IVF

Hold Your Horses

horserace start gateTechnology will always move faster than the Church. The infertility medicine industry may insist on creating and freezing embryonic children, but that does not automatically mean the Church should be bullied into adopting and implanting them. She should wait until she can with full, Scriptural confidence say that surrogacy in such a situation is pleasing to God and serves the best interest of her neighbors – all of them, including the statistically doomed 65%.

At the same time, the Church should not be a Levite and cross on the far side of the street from those abandoned to die in the ditch. She should speak on this issue. She should pray for these precious children, advocate for their legal rights, work to stop the creation and freezing of more children outside of the marriage bed in the procedure of IVF, and encourage parents to rescue their children from the freezer.

Help us, Lord God, and save us from our sins, for Jesus’ sake. “Cast us not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Spirit from us.” Amen.

Just Like You

It almost always happens.

Eighty percent of the time, someone comes up to me after I speak on the topic of barrenness and says, “I have a niece/daughter-in-law/cousin/granddaughter just like you. She and her husband tried for years and years to get pregnant, but– ”

And then I get a pointed look in the eye, almost a gauntlet in a glance thrown down at my feet.

“– they have triplets, now.”

There is an awkward silence. I know the woman before me wants me to ask how such a miracle is possible, how her loved one could possibly have three children when I have none, but I don’t.

She continues, raising her eyebrows in delight as she reveals the secret ingredient in her recipe, “Their doctor worked a miracle for them through IV-something-or-other.”

My answer shocks her. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

Because I am. All I can think about is whether or not these triplets have any siblings frozen in liquid nitrogen, whether or not their embryonic lives will be as coveted, respected, protected, cared for, and celebrated as the triplets currently sleeping in cribs in a green-and-yellow nursery lovingly decorated with hand-painted trees and animals on the walls.

I get sick to my stomach that we never acknowledge all of the children in such conversations, that our talk about children in general seems fueled by an underlying current of trying to get what we want rather than taking care of our littlest neighbors. When will we start publicly acknowledging that there are more children created through the process of IVF than the ones we see? When will we admit that there are more lives created, discarded, and frozen than the ones we actually want?

So many children…

Please, if you know of anyone who currently has children stored in liquid nitrogen, speak to them. Remind them of their children and their God-given call to parent them. Lovingly urge them to rescue their children from the freezer and attempt implantation. If the cost of such a feat is too high for them to afford, help them with the cost in whatever way you can. If the number of their children is too many for them to parent, help them find an agency who can facilitate adoptions after their children are born.

These children and their parents need our help.

Lord, have mercy on us all.

“To the barren ladies I know and the ones I don’t”

bleeding-heart-flower copySomeone loves you and prays for you and bears with you, dear sisters. Read this and rest today while a sister in Christ shoulders your cross.

I’m the one with more children than you have fingers on your right hand. I feel ostentatious and gaudy around you. I feel like having my babies with me is in poor taste, like I am flaunting my riches. I cringe to imagine that you might feel the same way, you who have suffered so much in your own mind and who are now subjected in real time, in public, to stare in the face the dream that hasn’t come true for you. I am so sorry it hasn’t. I am so sorry to think that I might be causing you more pain. I ache for the love you show my silly little people. I don’t know if I could.

I sin your sins. When I see all the world’s human trash with its ill-bred and empirically worthless children, I seethe to think of the pearls cast before them while your clean neck and open ears and graceful wrists and industrious fingers are bare. When another moron teenager turns up pregnant, I want to rage at God for what I can only see as unimaginable injustice and just plain poor planning. I want to make it right. I want to distribute the world’s children sensibly by my own self-righteous fiat. I want YOU, you wonderful, smart, talented, responsible, faithful Christian person, to be a mother of nations. NOT THEM.

I see it. I didn’t want to, but I loved you so much I finally looked and really saw it, or saw it as well as one such as myself is able to. It was the worst thing I have ever seen. It looks like utter desolation, like horror. I can’t look long. I can’t believe it’s the view out your window every hour of every day. Oh, you. You have lost what you never had.

But I know also that we are nearsighted. I am so nearsighted outside of this metaphor that, without my glasses, I can look into a dark bedroom where I know there is a digital clock and still see no light whatsoever. This is how we see into eternity also. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. So I know that, despite its appearance to myopics like us, the desolation is not utter. I know you know too, and we walk by faith together because our sight is untrustworthy.

I cannot tell you how much I respect and admire you for not trying to take by force what God has not given. You are like the man on a lifeboat, crazy with thirst, who still knows better than to drink seawater even though his companions fall to the temptation. It must be so hard to watch them–to watch them sicken, to watch them die, to watch them live. You are the one who clings to a true hope and has the best chance of healthy survival. You trust the Lord, though he slay you.

I thank you for the witness that you are to the sacred blessing of marriage no matter what the quantifiable yield of that marriage. I thank you for the witness you are to the inherent value of femininity no matter what the quantifiable yield of that femininity.

I don’t say these things to you because I feel I don’t know you well enough, or I don’t know how you are doing with all this right now, or I know you feel as sick of this being the relentless topic of your life as I am of the relentless topics of my life. But I want you to know that I am always thinking all these things even as you are, and I pray for you always. I’m sorry if my not saying something makes it seem like I don’t care or I don’t really get it. I know I don’t really get it, but I try to, and I care so much.

I know you feel empty, but you bear the heaviest burden, and bearing is never without gain. God bless you, strong one.

“A Loving Place, Inside Me”

Dear Church:

Please, read this article by Matthew Hennessey in First Things. He holds the mirror before us all.

P.S. Whenever I highlight an article such as this one, I do not mean to add to the pain of my brothers and sisters in Christ who repent of their use of IVF or their act of abortion. Christ died for those regrets and reconciles us to the Father. I am trying to call out those who justify the creation and subsequent termination of “the least of these” as an act of compassion.

 

“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.