Surrogacy

Compassion + Courage

by Katie Schuermann

We sometimes behave in the church as if these two virtues are opposed to each other, but we see in Scripture that they always are meant to go together.

“Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing … Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (1 Peter 3:8-9, 13-17).

Church, I see your compassion toward the barren. I do, and it is beautiful to behold. I witness your sympathy, your “brotherly love,” toward me and others from whom God is withholding the gift of children, and I thank you for your tender heart.

But may I humbly point out the danger in letting your compassion sour to pity?

For example, I often hear condolences spoken aloud in the pews such as, “Of course Laura and James are using IVF. I can’t imagine going through life without my own children,” or, “I can’t tell them not to use IVF. Who am I to say such a thing, when I have so many children — so many grandchildren — and they have none?”

This is compassion, yes, but it is compassion absent of courage. For in your gratitude for your own children, you are growing blind to the fact that the barren need your strength, not your pity, to bear the heavy cross laid upon their shoulders. They need shored up to resist temptations to manufacture children for themselves, lest they begin harvesting their gametes and enter into procedures that lead to the harming of the very children they desire. They need you to protect them with the truth lest, in their sorrow, they bury themselves deep in ethical conundrums that would bind their consciences to things temporal rather than eternal.

The barren need you to encourage them.

What does this look like? What are the qualities inherent to compassion plus courage?

A Christian exhibiting compassion + courage is tender-hearted toward the barren but also willing to suffer for the sake of doing good. This is a parental posture, one that heartens yet protects, sympathizes yet discerns, cheers yet endures wounds for the sake of another’s well-being.

Compassion + courage sounds something like this.

“Laura, I am so sorry. This is awful. I don’t know why God hasn’t given you the gift of children today. I am talking to the Lord about it, and I am waiting with you on Him. You are not alone in your prayers. But I need to be honest with you about something — something difficult. IVF is dangerous. It is not healing medicine. It is harmful medicine, and I don’t want you, James, or any of your children harmed. How about we talk to pastor about some of the ethical concerns surrounding IVF? I also can clear my calendar and drive you to your next doctor’s appointment if you want. We can ask the doctor about possible healing medicines available to you. Or I can sit in the waiting room and pray. Just know that you are not alone in this.”

Will Laura spurn you for your compassion + courage? Quite possibly.

But if that’s the case, then it is my turn to encourage you.

Or rather, let’s have Saint Peter encourage both of us.

“If you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. Those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.”

Born from IVF

by Katie Schuermann

Do you know what gives a child — any child — value in this world?

God’s love.

And do you know who God loves?

The whole world.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, ESV).

The world. This includes every child created in a petri dish, every child stored in liquid nitrogen, every child disposed of by a clinician in a fertility clinic, every child transferred to a womb for implantation attempts, every child who dies from failed implantation, every child miscarried, every child selectively terminated in the womb, and every child born from IVF.

It has never been our means of parentage that determines our worth in life nor our right to walk the earth with dignity and purpose. Every person’s value has and always will come from the same Source: God’s love.

That means you and me and all of us humans are the same in this regard.

Never doubt it.

Children were harmed in the making of this article.

Embryos are people.

When you read this article found at People.com (Oh, the irony of the site’s name!) about the first baby born from a transplanted womb, you will notice that such people are being unconscionably created to have their lives risked, all for the sake of other people’s – adult people, that is – happiness.

“Earlier this year, Brannstrom began transferring embryos into the seven other women. He said there are two other pregnancies at least 25 weeks along.”

If we put the best construction on this situation and assume that there were only seven total people created for individual implantation attempts in the seven successfully transplanted wombs, then that means there are at least three* people living today (one person born, two in utero) because of this experiment.

That also means there are at least four people dead today because of this experiment.

The obvious must be pointed out, as the media continually fails to do so:

We are quick to laud and celebrate the people that are born from such experiments, but we fail to acknowledge, mourn, and defend the people that unjustly die.

And our intentionally ignorant silence is to our shame.

* Best construction assumes that there are not additional living people currently frozen and waiting in liquid nitrogen.

Rejection of Unborn IVF Babies Is for Real

Please, read this article which appeared in yesterday’s Breitbart News.

What is it about?

Well, to pull a quote from the article given by Robert Oscar Lopez, professor of English at California State University at Northridge: “‘Our republic can’t function if human beings are the objects of property rights until they become adults.'”

Surrogacy does this to human beings.

Lord, have mercy on us all.

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.

The Sarah Syndrome

God promised childless Abraham that He would provide him an heir, a son of his own, and that Abraham’s offspring would number as many as the stars in the heaven. Abraham believed the promise of the LORD, and God counted it to him as righteousness.

Sarah, on the other hand, struggled to believe the promise.

She looked at her eighty-plus-year-old husband and her own, barren womb and saw only impossibility. How could God provide an heir through their cockamamie, one-flesh union? No, if they were going to have offspring that numbered as many as the stars in the heaven, they were going to need to take matters into their own hands. They were going to need to find a solution outside of their marriage union – outside of God’s promise.

But, what to do? IVF was not an option then. There were no fertility specialists to whom she could submit her husband’s semen for analysis. Plastic hadn’t been invented, yet, let alone those syringe-y thingies that could shoot Abraham’s seed closer to the target. There were no sperm banks she could consult for finding a tall, dark, and handsome brain surgeon to father her children. Nope, surrogacy was the best answer she could devise, so Sarah gave Hagar, her Egyptian slave, to her husband for impregnating.

And, he did.

The result? Marital trouble, broken relationships, agony, chaos, suffering, grief, and Ishmael, a wild donkey of a man who would beget a whole people born into slavery.

That’s what happens when we believe in the work of our own hands rather than in the promises of God. We create more slavery – slavery to sin, slavery to self, slavery to idols, slavery to the consequences of our actions, and, in Sarah’s case, literally more slaves.

I think we all suffer from Sarah Syndrome to some degree. When we grow restless in our barrenness, when we wait on the LORD for deliverance from our affliction, that is when the symptoms begin to show. The anxiety. The coveting. The self-entitlement. The spouse-loathing. The disbelief. We start visiting doctors who advocate for practices that break commandments of the LORD. We succumb to the advice of the roaring women around us and try to be fruitful and multiply outside of the one-flesh union God designed for procreation. We start looking around for some Hagars to give us the children we want and think we deserve.

And then, like Sarah, we despair when the work of our hands comes to fruition. For, we the baptized know deep down inside that God will give us a child if it be according to His will – not from a petri dish, not from a surrogate, not from the work of our own hands, but from the mysterious, one-flesh union God designed from the beginning of time or from the gift of adoption He so perfectly demonstrates for us in His Word. If God does not give us the gift of children through these blessed means, then we can be assured that it is for the best. He is working our childlessness for our good, and we can confidently rest in God’s guarantee of that goodness as He proclaims it in Scripture. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the the name of the Lord.”

Maybe you have already acted out on your Sarah Syndrome and feel ashamed. In Christ, sister, be at peace and take joy in this good news:

In spite of all of Sarah’s disbelief, in spite of her meddling, in spite of her laughing and lying, God still kept His promise to her and to Abraham. God visited Sarah years later, long after her menses had ceased, and she finally conceived and bore Isaac, a son and heir from whose family line would eventually come Jesus, the Savior of the world.

In keeping His promise to Sarah, God was actually keeping His promise to save you; and, in believing this promise, God counts it to you as righteousness.

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