IVF

Guaranteed or Your Money Back

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According to the wisdom of the ages, the following items guarantee a pregnancy:

1. a vegan diet

2. an organic diet

3. a dairy-free diet

4. an organic, dairy-free, vegan diet

5. cough syrup

6. cod liver oil

7. an adoption

8. yoga and green tea

9. egg washes (don’t ask)

10. relaxing

11. prayer

12. claiming your pregnant destiny

13. the think system

14. exercising

15. not exercising

16. losing weight

17. gaining weight

18. green smoothies

19. acupuncture

20. a reiki

21. Vit A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z

22. progesterone shots

23. pelvic elevation

24. IVF

25. a stork (Well, not really. This one only guarantees a baby.)

But the wisdom of the ages never attaches the “or your money back” to this guarantee. Can you guess why?

The only Scripture-proven, 100%-guarantee any of us has when it comes to pregnancy (or adoption, for that matter) is that the LORD does and doesn’t give the gift of children according to His good and perfect will – a will which is promised to work for our eternal good – with or without all of the stuff listed above.

And you can bank on that.

 

Examination

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Physician’s Assistant: Now, why won’t you consider IVF?

Me: My husband and I have some ethical concerns about the procedure. Our consciences are burdened by the meager 29.4% success rate of implantation–

Physician’s Assistant: Oh, that’s not right. That’s too low, I think.

Me: No, that’s right. I just looked it up last week. The success rate can be higher or lower depending on the age and health of the mother, but – let’s be honest – I’m going on thirty-six. That rate is just about as optimistic as the scientists advise me to be.

Physician’s Assistant: True, you are of advanced maternal age.

Me: Well, creating babies and then attempting to implant them into my advanced maternal womb with a whopping 70.6% chance of dying doesn’t seem loving to the babies, does it?

(That question went unanswered.)


 

Infertility Ethics Symposium – Saturday, November 8th

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Calling all LCMS pastors, seminarians, commissioned ministers, deaconesses, and parish nurses!

We certainly live in a “brave new world,” especially when it comes to infertility medicine.

In vitro fertilization, embryo adoption and assisted reproductive technologies…What is the Church to do? How can the Church steer congregations through the ethically murky waters of infertility medicine? What comfort can we as the Church offer to those who suffer from infertility and miscarriages?

LCMS Life Ministry and the Concordia Seminary Life Team are helping start the conversation by sponsoring an Infertility Ethics Symposium for pastors, seminarians, commissioned ministers, deaconesses, and parish nurses on Saturday, November 8, at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Won’t you please join us?

Admittance is free.

Contact LCMS Life Ministry at 314-996-1711 or tracy.quaethem@lcms.org for more info as it becomes available.

Symposium Schedule:

8:30 a.m. – Opening Worship – Rev. William Weedon (Homily: Prof. John Pless)
9:00 a.m. – “Be Fruitful and Multiply: When It Doesn’t Work” – Rev. William Cwirla
10:00 a.m. – coffee break
10:30 a.m. – “Survey of Reproductive Counseling Practices in the Lutheran Church” – Rev. Dr. Kevin E. Voss
11:30 a.m. – “IVF: from Created to Creator” – Rev. Dr. James Lamb
12:30 p.m. – lunch
1:45 p.m. – “Embryo Adoption: Helping or Hurting My Neighbor?” – Rev. Dr. Robert W. Weise
2:45 p.m. – “Pastoral Care for Those Experiencing Infertility” – Rev. Christopher Esget
3:45 p.m. – break
4:00 p.m. – “The LCMS and Infertility Ethics” – Rev. Peter Brock
5:00 p.m. – Closing Worship – Rev. William Weedon (Homily: Dr. Jeff Gibbs)
5:30 p.m. – Gemütlichkeit

True Love

heartWe’re confused about something in this generation. There’s the mistaken belief that loving someone means permitting them to do whatever they want, that love equals acceptance and tolerance.

Case in point, religion according to Lady Gaga instructs us to embrace and celebrate people as they are today – to tolerate and accept their feelings and actions – because they’re simply born that way. “I’m beautiful in my own way,” she sings. “I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way. Don’t hide yourself in regret. Just love yourself, and you’re set.” She expounds, “Oh, there ain’t no other way.”

If this were true, then a government which loves its citizens would provide a hotel room rather than a jail cell for the man in his forties who desires to bed preteen girls. After all, he was simply born that way.

If everyone is “on the right track, baby,” then we would not limit abortion to just babies in the womb. We would cease such unloving discrimination by age and, instead, allow adults to abort other adults who don’t fit into their own life plan.

If “loving yourself” is all that’s required to be set in life, then paying taxes to support the livelihood of policemen and firemen and soldiers and other civil servants would be bogus.

If we are to avoid hiding ourselves “in regret” for our in-born passions, then racists and terrorists and sociopaths should be hired to run our daycare facilities, schools, and businesses.

If “there ain’t no other way” than loving yourself, then parents should not be bothered with loving and protecting their children. They should create as many embryos through IVF as they want and do with them whatever they want. The important thing is to see their own desires answered and their own dreams fulfilled, not those of their kids.

Lady Gaga, in her effort to trumpet and memorialize and idolize the very passions with which we are all born, endorses the very opposite of love, for true love doesn’t tolerate and accept and serve the self. True love denies the self and its passions and dies for the good of their children.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13 [ESV]).”

Sometimes, the greatest act of love we barren mothers can perform for our children is to suffer the absence of them rather than create them to die.

Emancipation Proclamation Decimation

America is still in the slave market, and it’s called third-party reproduction.

With enough money, American citizens can go out and buy every ingredient on the “How to Make a Baby” recipe and create their own person to love and to cherish and to, well, to grade and to abuse and to legally discriminate and to throw away and to terminate and to deny any personal right to gamete donor information. We as a nation no longer sail across the ocean to capture and enslave human beings. We simply do it right here in a petri dish in the land of the free and the brave.

“IVF is the new cotton gin,” writes Alana S. Newman in her recent article The Mother-Free Money Tree. “Let’s learn from history and kick this before it takes us to the terrible places we once were.”

Yes, let’s.

But, be ready, friends. “[T]he rights of children are in direct conflict with the agenda of the fertility industry and its clients,” (Newman) so this is going to be an uphill battle. Yet, fight we must, because third-party reproduction is human trafficking only on a much bigger, legally-sanctioned scale.

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The doctor’s in…

IMG_1879 copyWe were blessed to have an OB-Gyn speak with us at The Great Getaway last summer. Here is a collection of some of the wise tidbits he shared with us:

On infertility…

“Fertility is one of those areas in life where God has us where He wants us. We have to lay it down. We have to give it to God. Who ultimately is in control? It’s not me [the doctor]; it’s not you and your husband; God is the one in control.”

“Infertility is a cross. It’s the cross God has given us. We are to bear our crosses.”

“We can’t even claim to understand why this is happening. This is a wound only God can heal.”

“No matter what happens, your Father loves you. Your Father has your best in mind.”

“Our culture says, ‘I have a right to have my 2.2 children when I want them. Children are things.’ We do not have a right to have children…Children are a precious gift from God.”

“If we had something that worked 100% of the time, then we would lose the awe and wonder of creation.”

On IVF…

“Infertility is not a disease. It is a symptom of a problem. IVF circumvents that problem. Let’s figure out the problem rather than circumvent the problem.”

“Who in the world do we think we are in saying that someone is a Grade D embryo?”

“For every baby that is born through IVF, between 20 to 30 are lost.”

The cost? “$15,000-$18,000 per cycle”

On why life begins at conception…

“Genetically, that embryo is not the mom; that embryo is not the dad. That’s a new person.”

On whether or not the pill ever acts as an abortifacient…

“If it happens once, isn’t that too many?”

Flesh vs. Holy Spirit

“The flesh distrusts God, trusts in present things, seeks human aid in trouble, even contrary to God’s will. It flees from suffering, which it ought to bear because of God’s commands. It doubts God’s mercy and so on. The Holy Spirit in our hearts fights against such tendencies in order to suppress and kill them and to produce new spiritual motives.” — Apology of the Augsburg Confession V 45-49

It’s tempting to seize control of your barrenness and change your status. You dearly want to trust that your doctor has the tools to prepare your body to carry a child. You want to believe the advice of friends who’ve had success in child-bearing. You hear about couples who have children through IVF. In your head and heart, you know it opposes God’s will. Yet it is still so hard to accept this truth and live in God’s grace. You go home to a quiet house at the end of the day. You weep when the phone call comes, announcing a friend’s pregnancy. You wonder if toys will ever occupy space on your living room floor. Your suffering never seems to end. You feel alone.

Take heart, dear sisters. You are not alone. The Holy Spirit is fighting against the sinful flesh for you. Yes, for you! The Holy Spirit wards off more evil thoughts than you know and gives you strength to live each day. It is the Holy Spirit who reminds you that you are remembered by Jesus. So fight on, Holy Spirit; fight on! th-1

Ephesians 6:10-17 (ESV)

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Differing Perspectives

Nurse: Do you have any children?

Me: We have not been blessed with any children, and I’m thinking maybe it won’t happen at this point.

Nurse: Oh, now, I don’t know. I have many friends who have done IVF, and, then, when they stopped trying and finally relaxed, they got pregnant.

Me: Well, my husband and I’ve never done IVF, so we’ve been relaxing for over eleven years, now. We’ve probably earned a black belt in relaxation.

Nurse: But, still, you never know. I have a friend who tried for years to get pregnant. Then, when she and her husband adopted a child, they suddenly got pregnant.

Me: I have a sister who has adopted three children and has never been pregnant. I also have two close friends who adopted three children between them in the last year, and neither of them have gotten pregnant since. And my husband and I never got pregnant after going through the foster parent training program. That was three years ago.

Nurse: I don’t know. I know too many people who’ve had that happen.

Me: I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m just saying that it also doesn’t happen.

Nurse: Well, it seems like a lot of people get pregnant that way.

Me: And a lot of people don’t. As many as one-third of the couples who seek medical help for their infertility never achieve a pregnancy.

Nurse: That’s not a very big number.

Me: It is to one-third of the couples trying to get pregnant.

Nurse: The glass is half full.

Me: And half empty. But what does it matter? Why bother measuring the glass at all when taking a drink? It is what it is, and it is given to us by God for our good. Bottoms up!  

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“How can you be certain?”

MP900321169Question Submitted: I read the following statement in an answer you gave to another submitted question: “God calls doctors to diagnose and treat illnesses, not to risk the lives of innocent children for the sake of their parents’ happiness.” Who are you to determine what God calls others to do?  How can you be certain they are not called to assist these families in being created?

I think the answer you seek is in the very statement you quote. Take a look at it, again.

“God calls doctors to diagnose and treat illnesses, not to risk the lives of innocent children for the sake of their parents’ happiness.”

Doctors, in the very oath they take before beginning a life of medical service to their community, promise always to help and heal and restore people through their practice of medicine. Never are they intentionally to hurt, harm, or kill their patients, yet this is exactly what happens to most of the children doctors create through the procedure of in vitro fertilization. Not only do doctors grade, test, discard, freeze, selectively terminate, and medically disrespect these genetically whole human beings after their creation, but the children who are finally chosen for attempted implantation stand only a 29.4% chance of surviving implantation. (Don’t take my word for it. Look up the statistics for yourself on WebMD. You can find the implantation success rate stats on page two of this article.)

This means most of these children are created simply to die.

In light of God’s Word (Exodus 20), we all can boldly confess together that God does not call anyone to create children simply to die.

In fact, God’s Word gives us certainty (1 Samuel 2:6) that God does not call anyone to create children, period. He reserves this miraculous gifting for Himself. Children are His blessing spoken over the institution of marriage (Genesis 1:26-28), His gift to give, His heritage to bestow (Psalm 127). And, while God is generous in the giving of His good gifts, nowhere in His Word does He promise the gift of children to every person, neither does His Word bid us to create our own heritage of children where He in His wisdom has not given them. Quite the opposite, God’s Word reveals to us the plight and agony which can result from creating our own heritage of children apart from God’s plan and promise.

“Who are you?” you ask. I am a barren woman who is free in Christ (Galatians 5:13) to seek healing medicine from my doctors for my infertility but not to create and kill children on my own.

But, again, don’t take my word for it. Take another barren woman’s:

“The Lord kills and brings to life;
      he brings down to Sheol and raises up.” 1 Samuel 2:6 (ESV)

Creation is God’s business, not ours.