GUEST OPINION: Children conceived by IVF are precious. But IVF is still unethical.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this guest post are solely those of the guest author. Edits have been made for clarity. 

I recently had a conversation with a fellow Christian about Trump’s Executive Order to reduce barriers to accessing in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. This discussion revealed to me that many people, even in Christian churches, seem confused about the ethical dilemmas surrounding IVF. This is unsurprising, as some politicians who oppose abortion have also championed IVF, blurring the line between ethical and unethical reproductive procedures.

Should “safeguarding” IVF really be the goal?

The White House recently tweeted that Trump’s EO will “safeguard” IVF and “lower costs… for American families.”

The U.S. government has an obligation to uphold the common good, but officeholders striving to make it more affordable to access a procedure that experiments with and treats as disposable the lives of millions of human beings annually — IVF — means that they are failing to uphold the welfare of our most vulnerable fellow citizens.

One question that must be asked is whether IVF can actually be considered “fertility care” at all since the procedure only masks the underlying issues of infertility instead of healing them.

As stated by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan, IVF is “one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today.” While RFK Jr. has tweeted that neither he nor Trump is against IVF and that they “want couples to get the help they need to have a baby,” he has also prioritized finding the root causes of the country’s increase in infertility. 

Those who seek fertility treatments via IVF are often diagnosed with “unexplained infertility.” Endocrinologist Dr. Lauren Rubal stated that after learning more about fertility awareness-based methods, she learned a lot about treating reproductive issues — information that was previously unknown to her despite her many years of practice. She explained that the literature revealed that only about 6% of OB-GYNs and family medicine physicians were able to correctly answer questions about the efficacy of fertility awareness-based methods in achieving and avoiding pregnancy. Their lack of knowledge and understanding of such methods is a disservice to their patients.

“Non-abandonment is one of a physician’s central ethical obligations…” wrote physicians Timothy E. Quill and Christine K. Cassel, “There is a world of difference between facing an uncertain future alone and facing it with a committed, caring, knowledgeable partner who will not shy away from difficult decisions when the path is unclear.”

It is, therefore, the duty of every physician not to abandon their patients to the multi-million dollar IVF industry but instead to help them in seeking alternative, restorative reproductive medicine treatments that balance hormones, help make lifestyle changes, detox heavy metals, provide surgeries that restore overall health, and show strong success rates.  

Yes, we want more babies… ethically.

President Trump stated that one of his main reasons for expanding access to IVF is the fact that “We need more children in our country” and “We want more babies.” 

Of course, we want more babies! The issue hasn’t to do with the beautiful children created through IVF, but with an industry that takes advantage of the vulnerability of those struggling with infertility and treats human life as expendable.

Children are precious and worthy of life and love no matter how they’re conceived, whether it be out of wedlock, through rape, IVF, etc., and no parents should regret the existence of their children.

However, this doesn’t mean that every practice that brought them into existence is, therefore, automatically ethical. 

Kansas Senator Roger Marshall stated, “There’s nothing more pro-family than supporting the birth of babies.” Yes, being pro-family is important, but IVF treats children — part of our families — as if they are products, selecting which children to transfer or freeze — and then making the painful decision of what to do with those who are “left over.”

Further, considering that the process of IVF ends preborn lives at a higher rate than abortion, IVF is not “pro-life.” As Live Action News reported in 2022:

In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is carried out 2.5 million times annually around the world — but each year only 500,000 babies are actually born from the IVF procedure, according to research published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online. That means that each year, if just one embryo is created during each IVF cycle (the average is seven), at least 80% — at least two million — of the human beings created through IVF either die during the process, are frozen indefinitely, or are destroyed.

According to the World Health Organization, there are 73 million induced abortions each year around the world and 29% of all pregnancies end in induced abortion. This means that when comparing rates — human beings are being destroyed by IVF at a higher rate than they are by abortion.

The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology reported 389,993 IVF cycles in the U.S. in 2022, compared to the CDC’s report of 609,360 abortions. If every cycle produced eight children, then there were 3,119,944 embryonic human persons created.

There’s a huge game of trial and error that takes place with millions of embryonic human beings. Even the “best prognosis” patients — those under 35 years of age — have an average of two egg retrieval cycles, and those over age 40 can undergo up to nine. If 10 eggs are retrieved, then about eight of them will become embryos upon fertilization. Just two retrieval cycles create 16 persons who won’t all survive.

Can You Be Pro-Life And Support IVF?

Embryos are also often tested for “viability” to determine which are worth transferring to the woman’s uterus (or for sex selection purposes). Here’s the issue with testing for “viability”: Dr. Craig Turczynski’s research shows that embryos who appear abnormal often result in chromosomally “normal” babies, and vice versa; Dr. Rubal seconded these findings, stating that that it’s possible to biopsy the wrong area of chromosomes in an embryo and be incorrect about a diagnosis.

However, even diagnoses that are not actually “incompatible with life” (such as those with Down syndrome, Trisomy 18, or Turner’s syndrome) are automatically deemed “non-transferrable,” regardless. And if these embryonic persons are fortunate enough to be deemed “transferable,” then they run the risk of being “selectively reduced” if further imperfections are found or if “too many” children implant. 

Did God ‘give us’ IVF with the intent that we would use it?

Senator Marshall further stated that he is “absolutely certain that in vitro fertilization is a great thing, that God has given us this technology and we should use it.”

The argument that “if God wasn’t okay with IVF, He wouldn’t allow it” is brought up often, but this faulty argument can be made for numerous non-ideal scenarios.

For example:

“If God didn’t want me to gamble, why did he give me the ability to make money and allow casinos to exist?”

“If God didn’t want me to be an alcoholic, why did he give us the ability to make alcohol?”

“If men weren’t supposed to kill each other, war wouldn’t exist.”

“If God didn’t want her to conceive out of rape, she wouldn’t have been raped.”

Just because God brings good out of non-ideal situations doesn’t mean that He condones the acts leading up to them.

How we choose to abuse things as humans has nothing to do with God. Just because we want something and can make it happen by means of technology or money doesn’t automatically make the act morally correct or justifiable because “God allowed it.”

Though God commanded humankind to “be fruitful and multiply,” this command is surely not a license from the Creator allowing us to create children by any possible means. Husband and wife, in their reflection of Christ and the Church, reflect the love of Christ for His creation, and God doesn’t treat any of us as disposable.

One man stated, “I was conceived through IVF; I am fully against it. I was conceived alongside eight of my siblings. I’m the only survivor.” How many of his siblings may have been deemed “nonviable” when they actually had a chance of making it? How many of his siblings’ lives were treated as expendable and lost to any number of unnatural IVF protocols? How does being the only survivor among his siblings impact his psychological well-being?

Even though it’s considered standard medical practice, physicians are called to heal, to “do no harm,” and to uphold the innate worth and dignity of every human being. IVF is not healing, nor does it honor the worth and dignity of embryonic persons. IVF medications and procedures expose women to unnecessary side effects while leaving their underlying fertility conditions unhealed. IVF’s practitioners pre-perceive every single human being created in their laboratories as potentially disposable.

IVF, simply put, is human experimentation — not medicine. 

We don’t need better access to IVF. What we need is to stop pretending that IVF is a child-honoring procedure just because it enables people to have children. Christians must be vessels of God’s mercy and compassion, honoring the basic right to life of every human being made in God’s image while refusing to condone the artificial creation of even one human life in a laboratory. 

Bio: Katie Breckenridge, M.S., is an editor for Them Before Us and the author of Silent Sorrows: Let’s talk about abortion, reproductive technologies, and adoption.”