we use technology to solve other biological problems, and IVF, in theory, provides a solution to infertility and fights back against the declining birth rate.
Who, then, opposes IVF? Pro-life Christians — and for good reasons.
If you dig below the surface, you discover significant ethical, moral, and societal problems with IVF. Unfortunately, these problems are not immediately obvious. But they are problems nonetheless, and they cannot go ignored or unaddressed.
Here are some, but not all, of the reasons that pro-life Christians oppose IVF and why everyone should critically weigh the implications of IVF on ourselves, our families, and our society.
1. IVF destroys embryos.
Pro-life Christians believe that life begins at conception. This is the chief motivation for opposing abortion: It kills an innocent life that, although unborn, has inherent worth and dignity because it is made in the Image of God.
In the same way, IVF kills unborn lives.
The IVF process almost always involves the artificial creation of multiple embryos, not all of which are implanted into a woman’s womb. This is done to maximize the probability of successful implantation. But it creates a massive problem because, in most cases, many embryos — lives beyond the stage of conception — are “left over.” Those that remain are treated like property: frozen for future use (when?) or worse, destroyed or subjected to scientific research.
The truth is that the vast majority of embryos created through IVF are never “used.” That means,
according to some estimates, that more unborn humans lives are snuffed out through IVF than are killed in abortions.
This is a grave injustice.
Even worse, because multiple embryos are often implanted during the IVF process to maximize the probability of a successful pregnancy, IVF can lead to what the medical community calls “multifetal pregnancy reduction” or “selective fetal reduction.” In other words: abortion.
2. IVF commodifies human life.
There’s no way around it: IVF commodifies human life. It turns children into
products — something to be purchased, controlled, and even designed.
IVF treats women as egg donors and men as sperm donors, reducing the creation of life to a marketplace transaction. In this system, life is valued based on its utility, reinforcing a consumer-driven mindset that inherently undermines the God-given dignity of human life. This transactional attitude reshapes how society views children — not as gifts, but as products. In the case of “designer babies,” parents even get the privilege of “shopping” for those genetic traits they most desire.
Ultimately, the commodification of human life reinforces the idea that people have a right to children, as if children are products to be bought and sold — not God-given blessings.
3. IVF idolizes technology.
Beyond turning children into products, IVF elevates technology to the pantheon of secular gods, entrusting science to veto nature and satisfy human desires.
IVF attempts to rob the Creator God of the authority to create life and give it to the science lab, using human ingenuity and technology to override natural limitations and manufacture a product. It treats a barren womb as just another problem that can be solved if we discover the right technology.
Just as problematic, IVF creates technological idolatry that deceives us into believing that if we can do something about a biological “problem,” then we should. Technology, therefore, becomes a pseudo-savior that gives people what they long for — but demands ethical and moral sacrifices in return.
In the cult of IVF, doctors are the high priests, laboratories are the sacred temples, and embryologists are the gatekeepers of life.
Ultimately, the elevation of technology to divine status tricks us into committing the same sin as our ancestors in the Garden of Eden: We believe a lie and seize the opportunity to become like God, deciding who should live and die based on our own reasoning rather than depending on God and His wisdom for life.
But technology, despite its promises, will never provide what only God can: the assurance that life is a precious gift from a loving God — not a commodified product.
4. IVF violates God’s plan for family and child-rearing.
God created men and woman, and He created marriage. God declared that one man and one woman should become “one” and said, by their oneness, they should multiply.
The obvious problem with IVF is the subversion of the process through which procreation naturally occurs: IVF divorces conception from the intimate, God-ordained marital act that He designed as the sacred means by which He creates new life. IVF treats children not as gifts from God or the fruit of a loving marriage, but as engineered products.
But God is the one who opens and closes the womb (Genesis 30:22; 1 Samuel 1:5). We should trust His way of creating life — through partnership with Him and our life partners — and His sovereign plans, not seize what we think is ours to take.
5. IVF disregards children who need adoption.
Estimates
indicate that there are more than 400,000 children in the U.S. foster-care system and more than 100,000 children in the U.S. awaiting adoption.
IVF ignores all of these children — who already exist and need loving parents and a safe home — because IVF emphasizes the engineering of biological children on a timeline that suits the parents’ desires.
IVF not only robs children of an opportunity to find a loving, secure, and nurturing home simply because some couples demand children that are “their own,” but it takes from us the opportunity to model God’s redemptive love and the chance to reflect the gospel.
6. IVF exploits women through surrogacy.
The advent of IVF birthed a new industry that humanity had never before known: surrogacy.
Without IVF, surrogacy cannot happen. But surrogacy is problematic because it commodifies and exploits both the surrogate and the child, reducing reproduction to a business transaction. Through surrogacy, a woman is reduced to an incubatory rent-a-womb and the child to a mere product to be delivered.
Just as dehumanizing, surrogacy ignores the biological connection that develops between a mother and her unborn child and callously disregards the physical, emotional, and hormonal connection between a newborn child and the surrogate mother. The negative long-term impacts on the disruption of the natural bond between mother and child remain unknown, though it’s likely deeply traumatic for both.
May we not forget that a woman who agrees to be a surrogate is likely only doing so because she needs the financial reward on the other side of birth. In this way, surrogacy is deeply exploitative.
7. IVF neglects the root problems of infertility.
IVF overlooks and outright ignores the root causes of infertility. Like a band-aid, it covers up the underlying causes of infertility: age, stress, bad diet, hormonal imbalances, metabolic diseases, etc.
The truth is that any number of emotional, environmental, and lifestyle factors can contribute to infertility, most of which can be addressed and reversed. But IVF provides a quick fix, further masking issues deep below the surface. It would be better to understand
why someone is experiencing infertility problems, using a holistic approach to find the solution.
IVF, therefore, contradicts the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Whereas MAHA asks questions and seeks to discover root issues and provides holistic solutions to health problems, IVF uses a cookie-cutter approach to infertility and enriches Big Pharma along the way.
8. IVF inflames the perverse incentives of Big Fertility and Big Pharma.
Speaking of Big Pharma, IVF is an industry with perverse incentives that feeds on the grief of loving couples struggling to conceive.
In my own life, my wife and I struggled for several years to start our family. We sought medical advice and were told by a local “fertility clinic” that our “only hope” to have children was IVF. Less than a month after a board-certified fertility specialist medical doctor said this, we naturally conceived our son, who was born last year.
Never once were we counseled on the moral and ethical questions of IVF. Never once were we counseled on the physical and emotional consequences of IVF. We were not told about the experimental nature of the science or the harms of the drugs and the potential complications of an IVF pregnancy. We were not told that if we did IVF, we would later find ourselves in a moral dilemma over the “unused” embryos.
Informed consent was nowhere to be found, and I suspect our experience is not unusual.
My wife is not “infertile,” yet the doctor diagnosed her as such and defended the diagnosis
while my wife was pregnant. Again, I suspect that many women are diagnosed with infertility when they are, in fact, not infertile.
If this is true, it raises the question: Why? Perhaps Charlie Munger can answer that. “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome,” he famously once said.
The chief incentive of the IVF industry is not to
actually help women but to use them to turn a profit. IVF is extremely expensive — often costing couples between $10,000 and $30,000+ per cycle — and it’s easier for fertility clinics to give couples what they want through artificial means than it is to help them conceive naturally.
All the while, IVF mills, Big Pharma, and Big Medicine rake in the profit.
Where do we go from here?
It’s important to clarify: Opposing IVF does not — in any way, shape, or form — make a judgment about the children born through IVF.
Every child, whether conceived naturally or through artificial means, is made in the image of God, is infinitely precious, and has the same inherent worth and dignity as every other person. The process through which a person is conceived says nothing about his or her worth. God, after all, takes what man means for evil and uses it for good (Genesis 50:20).
But pro-life Christians cannot sit on their hands. We must speak out against IVF and Trump’s order while helping educate people who are unaware of IVF’s numerous problems.
It’s true that Trump’s EO is mostly symbolic. But it’s still a signal that his administration is willing to make a dark compromise on its pro-life promises to prioritize this ethically and morally compromised process that dehumanizes everyone involved. We cannot be silent.
Donald trump, Pro-life, Christians, Ivf, Bible, God, Christian, Abortion, Faith
