by Katie Schuermann
I could not fathom asking my children to spend their earliest days away from the warmth and safety of my womb’s embrace.
To be created in a petri dish means living in an environment that cannot sustain life. If I used IVF to create my children, then their first home would be in that unsustainable, dangerous environment. They would be far away from me, and I would be unable to protect, defend, or nurture them at their weakest and most vulnerable state. I would be unable to mother them.
It would be a hired clinician, not me, overseeing my children’s initial cell-division. This means that my children’s earliest caretaker in life would be a stranger tasked with grading them by sight alone for their viability, determining which of them should be transferred to my womb and allowed an attempt at implantation, and, if any remained behind in the petri dish, which of them should be frozen and stored at the clinic in liquid nitrogen.
Subjecting my children to such indignities and clinical abuses seemed the very opposite of parental love to me.
If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.
