IVF

“So Ashamed”

Clinical Waiting RoomQuestion Submitted:  I was raised LCMS and have three amazing children, not from IVF or anything, but I have so many friends I have supported through that journey and I was recently struck by a forum where I have LCMS friends in and they started telling a woman that IVF was sinful and some really awful, unchristian things, and I felt very ashamed to be Lutheran in that moment. Now, I can see the destroying embryos and blah blah blah that people get off on and the “frozen kids with no rights.” But, my friends have done IVF in a way that they, and I, believe is God pleasing. They do a cycle a time, only harvest one egg that they make naturally, inseminate it, and put it in, regardless, no testing or anything, it is placed back in the mother’s womb and up to God. Is this such an awful thing? Why would God call physicians to help some of the most brokenhearted people if he didn’t think it was ok? It made my heart heavy tonight for those women and so ashamed of my LCMS sisters. So unforgiving and judgmental.

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

For, that is what IVF is. It is a self-serving, child-risking procedure. It creates children apart from the marriage bed – apart from God’s Biblical plan for procreation – not to serve, guard, protect, and save the lives of the children created, but to serve the desires of the parents.

Whether or not children are discarded, frozen, or selectively terminated during the procedure of IVF, parents who attempt to create and implant even one child at a time are still risking someone else’s life for their own happiness. I would be wary of calling this God-pleasing, for nowhere in Scripture does God tell us that we are to risk the lives of our children in order to serve our own needs and desires. Neither does Holy Writ invite us to think that God’s good will for our lives is for us to be happy. Instead, God’s Word reveals that His good will for our lives is for us to be saved through His Son, Christ Jesus, and for us to be faithfully content in what He provides for us.

As a woman who has not been blessed with the gift of children, I know from personal experience that broken-heartedness of which you speak. It is a dark, lonely, terrifying thing to look a life of childlessness in the face, and it is very tempting in that darkness to do whatever it takes to get a child. I am thankful your friends have such a supportive advocate in you, someone who encourages them and defends them in their suffering. However, please do not let your compassion for their childlessness move you to promote IVF in any form.

Remember, for whatever reason, God in His wisdom has not given your friends the gift of children through the one-flesh union, and attempting implantation of any number of children in a barren womb is statistically going to fail up to 70.6% of the time. (Just to be clear, that failure means the death of whole, already created, living children.) Advocating for IVF is more than just rooting for the 29.4% hope that your friends will be parents; it is also, by default, rooting for the larger, sadder statistic that children will be created simply to die.

If your friends still have a burning desire to be parents, why not encourage them to adopt? Not only is adoption a Biblically supported means of parentage, but it also serves the lives, needs, and desires of both the children and the parents. This, I believe, we can say with confidence is God-pleasing.

Upcoming Pastors’ Roundtables

Dear Pastors,

We could use your help formulating theological responses to ethical points of contention surrounding IVF and embryonic adoption. Would you please join us for a roundtable discussion of these issues and their effects on all of us in the church?

When: Saturday, May 18th, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Where: Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Davenport, IA

When: Thursday, May 23rd, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Where: Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Sherman, IL

When: Thursday, June 6th, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Where: Village Lutheran Church, St. Louis (Ladue), MO

Please RSVP through the Submit a Question page on this website if you plan to attend, or, if you would like to host a pastors’ roundtable discussion of these issues at your own church, please contact us. 

Thank you for your help!

The HRTB Ladies

A Bunch of Garbage

MP900405360“How old are you?” the woman with the hot pink lipstick asks.

I don’t like that question. No matter what number I give, I am either too young or too old in the eyes of the interrogator. I’m never just the age I should be.

“I’m old enough,” I answer.

“Well,” she says, simultaneously rubbing her hands up and down my arms as if she can polish my barrenness right off my skin, “you can still have a child. My son is forty-one, and he and his wife just had their first child. They used IVF. It went so well, they probably even have some children in the trash.”

I’m speechless. I don’t know what to say.

“There are some frozen embryos, too, or something like that,” she keeps rubbing, “but at least they have one that’s alive, now.”

I know what to say to this. “Those embryos are alive, too.”

She stops rubbing. Her eyes flicker. There is knowledge in her eyes. Conviction. She knows, and I can tell she is bothered. “I know. I don’t know what to think about all of that.”

And I am sad for her. She is a grandma many times over through IVF, and she is confused. I realize I misjudged her. She wasn’t being flippant about the children in the trash. She was confessing. She couldn’t stop herself from telling me. She just needed someone to know.

Please help, dear Church. Tell the truth about IVF before more children are created in glass to be tossed out with the trash.

Babies are not garbage.

A Grave Disparity

Robert G Edwards NOBEL MEDICINA 2010Robert G. Edwards, the 2010 Nobel Prize winner of Physiology/Medicine for his development of in vitro fertilization (IVF), died yesterday at the age of 87.

Gina Kolata of The New York Times wrote in a recent article recounting Edwards’ controversial career that, according to the International Committee Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies, the “technique [of IVF] has resulted in the births of five million babies…”

Not once in her article does Ms. Kolata attempt to tally the deaths that have resulted from Edwards’ awarded technique.

If we consider Edwards’ many failed attempts in the early 1970s to bring an IVF child to full health and vitality outside of the womb; all of the failed attempts at implantation made since then by the medical community at large; all of the children discarded and killed because of their sex, chromosomal abnormalities, perceived lack of vitality, or perceived genetic flaws; all of the children selectively terminated and sacrificed for the vitality of a perceived stronger brother or sister in the womb; and our current, dismal 29.4% success rate of implantation in IVF today, the exponential number of dead children to date is hard to even fathom.

Maybe that is why Ms. Kolata, the infertility industry, the CDC, and so much of the rest of the world choose to simply ignore them.

When will we as a culture start acknowledging the death that results from IVF? Do these children who have died not also deserve our attention and respect?

Mama Bear

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I know you’re afraid. I am, too.

We’re going against natural instinct, you and me. We know we’re not supposed to step in between a mama bear and her cub, but that’s exactly what we’re doing when we speak out against infertility medicine which breaks commandments of the LORD. We are stepping in between a mother and the children to which she feels entitled.

And a mama bear’s roar is terrifying.

Yet, we step in, nonetheless, because all children are loved and wanted by God, not just by mama bears. Every child’s value is best seen and understood at the foot of the cross on which Christ’s bloody sacrifice was laid out for them. We love these children, because God loves them; and we don’t want any of them to be valued solely for what they provide for the mama bear or the research technician or any other self-serving individual. We want to protect these precious children from being recklessly created outside of the one-flesh union where they can be graded, tested, abandoned, and destroyed.

Things could be different. We could be proactive in applying theology to infertility medicine rather than reactive. We could intentionally teach and counsel couples to live life under the cross of barrenness rather than encourage them to try every possible means to overcome it. We could speak the truth in love that children are not a commodity to which we are entitled in this life but a gift which God in His wisdom gives and doesn’t give. We could be honest in the Church and admit that God has not promised in His Word to give the gift of children to everyone.

Maybe, just maybe, this kind of honesty spoken in love would help the barren mama bears cope a little better. I know it helps me.

Close to Home

Family Walking In The ParkQuestion Submitted: I found your article in The Lutheran Witness, “Why Am I Barren?” very thought provoking.  There was one statement in it that I did not understand or catch what you meant or intended. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, a gift from Him, and that good gift is received, NOT MADE MANUFACTURED OR MADE.” [caps added by submitter]

What are you saying with the last phrase?  Are you implying that in vitro fertilization brings forth a “manufactured or made” child? And therefore in vitro fertilization is not God pleasing and contrary to His will?

We have grandchildren who are precious gifts from the Lord via in vitro fertilization. Their mother is an OB-GYN doctor who has delivered over 1,000 gifts from God to their parents.

I believe that the Lord answered our daughter’s barrenness with a son and a daughter by the same modern, medical technology that grants His healing and extends lives by kidney dialysis, heart transplants, and chemotherapy which are all “manufactured and made” answers to prayer by the talents and abilities that God grants to people.

I really appreciate that you shared with me the details of your family’s experiences. Praise be to God for the precious gifts He has given you in your grandchildren!

I think we would agree that, as Christians, we interpret all of life in this world in light of Scripture. Therefore, we can know with certainty that all children are exactly what God tells us they are in His Word: a heritage from Him. Whatever controversies surround in vitro fertilization (IVF), the children that are conceived and born to us through such procedures are still a heritage from the Lord. God’s love is what makes any and every child valuable in this life, not the means of parentage. Your grandchildren, without a doubt, are precious treasures who are wanted and cherished by our Lord, so much so that Christ died for them.

I also agree that healing medicine in and of itself is part of the daily bread God provides for us. It is part of how He richly and daily provides us with all that we need to support this body and life. Seeking medical attention where there is infirmity is natural and right. It is appropriate to try to make the body whole as long as it does not break one of our Lord’s Ten Commandments.

Knowing that, we must be consistent and interpret all of life in this world – even IVF – through the light of Scripture, and it is the genetic testing, grading, discarding, and freezing of embryos as well as the selective termination of the multiple fetuses implanted in the procedure of IVF that set it apart from other healing medicines (such as the kidney dialysis, heart transplants, and chemotherapy you listed in your question). We break the Fifth Commandment of our Lord (“You shall not murder”) when we employ any procedure that hurts or harms our neighbor in his body and fails to help and support him in every physical need. This commandment includes children in our wombs and unwanted, discarded embryos.

Consequently, in answer to your question: I feel confident in writing that any procedure which breaks commandments of our Lord is, indeed, contrary to His will, and I do not see how IVF, a procedure which serves the needs of self over the needs of the neighbor, can be pleasing to God. Thankfully, God is pleased with us because of Christ and forgives us of our sin, and He promises to work all things, even infertility medicine, for good for those who love Him and keep His commandments.

If you are interested, I write further about this issue in the posts Is IVF Healing Medicine? and The Bypass Surgery Analogy.

Also, here are a couple resources I recommend from the LCMS website that can better and more fully articulate the controversies surrounding IVF:

What Are We to Do with the Embryos?  by Richard Eyer

A Review of Reproductive Technologies by Richard Eyer

I am thankful for the candor in your question, and I do not mean to make light of all that you must feel as a grandfather regarding this topic. Yet, my brother in Christ, we must interpret all of life through Scripture. Know that Christ has died for all sin, and, please, as you read these posts and documents, go talk with your pastor. He is God’s man there for you.

Hagar

Yesterday, many of you sent me a link to a CNN story by Elizabeth Cohen:

“Surrogate Offered $10,000 to Abort Baby” 

Here we see The Sarah Syndrome gone wild.

1 genetic father + 1 wife + 1 anonymous egg donor + 2 IVF embryos + 1 surrogate birthmother + 2 adoptive parents = 1 child alive, 1 child dead, and 1 social and legal mess

I am afraid of the fact that cases such as these are getting court time. The more court rulings that are made on sperm donor, IVF, and surrogacy cases, the more…I don’t know, I guess the more we formally and publicly despise, defile, and – God help us! – abandon the one-flesh union and adoption as the means of parentage in our country. And so may times the children involved in these cases are treated as property with no individual rights of their own.

We are different from the world, Baptized Christians. Always have been, always will be. Remember that.

Infertility Medicine: An Unregulated Industry

MP900315620They’ve gone rogue.

The infertility industry not only allows for unreported, anonymous sperm donations and child-freezing but also for the killing of children at the whim of adults (parents, judges, doctors, technicians, etc.).

What about the children’s rights? They basically have none, at least not any that an adult would feel bound to respect, and the children involved have the disadvantage of not being the paying customer in the industry. There are no checks and balances set in place, legal or social, to protect the rights of the children created, handled, and destroyed by the infertility industry.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute explains it this way in an interview with Todd Wilken on Issues, Etc. (November 22, 2011):

“A lot of our social systems have built-in, self-correction mechanisms…[T]he free market where we let people do what they want has built into it a system of property rights protection and a system of competition to keep people from getting too far out of hand. There’s nothing built in to in vitro fertilization and the industry around it that stops people from going too far. Absolutely nothing.”

If there are no checks and balances set in place in the infertility industry, what exactly is powering the frantic steam roller that is infertility medicine? Dr. Morse explains:

“[W]e have sort of drifted into the system that we have now. [N]obody ever sat down and said to themselves, ‘You know, I think it would be a great idea if anyone with money could do anything they want as far as bringing a child into being, whether they have to have a relationship with their child’s other parent or not. We’re going to give legal parenting rights to whoever intends to be a parent, never mind if there’s any biological relationship or anything like that.’ Nobody sat down and thought through and said, ‘Hey, this is a great idea. Let’s do it.’ We just kind of drifted into this position, and the in vitro fertilization industry is pretty much unregulated. People say it’s like the Wild West. Well, that’s actually kind of a smirch on the Wild West, because the Wild West did have some sense of order and some internal sense of right and wrong. And in this particular case, people seem to think that as long as the adults get what they want, they don’t really have to think through what they’re doing to the individual child. And they certainly don’t have to think through what they’re doing to the whole system that everybody is operating within…I think it is really quite appalling that what we’ve got is a system that is being driven by two things…One, it’s being driven by the passions of the infertile woman, and, two, it’s being driven by the greed of the infertility industry.”

(Dr. Morse’s full interview can be heard here.)

In a recent interview on NPR’s Fresh Air (January 17, 2013), science editor Judith Shulevitz shines the light on the fact that we can’t even be sure of the longterm medical consequences to both the mother and children affected by infertility treatments:

“[W]e just don’t know what we’re doing. There just isn’t a lot of data, particularly in America. The good stuff is coming out of other countries where they actually have the information collated in a national health registry. In this country, the fertility industry only reports pregnancy rates to the CDC – the Centers for Disease Control – and we don’t do follow up studies.”

Ms. Shulevitz continues to explain that it is not just a lack of required data which should cause us concern but also the cavalier, consumer-driven mentality which steam-powers an already unregulated industry:

“[W]e’re not studying [fertility] enough. We don’t regulate it enough.[W]e celebrate triumphantly each breakthrough as if it was an absolute good, and we don’t go cautiously enough and I think that’s a problem, and as the age of first birth creeps up more, and more women are going to be availing themselves of these technologies, and I think that we really ought to go carefully.”

(Ms. Shulevitz’s full interview can be heard here. PLEASE NOTE: I neither agree with nor endorse Ms. Shulevitz’s personal views on feminism, birth control, or family planning.)