The IVF Question: Is there a moral way to commodify human lives?

The Christian debate over in vitro fertilization (IVF) took center stage in an article published by the Associated Press last month, which highlighted a Christian reproductive endocrinologist who has allegedly found a way to "align" IVF with "his evolving faith-based views."

As the Associated Press and most major news outlets frame it, if one Christian participates in a widely accepted but immoral and unethical societal practice, then it is must be that Christian who is right, and all of the other Christians must be wrong, judgmental, and controlling.

Let's examine this situation for what it really is.

Key Takeaways:

• Dr. John Gordon is an IVF doctor who says he had a crisis of conscience about his profession due to his Christian faith.

• He pivoted to a form of IVF he feels is more 'ethical,' but many things about the nature and function of IVF call into question its ethicality.

• Gordon's fertility clinic still offers traditional IVF methods, and still participates in overtly unethical IVF practices.

The Details:

Dr. John Gordon built a successful career and financial stability from the practice of IVF. Then he had a "crisis of conscience" regarding the creation of human lives in a lab, and the subsequent deaths of the majority of them. But to him, that didn't mean he had to stop practicing IVF; according to PBS, he simply had to "pivot" in order to make room for a more 'ethical' version.

And as is usually the case, the mainstream media entered the scene, attempting to assuage the consciences of other Christians about IVF by promoting Gordon and his ideas, holding him up as an example of sorts in how they, too, should think. The Associated Press and PBS News, therefore, both imply that every Christian can, and should, ignore the commodification of human beings and the massive destruction of life in IVF — if not morally, then politically.

The insinuation is that because Gordon is a "man of faith" who supports IVF, then IVF must be morally acceptable. This is a common manipulative tactic — and a form of the "appeal to authority" fallacy — used against people of faith in order to lead them into supporting something that has traditionally been viewed as unethical or immoral.

'Crisis of conscience'

Tiffany Stanley wrote for the Associated Press:

As co-director of a fertility clinic in suburban Washington, D.C., Gordon grew troubled over helping create surplus embryos, which would often languish in storage or be discarded. With the expansion of genetic testing, couples could choose the sex of their baby. They could screen out painful or fatal diseases, but also milder impairments like hearing loss.

"'It's too morally problematic,' Gordon thought. 'I don't know where you draw the line.'"

This statement highlights that Gordon was "troubled" over the "surplus embryos" just as most Christians are. But, according to the article, that didn't mean he couldn't continue to support and participate in IVF — he just had to find the line in the sand where he felt comfortable with a moral wrong — removing the objective wrong of IVF and making it relative, meaning each person can find their own level of immorality (or not) in relation to IVF.

That's the apparent goal of the AP article — to convince Christian readers that there are ethical and moral ways to commodify human beings.

In 2018, Gordon's wife, Allison, urged him to change how he practiced IVF, so he bought a practice in Tennessee, molding it to reflect what he saw as an ethical way to carry out IVF. He would only create a couple of embryos each time, he wouldn't genetically test or discard embryos, and he wouldn't donate embryos to science.

"Living with" the moral implications?

"I need to practice in a way that I can live with the decisions I'm making," he said (emphasis added).

Though this seems an effort to reduce the damage of IVF, if one was actually taking a right and moral action, would one truly have to view it as "liv[ing] with the decisions" one is making?

There's a serious issue here: There is no way to spin IVF to make it ethical.

Reducing the damage does not make it acceptable. It just makes it possible for Gordon to live with a diminished amount of guilt. Despite his best efforts, his business, Rejoice Fertility, still:

• treats human beings as commodities.

• creates human beings in a lab and grades them for 'quality assurance and quality control'.

• allows embryos to be indefinitely frozen.

• allows the destruction of embryos deemed 'non-viable'.

In addition, IVF...

• more often than not, uses pornography and masturbation as means to collect sperm (which can involve sexualizing individuals other than one's wife).

• deliberately separates the procreative act from the marital act, relying on a third party (other than God) to directly bring about conception.

Zoom In:

Rejoice Fertility practices "Natural Cycle IVF," which it says involves "retrieving the single egg produced in an unmedicated cycle" and "mini-stim IVF," which uses "a combination of clomid pills and low dose injections with the aim of retrieving 3-8 eggs."

Yet, it says that "95% of our IVF cycles are either Natural Cycle IVF ... or Mini-stim IVF," leaving five percent (5%) of the cycles unaccounted for and potentially involving the creation of more embryos.

The facility also has an embryo adoption side to it. Gordon is the doctor behind the birth of baby Thaddeus Pierce, who had been frozen for more than three decades.

While the fertility clinic does not offer preimplantation genetic testing — a common practice that leads to the destruction of embryos with conditions like cystic fibrosis or Down syndrome — it does offer "rigorous" quality assurance and quality control of the embryos that it creates. It says this is "to ensure the very best care for every embryo."

According to the website, "Since many of our patients wish to limit the number of fertilized eggs to 6-8 (as opposed to the 20-30 in most clinics), every egg matters even more than usual. ... We are a 'no discard' program so every viable embryo is either transferred in the same cycle in which it was fertilized or it is frozen for use in a future cycle." And yet, Rejoice also offers Stimulated Cycle IVF — which it states has a goal of harvesting 8-15 eggs.

It seems odd that Rejoice uses dehumanizing language, such as "fertilized eggs," when they are not "eggs" anymore at all — they are new human beings, or zygotes, with their own unique DNA.

Though Rejoice insists that none of the humans that are considered high quality or "viable" are thrown away, they may be frozen, and those deemed 'non-viable' may indeed be discarded.

So while the clinic may not be testing for Down syndrome or cystic fibrosis, Rejoice Fertility is still grading embryos and deeming some to be 'non-viable.' As the website states (emphasis added), "No viable embryos are destroyed."

But those embryos could still successfully reach birth. Research published by the National Institutes of Health explained (emphasis added):

It must be clearly recognised that a discarded embryo has a zero chance of producing a pregnancy, while a poor-quality embryo, deemed non-viable by a novel test, may still have a chance of producing a healthy baby. After all, the nature of any test includes false positive and false negative outcomes, and no test is 100% accurate.

As for "viable" embryos who are not implanted or destroyed, Rejoice Fertility appears willing to freeze them indefinitely:

Patients who have frozen embryos remaining that they do not wish to use after their family is complete, can choose to keep them in storage at Rejoice until they have made the sometimes-difficult decision of what to do with them.

Patients can choose to donate their leftover embryos to another couple for a chance at life, or they can choose to ship the embryos out of our lab to a different storage facility or clinic of their choice.

• How can a family be "complete" when one or more of its children is frozen in a storage facility based on the desires of the adults in the family?

• How can embryos once so deeply desired by their parents become 'surplus' products kept in storage facilities?

• How can a company that claims to value human embryos discuss the 'quality control' and 'shipping' of humans like products, and fail to recognize that it is treating them as commodities?

Another ethical red flag for Christians considering IVF is that pornography and masturbation are widely used to collect sperm.

Even with married, Christian couples who are creating just one embryo using their own gametes, the man is typically given pornography and instructed to use images of someone other than his wife to masturbate.

This, ethicist Stephanie Gray Connors explained, is akin to having an affair (after all, Christ had some things to say about lusting after others and adultery). This should be deeply concerning for Christians.

Commentary:

Stephanie Gray Connors is clear that there is no ethical way to do IVF — even if only one embryo is created. She told Jonathon Van Maren on The Bridgehead podcast:

"There's still the risk of human error because even if you're creating one embryo, that embryo is out of the woman's body. It's in a lab. And is that embryo gonna be inserted in the right mother's body? Is the sperm sample the right sperm sample, or is it someone else's?

There still is a risk that someone could be created and/or inserted in the body of what should be the genetic mother, who would never be able to come into existence, morally speaking, in the marriage bed.

And by that I mean, is not the offspring of the mother and father, is not in the biological mother's body because of human error, because we have turned the creation of life into something that gets manufactured, which then is my second point, and I think to address this issue that... if we narrow the parameters, is, at the end of the day, we don't have a right to another human being."

During the 2025 Live Action Women's Summit, Gray Connors further explained:

"The reality is, regardless of our intentions, the process of IVF involves manufacturing, and humans ought not be manufactured.

It involves putting parts together, piecing things together, making something. But we ought to be begotten, not made. If you think about the one flesh union, a couple might say, when they know they're fertile, 'Let's make a baby.' But you still aren't making a baby when you engage in sexual union.

You can optimize the likelihood of conception by knowing your fertility. But what sperm hits what egg, what moment you conceive, if you conceive at all, all of that, there is a hands-off element to a receptivity instead of manufacturing."

Gray Connors is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is the most vocal religious group against all forms of IVF.

Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, Senior Ethicist at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, noted in a 2018 article that the concern isn't that humans conceived using IVF are somehow 'less human' or 'less valuable' than children conceived naturally — they aren't — but that they are treated as if they are less human, and there is now an entire industry built around producing new image bearers of God in a lab:

Adding up the grave harms from IVF gives us a long list: IVF turns procreation into “production.” It dehumanizes embryonic children, treating them as objects to be frozen, manipulated, abandoned or de­stroyed.

Since the practice began in 1978, millions of embryos have be­come warehoused in liquid nitrogen, abandoned in frozen “orphanages.” Millions more have been outright discarded as biomedical waste.

In­stead of “loving our children into being” through the one-flesh union of husband and wife, IVF mass-pro­duces children in clinics, assembly-line style, under the impetus of mar­ket capitalism. Children born by IVF, moreover, experience roughly double the rate of birth defects of regularly conceived children. 

Over the years, these kinds of concerns have been mostly glossed over or ignored — we’ve grown ac­customed to frozen orphanages, and to the high toll involved in the proc­ess of assuring that a few of our em­bryonic children survive and success­fully implant. We downplay the risk of birth defects. Our insensitivity and desires have trumped a clear sense of ethics. 

Protestant voices are also speaking out about the immorality of any type of IVF.

While Allie Beth Stuckey, host of the Relatable podcast, believes that creating one embryo may be "better" than creating a dozen or so, she told Live Action's Lila Rose:

"You still have to ask the questions — the ethical, moral, and Biblical questions — as Christians of what happens when we take conception outside of its intended context, which is in the context of love, in the context of sex between a husband and a wife. ... Whenever technology takes us from what is natural to what is possible, we have to ask, 'Is this moral?'

Sometimes it is; not all technology is bad. But when you're talking about creating life and creating life outside of its intended context, there are just going to be a lot of consequences, a lot of questions that we have to ask."

IVF is unethical because every human life is precious and made in the image of God; no one should ever be considered "leftover" or be destroyed for being "less than," or be indefinitely frozen because his or her parents chose to carry a different child who was pre-screened and hand-selected by a fertility specialist or even by AI.

The process fails to show the respect that every human, whether conceived naturally or via IVF, is due.

Psalm 139:14 (NIV) states, "I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." The word "fearfully" carries the meaning of something sacred that inspires reverence, godly fear, and awe. Human beings should never be treated as a commodity to be purchased, produced, sold, transferred, frozen, or destroyed at will.

As John M. Haas, Ph.D., president of the NCBC, stated in a preaching position paper (emphases added):

The children conceived through IVF are precious in the sight of God, as are all children. Even though the means by which they were conceived are immoral (as are some other means by which children are engendered, such as sexual activity outside of marriage), they are loved by God and should be loved and cherished by us as well.

The Bottom Line:

IVF involves moral and ethical actions that treat human beings as if they are products without dignity, when in fact, every human being has incalculable value.