IVF and Politics: Navigating Ethics, Subsidies, and Moral Dilemmas

Recently we had an episode on IVF , but we really wanted to talk about it today in the political realm because it's getting a lot of attention , I would think , in this political cycle , and so we really wanted to bring it to the forefront with our listeners today and talk about it . Anybody have some opening thoughts on just IVF and politics in general ?

You know , when it first happened back in the 70s or 80s , was the test tube baby , and it's just basically saying that the fertilization of the woman's egg happens in , they say , a test tube , but it's actually more like a petri dish where it happens and that's the term that's used IVF for how the fertilization happens .

But of course , when you talk about IVF , it's a much bigger thing , because it's not just talking about , okay , how do we fertilize this egg .

It's everything that then is involved in terms of getting that embryo into a woman at a time when her body's ready to accept it , and pregnancy will result and a live birth , and there's just an awful lot involved there .

We've got a variety of other biblical references that reference life in the womb . So if it begins at conception , if it begins at the fertilization , the joining of sperm and egg , then it begins at the joining of sperm and egg , whether it occurs within a fallopian tube or within a laboratory dish .

Advocates for abortion rights already accept the fundamental premise that some lives are expendable . A woman should have control over her body and that means that sometimes she can take care of that life that's growing in her by destroying it .

I remember I was listening to public radio , wisconsin Public Radio , and they had a representative from Planned Parenthood this is probably a dozen years ago or so and she referred to that life as parasitical . It was a parasite . It attached itself to the woman's body and was sucking life from the woman's body .

That kind of approach and the abortion rights advocates are basically arguing that some life is expendable . All right . Now what happens is that if you're pro-life , you don't give any ground on that . There's no logical ground for a life being expendable , so you hold your line .

Well , now , all of a sudden we find out from the 70s that they've been doing IVFs , ivfs , ivfs , and now people are , oh , they're going to take another right . And then abortion rights advocates want to make the pro-life people look like they're going to take over your entire body , they're going to run everything .

And the problem with the pro-life people is they have a little trouble thinking logically too , because there's a lot of high-profile pro-life politicians who are saying , well , I'm fine with IVF , and , of course , based on what ? But that's the kind of thing that goes on is that I was just watching some political show and a commentator made the statement .

You know , logic has nothing to do with it . It's all about emotion . If I can generate in the motion an anger and excitement , zeal , frustration , I'm going to get far more progress out of you than logic will , and we're seeing that in the debate on IVF .

But people immediately recognize well , wait a second that has a lot of implications for what's going on with IVF generally and in fact a lot of IVF practitioners in the state of Alabama immediately stopped doing what they were doing .

And then I think it was just a few weeks later the legislators in Alabama passed a new law that was basically saying OK , well , if anybody's doing this as a part of IVF , it's OK , which logically doesn't work . But legally , in terms of the criminal code and everything , it did work .

And ever since then that's been the example that people on the I'll say , the anti-life side have been pointing to is like oh , those crazy conservatives , those crazy pro-lifers , look how far they're going to go . They're just even want to take this , this wonderful thing that progress has given us that allows women who want babies to have them .

They even want to take that . So these pro-lifers , they're after you coming and going , as Bob said it . You know it appeals to the emotions and it's very effective that way and because this is a presidential election year , they're trying to use that that much more and it's getting some purchase . There's some effect to it .

Adding to that is , I'll just say , the presidential candidate , who is the most likely target for this , has turned around and suggested that well , maybe we should mandate it so that every person's medical plan , health insurance , has to cover IVF , which is obviously something that was not thought out at all , and the fact that it would never get that , that would

never get passed because of its prohibitive expense . It's just kind of set to the side because you know he's put it out there as well . If they're in favor of it , we're even more in favor of it and again without thinking any of it through , as far as the moral , the ethical and even the spiritual meaning of it .

It makes you just kind of wonder oh , is that the government's role to even step in on those situations ?

Biological fact is that the moment egg and sperm connect , the moment the nuclei connect , there's a whole different biology takes place , a whole different genetic forms . Everything that is distinctly human begins at that point .

So we have to understand that , no matter who it is , whether it's side of the aisle they are on and they're advocating for IVF rights , you are saying that we must accept the fact that there's going to be increased danger to some human life , and we're willing to accept that . And that's , I mean , that's the rub .

And , of course , where do you divide the line ? Now , I'm always hesitant to bring that , you know , because it's the old slippery slope argument , because it's wrong whether it could get worse or not .

If you say that we should be able to destroy frozen embryos , or we should be able to discard unwanted embryos , or we should be able to remove the ones that we suspect will not develop as normally as they should , how far do you go ? What's the logic then that says you can't do it after implantation ? Well , actually we do .

In some cases it's selective abortion , which is three growing embryos and you want to give the best one the chance for survival . There's been selective abortion where two of them are removed , so only one continues to grow . So why wait there ? What happens when they're born ?

Some people have argued and it's under the Groningen Protocol in the Netherlands that if you don't match up to certain criteria of leading a meaningful life , your parents can authorize its termination . You have to follow one or the other logic .

You either have to follow the logic that life is expendable in the womb and therefore take it where it leads you , or you have to follow the logic that says that life is a life from conception on and it's all equally entitled to protection .

I don't see—no one has given me—and I mean smart pro-abortion people , haven't given me a good argument for drawing a logical line . I mean , they're just , you know to say simply well , while it's in the womb , well , their own peers are not buying that one .

You've still got people who will say that holding off on determining the personhood of a newborn should wait to see if there's problems . That's the nature of society and so we have to understand . What we're fighting is a conflict between logic and emotion Doggone it . Nobody wants to admit that they were wrong . I mean , people have written me horrible letters .

I remember a letter I got from a grandfather who just was furious over something I had said about IVF and said are you telling me my two granddaughters are not blessings from God ? I never said that . I've seen God do incredible blessings in the most horrible circumstances . But the point is is that you still have to deal with the logic of it .

The way that I deal with the logic is that I take every scenario of life in a petri dish or life growing in the womb , and I imagine it being one of my daughters at the age of two and say , if I'm willing to take that risk with an embryo , would I be willing to take that risk with my daughter when she was two ?

And of course , there I start to have a problem , because if it's a life , it's a life . If it's not a life , then it's not a big deal .

There's not a more vulnerable those who want the government to be proactively involved with IVF in terms of promoting it , in terms of maybe subsidizing it and there are some states in the US and certainly there are countries where it is subsidized partly as a sense of well , people have trouble paying for this because it's outrageously expensive .

So the government , we should be nice and we should help people pay for this . And in some cases , it has been rationalized with the idea that , well , since we've got a fertility problem here in the United States , as many other countries have , that if we want more babies born , we should be subsidizing IVF because IVF produces babies .

None of those arguments for subsidy or promotion are really coming from people that we would consider anti-life from the pro-abortion side . The pro-abortion side is just basically saying , well , if the pro-lifers are against it , then we're for it . That's a gross over a simplification , but that's it . But studies have been done .

We just looked at one that came out recently from the Institute on Family Studies that says that if your goal in subsidizing IVF is to raise your fertility rate , it doesn't work , and there are some good reasons that you hardly . When you think through , it's like , well , yeah , that kind of makes sense that it wouldn't work .

There are even arguments about why it doesn't even make that much sense as a compassionate kind of thing .

The people who are doing IVF , generally speaking , are couples who have reached an age where fertility is an issue , meaning they're in their late thirties , maybe even forties , desperate to have a child , and people who are at that stage in their life , usually two income family or couples , and they usually have pretty good incomes .

So if your government is subsidizing it , they're basically taking money from people who are not in that advantageous situation in life and giving it to the people who are , and so even in terms of like a financial equality kind of issue or situation , it's not really a fair thing there .

So that's basically people who want the government involved , either want it involved to restrict or even outlaw it or to promote it , which means they're very much opposites in that sense .

Hey , there's a life here that wasn't here before , and I know , like Bob is saying , though , too , that there is just so much risk in it and so many lives that are probably being terminated that we don't see , and I think that is something that's hard and even just for a lot of Christians too , maybe not understanding the risk that is involved in IVF , because

I think some Christian couples maybe just feel like okay , well , if we keep all the embryos , then we're doing this the right way . What , maybe would a Christian couple be missing if they said that , like they felt , well , we're just freezing all the embryos , so that's got to be okay .

You know , when it began . If you read the early papers when they began with IVF , they discovered that if a Petri dish had a little nipple , a little divot in it , that it actually hurt the chances of it resulting in a successful embryo transplant . It was something about it , something about the way that things developed in that petri dish . It just didn't work .

So they make a switch that way , and then there's transporting it and getting it and placing it up high enough within the fallopian tube . You have all of this human intervention , which of course makes it less effective . And again I go back to the argument I made earlier .

If we were talking about doing this with your two-year-old child , with the risk that comes with it , the greater risk than a natural pregnancy would you do it ?

And that's a real challenge , one of the problems we really have kind of at the heart of all this is we basically have two worldviews that are in conflict as a worldview , but not in conflict when it comes to judging the worldviews .

The conflict in worldview is this I am pro-life , not because I love babies , though I love babies or not , because I believe life begins at conception , but I do believe life begins—I'm pro-life because it's what God says and I seek to live in the way that God—that pleases God , as a testimony to what he means to me . So that's how Christians work .

So how fair is it to foist that on society ? And that's the argument . Because in society , in a godless society , you are living for heaven . On earth , you are living . This is all you have . Get all the gusto you can out of it . So when you live this way , shouldn't we allow IVF ? Shouldn't we allow abortion for the people who want to live for the world ?

Well , the problem you have is the logical problem . Both sides have to use logic in order to determine what it is that pleases God , because God doesn't mention in vitro fertilization in his word . You use your logic , your understanding of the language and logic to make those judgments .

When you apply the logic to a worldview , a secular worldview , on IVF and abortion , the logic says where do we stop ? Somebody asked me once if we could make it as secure and safe as natural fertilization , natural pregnancy . Would you have an objection ? Well , of course not . I just know that God is not pleased when humans take human life .

So if you're going to argue with me that I want to do this , even though it's going to cost some human lives , in order that I can have the pleasure of a child , I'm sorry . You've got a bigger problem than disagreeing with me . You have a problem with the creator of life and nobody wants to confront that .

And on both sides of the issue , politically , that's exactly what's going on is that neither side wants to confront it Because on a political level , both side knows what the other side's trying to do and so they're trying to defeat it and they're going to throw emotional arguments out at everybody so that you don't think through the logic .

If you have five or six embryos that result and you are a 37 , 38-year-old woman who's doing IVF , when are you going to have those other babies ? When are you going to have them unfrozen and inserted and everything like that ? Are you going to be able to pay for all of those procedures , which are quite expensive ?

You're just kicking the can down the road in the sense of saying , well , we'll deal with that later . But again , bob , talking about the logic of it , well , when's that going to be ?

Because a woman only has so many years where she is physically capable of carrying a child and most people don't like the idea of popping one out and starting another one immediately afterward and that's not even a healthy thing to do , even with a much younger woman .

And so there's logic that needs to be applied , that if you really are convinced that , yes , every embryo is a life worthy of protection , then you need to take seriously every aspect of this and you can't just say , well , we want this a lot , and so we'll deal with the difficult questions later . That's just not a legitimate way to approach it .

Can I ask that just because that gets to maybe some of what people are thinking too oh , like IVF good thing , but oh , discarding embryos bad thing .

well . You know they started off . You know a couple deeply in love with each other they started off . You know a couple deeply in love with each other , married married in one of our churches , all of life as well . They couldn't seem to have children and so forth Some problems , you know that prevented having children .

So they decided to go to IVF and they fertilized half a dozen eggs and then they cryopreserved them and they had one child and it was great . And then he wandered , landed in the bed of another woman , and so then they landed in divorce court and he wanted the embryos destroyed , she wanted them preserved . So what do you do All of a sudden ?

All this nice , wonderful plan that we had for everything , and so all of a sudden you now have five children at risk and you get that . And that's a very common argument that somebody doesn't want to have their genetic line out there without their authority , without their say in it . There are things that we do in the world .

There are experiments that have been tried over history that we have walked away from . We tried it . It was a disaster . People were killed , people were hurt or maimed , and so we stay away from it .

We got this idea that because IVF is relatively successful now I guess it's from fertilization to baby in arms , I guess it's risen from 19% to like 23% or 26% some statistic like that that for the sake of that 23% or 26% , that we should keep doing it , or maybe it just is a wrong thing and we should be staying away from it .

Now , do I favor improving it ? You know , if we can , yes , I do favor that . I think if we could model it , if they could improve it , because right now we have we've talked about this , we've had guests on the show to deal with snowflake babies , which is the ability to adopt a cryopreserved embryo rather than having it destroyed or used for experiments .

So we have people do that but , as they've told us on the show , sometimes you lose the first one or two . It's not an exact science , so I would like to see it improved just for the sake of the ones that were preserved that could be cryo-adopted , snowflake-adopted by another couple .

It's not really surprising that people I mean because Bob was talking about how messy all of this is People don't want to think about the messy stuff and particularly if you are not somebody who's going through this yourself , you really don't want to be thinking about it . As far as you're concerned , it doesn't concern you , and so you know .

On the other hand , ivf produces babies . Babies are cute , babies are wonderful . Babies make their parents happy . Who could be against that ?

People don't really want to think so much about the messiness of it , and people who might even realize that there are these two different things here , they probably just they'll say I don't really want to do the hard thinking about it .

One of the interesting things from this Gallup poll , which should not surprise us , is that the people who are most against both IVF at first , and particularly against any destruction of live embryos , are the people who are most likely to be in church on Sundays , and particularly people who are from more theologically conservative churches .

Those are the people who understand what we understand , which is that God is the author of life and that that's not something we should be messing around with , and that , to the extent that it's within our power , we should stop the destruction of life .

How can you be pro-family and pro , you know wanting people to have kids and lots of kids , but still be against IVF ? And I guess maybe how do you articulate that in a way that still makes you sound that you're pro-family ?

But if you want to be a little , I guess , nicer about it or more positive , just say well , being pro-family means we're pro-baby , and since we understand that every time an egg is fertilized you have a baby , well , that means that we are going to be in favor of whatever policy maximizes the chance at life for every one of those , those babies that is created .

And you know , just because you know some people have babies as a result of this doesn't mean that there are other babies that are never going to come into the world as living beings , live breathing human beings . You can't forget about them .

I may be thinking more of you in trying to help you because you're an infertile mother or an infertile father , but then what about thinking more of the children that are formed , the embryos that are formed , and how do I think more of them than I do of myself ?

Am I thinking more of them when I say well , you know , get rid of one , four and six , because they're more than you need . Get rid of two of those embryos , or , you know , let's let them develop a little bit more and then maybe we'll donate some for science .

Or , you know , the point is that if you truly are thinking more of others than of yourself , you've got to first of all define who the others are and be honest with yourself . Other is more .

You know , like if you came to me as an infertile person and said we want to go with IVF , we love each other dearly , we go to church , we want to do the will of God , all that kind of stuff . You know my heart goes out to them . I mean it truly , truly does .

But when they want to do IVF they're saying you know , we would like to use a procedure that may cost some lives and may on a higher level than the natural childbirth , you know . So what do you think of that now ? Well , let's not talk about that . That's kind of the approach is .

If we don't talk about that , then it feels warm and fluffy , but the moment you talk about it it's uncomfortable and you're almost characterized as mean for bringing it up . And that's the thing I object , because it's interesting .

There's a thing called intellectual bullying , and intellectual bullying is I'm not going to punch , is I'm not going to punch you and I'm not going to take you out in the alley and pound lumps on your head . Instead , I'm going to . You know , I'm going to attack you for all sorts of other reasons .

You're cruel , you're heartless , all these other adjectives that have nothing to do with the argument . You know , either you recognize life as God's gift and something we are to be stewards over , or you really are presuming that because you happen to be able to mix an egg and a sperm in a Petri dish , that you now have become the author of life .

You now can determine when it ends . And then , hey , why stop in the dish ? You know , tell me how you feel when your kid's in middle school and causing all sorts of trouble politically .

Back when abortion was still relatively rare and you'd had one , you generally didn't tell people you knew about it . Voting against it would not have been seen as something unkind or thoughtless or inconsiderate towards that person , you know .

But these days you've got a girlfriend who's had one , you've got somebody in your family who has had one , maybe you even had one or whatever . And to you , voting for a very pro-life position or a very pro-life candidate might very well feel , particularly if you don't have strong convictions on this already .

It might feel like you're somehow doing wrong by that person because they did it and you're saying that they did something wrong when you take this politically pro-life position and so even if you might be inclined toward the pro-life , you're not so inclined to vote that way or to be active in a pro-life movement that way on abortion .

Well , you have the same kind of thing happening with IVF . It's been around so long . So many people know someone who has they've had a child by IVF , or maybe even at this point they know somebody who was a product of IVF .

Or maybe you've used it yourself a political position in terms of voting or speaking out or whatever that feels to you like you're telling those people that you care about you did something wrong . Well , unless you have a really strong conviction , you're not comfortable with that and you're a lot less likely to speak out or even to vote on that matter .

And I think that the poll reflects that and I think just generally our listeners will agree that experience bears that out as well .

You were happy for the one and you're beginning to kind of soul search over this and wondering you know , did I engage in a procedure that resulted in the death of five of my six children ? And you might be incredibly sweet and nice and loving and caring and faithful to your Lord and to your congregation and serving others .

You are not immune from doing wrong , and the problem that we often have is that we like to always characterize making wrong choices with really wrong , wrong , bad , rotten people . And the reality is really really wonderful . People sometimes do really really wrong things , sometimes in ignorance , sometimes in a moment of weakness .

But the reality is that what we're trying here is remember nobody here is talking about trying to earn your way to heaven . This has nothing to do with that . We're talking about Jesus died for your sins . He died for the sins of the world , and your life is supposed to be a testimony to the world of the high priority you place on what God's done .

So when you're looking at IVF as one of your infertility options . The question you really should be wrestling with is options . The question you really should be wrestling with is will following through with this , knowing all that it does ? Is it my way to say thank you God , thank you Jesus ?

And the reality is , I think most of us , when we apply our logic , are saying it's a pretty high price to pay to take life and now characterize it as if I'm somehow glorifying God with it , even if it makes me happy and makes my spouse happy and makes my family who have been pulling for me , my friends , to have a child , that now we can have one .

Okay , let's say we've convinced you , or you've done enough research and you've realized , oh , this was something wrong , even though I thought that I could do . You know I I had done my due diligence and decided this , this was okay . Even now I thought that I could do . You know I had done my due diligence and decided this was okay .

Even now I realize that no , something the cross and washed away that sin . We never use that as an excuse for sin or , as you know , get out of jail free . You know I can go ahead and do wrong because I know I'll get forgiven later .

But if this is something that's on your heart , as it should be well , then know that you're forgiven and resolve to do better from now on and that's the fruit of repentance or whatever . How that's going to look I don't know , but go talk to your pastor about it .

But we don't want anyone to be rejecting what is said here , the truths scriptural , spiritual , moral truths about IVF . We don't want anyone to reject what is said here because they are thinking well , that hits a little too close to home . That makes me feel guilty and I don't like that . That's something as Christians . That's part of our self-examination .

We have to admit the fact that I may have done wrong and if I have . The correct thing to do is to confess that sin and repent of it and go to the Lord for forgiveness and then produce the fruits of repentance .

Can I support the defense of all of my sentences with Scripture ? Because if all you're going to do is share with us an opinion that , because it makes a lot of people happy , we should go ahead with it . Don't bother . I mean , write us , because if we are wrong , we want to be corrected . We have no vested interest in being wrong .

When people do get upset and write me , it's 99% emotion , almost no logic and no facts .

Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help . You can submit your questions , as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes , at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom .

In addition to the podcasts , we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus , so be sure to check it out . For more about our parent organization , please visit ChristianLifeResourcescom . May God give you wisdom , love , strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge .