“We are really struggling with infertility… We have spent the better part of our married life trying to conceive. We prayed and prayed. We have paid close attention to ovulation cycles. We have gotten our hopes us time and time again only to have the pregnancy test shatter our hopes with a negative result. We feel like we have exhausted all our options. We know that the Lord calls children a blessing and a heritage, we know that our desire for children is a good and godly desire. We are going to go to a reproductive specialist this week, and are considering IVF. Is there anything that we should be thinking about as we consider this?”
This conversation isn’t an unusual one in our day. I recall having this conversation with my own parents and friends as my wife and I went to our second appointment with a reproductive specialist. In my first examination of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), I recall thinking that this was a miracle of science that solved the problem of infertility for so many couples, and would perhaps do the same for my wife and me. Make no mistake, it is an incredible scientific feat. But there several considerations which show that this miracle of science is in fact far more sinister.
First, there is the potential loss of life in the process itself. Normally the whole process of IVF starts with ruling out the possibility of natural conception. Scans and tests are run to diagnose the issues preventing conception, after which the doctor suggests In Vitro Fertilization. Assuming that the couple decides to go this route the process is as follows: The doctor takes eggs from the woman’s ovaries and then the doctor fertilizes those eggs with donated sperm, normally ten to twelve eggs will be fertilized. After this they will wait to see how those fertilized eggs develop, generally only those that develop appropriately will be candidates for implantation. They then will inject 2-3 eggs at a time into the woman’s uterus with the hopes that one or both would implant. Assuming that the implantation is successful, the child implanted will be brought to term and born.
Can this be done ethically? There are a number of arguments on how to use IVF while upholding biblical standards of morality. The most common argument is that the couple will only fertilize the eggs that they are committed to bringing to term. While this is a noble answer to the question, I believe that it also assumes too much. It either assumes that every child conceived will make it past the five days of development, or that the children who don’t make it through those five days would not have made it if they were conceived of natural means and were permitted to grow in the natural environment of their mother’s womb. Regardless of the noble intention to use IVF in biblically responsible way, the reality is that the successful use of IVF will cost the life of several children.
This leads us to the second consideration, namely price. In general, the financial toll of IVF is somewhere between $15,000 - $30,000 a cycle. This is an expensive process, but as an adoptive parent I can say that it is no more expensive than domestic adoption which has a price tag of $25,000 - $40,000 depending on the state in which you reside and the adoption agency you choose. The financial burden is problematic but for most people who desire children it is no real issue. The real cost of IVF is blood. In case you think I’m exaggerating here is a real-world example. A woman had fourteen eggs harvested, thirteen of those eggs were fertilized, eight were viable for implantation after five days, after genetic testing that number fell to four, after four attempts at implantation one child was born. Since life begins at conception, this means that twelve children died so that one could be born. And that is a low body count. One example that I found had thirty-two children conceived and out of that thirty-two, two would be born. In short, you need to ask yourself the question: how many of my children am I willing to permit to die so that I can hold one in my arms?
IVF is a house of mirrors where the only reflection seen is that of a child in the arms of a longing mother, while hiding the reality that for every one child born there are many that have perished and some that will remain in cryostasis indefinitely. Do not believe for a moment that IVF doesn’t have a unique cost to it. The financial cost is high, but the blood cost is far higher. I don’t mean to overstate my case, but I am hard pressed to find a greater example of child sacrifice in our day than that of IVF and I’m including abortion in my assessment. Moloch lives, and he offers you one child at the expense of 8.
The third consideration is the alternative. I want to pause and recognize that this is a sensitive issue with real people who are truly wounded by the burden of barrenness. My wife and I are some of those people. Infertility hurts but God has already provided a glorious solution to barrenness: adoption.
Unfortunately adoption has often become the very last option for the barren. This is not because it is the most expensive option, nor the most difficult, but because we have forgotten that God’s solutions are the best solutions. His answers are clean and bear in them testimonies of the glory of the gospel of Christ. There is a beauty about it that no other solution can match.
Consider for a moment the cost of adoption: it is a bloodless endeavor. Not a single child needs ever be put at risk. Instead, adoption takes children who are at risk and provides for them a place of safety and security. Adoption considers the orphan and the barren and binds them together making the orphan an heir and the barren a fruitful garden.
More so than that, the true beauty is in the gospel proclamation attached to it. In adoption the orphan is welcomed as a child, granted the rights and rewards of an heir, and shall spend the whole of their life in the home and at the table of the adoptive parents. This is what God has done for us! He has taken us, naked, pitiable, and poor, and brought us into His family, bestowed upon us His name, made us an heir with Christ and seated us at His table. What great distinction between Moloch’s methods and God’s.
In conclusion, the process of IVF is too dangerous, and the price of IVF is too bloody, and the alternative of IVF is too glorious to take such a tumultuous road. Thankfully, God has paved the road of adoption with the very gospel of Christ, we need only follow Him down that beautiful road to see barrenness obliterated and broken heartedness turned joy.
