In light of President Trump’s recent Executive Order Expanding Access to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), Christian parents who dream of having a child through IVF now have greater hope and access to those services.
As the Order states,
“infertility struggles can make conception difficult, turning what should be a joyful experience into an emotional and financial struggle. My Administration recognizes the importance of family formation, and as a Nation, our public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children.”
This is wonderful news, and yes, it should be easier and better thought-through by parents who choose to avail themselves of this miracle reproductive technology. And as all knowledge is God’s knowledge, IVF technology is clearly no surprise to Him.
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Christian parents, nonetheless, will want to honestly and prayerfully consider the serious biblical truths implicated by this new opportunity. As a Christian, you will want to know how you can be sure that God is honored by your use of IVF to build your family.
Three very clear and necessary guiding principles are necessary:
1. Parent all your created embryos
2. Protect all your created embryos
3. Protect your marriage
Christian parents must value and employ these three simple principles.
One: Parent all your created embryos
Proverbs 17:6 calls parents the pride of their children. God is our best model as a parent – He cares for each of us as a loving parent. In your excitement to embark on the road to parenthood through IVF, you ought to create only as many embryos as you are committed to parenting. While the medical professionals may want you to create 30 or 40 embryos, can you parent that many children? They are all your children, and you are responsible for them. State laws may or may not assist in this principle, but your first obligation must be that the embryos you create are your responsibility before God as their parent. If you want to become the parent to only a few children, then create only a few children. When you create more embryos than you want for children, you will be faced with their disposal. Godly parents do not dispose of their children. You are responsible for those created embryos as their parent. Therefore, only create as many embryonic children as you are willing to parent. This honors God, and your children.
Two: Protect all your created embryos
As a Christian parent, you would never choose the options of “destruction, discarding, or experimentation” for your children, so you will never want to make those choices for your embryos. Those are three of your five choices once you create the embyros (the other two being gestation toward birth, and donation for adoption). Choosing destruction, discarding, or experimentation is choosing death for your child. With IVF you have a choice for them that is also no surprise to God. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil…” (Deut 30:15 ff).
Your embryos are not just medical or scientific creations; they are your children. From the moment they come into existence, they are lives—unique, whole, and worthy of protection. Each embryo carries the same dignity as the child you long to hold in your arms. To treat them as excess, discardable, or experimental is to deny the truth of their Creator. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” (Jeremiah 1:5). From the beginning, God sees and knows each life. Your embryos are not mere potential—they are already known, loved, and entrusted to you by God as their parents. Indeed, every year more human children die from IVF than from abortion. This is a tragic and largely ignored reality, yet no less true. Christian parents do not participate in choosing death. Protect all your created embryos.
Three: Protect your marriage
Guard your loving marriage. A husband and wife are “one flesh” by God’s design (Genesis 2:24), yet IVF separates husbands from wives in many ways throughout the process. And many couples who seek to build their families through IVF struggle through that arduous and separational process, to the destruction of their sexual oneness and the emotional detriment of their marriage. Don’t allow this to happen to you. There are myriad cases where divorcing IVF parents litigate the fate of their embryos because their efforts to build their families have destroyed their marriages. Christians who utilize IVF to build their families must take care of each other, protecting your spouse, and guarding your marriage, honoring God. Your children need you both as the foundation for your family.
These three very basic and very biblical principles ought to be agreed upon by mother and father, husband and wife, at the outset of the process. Your directions, guided by your faith, should be given to involved physicians, counselors, and lawyers accordingly. Doing so in a formal writing (a legal clinical contract, consent forms, etc.) is an excellent safeguard for everyone — especially for your miracle IVF children — and for your relationship with the loving God of this design.
IVF parents, you are in charge of this process. Seek God and His wisdom by following these basic biblical principles. As the Executive Order states, “infertility struggles can make conception difficult, turning what should be a joyful experience into an emotional and financial struggle.” God is not glorified by immoral choices of death for your embryos or destruction of your marriage. Do not allow your dreams for your IVF family to be hijacked. Christian parents who love and obey God would never allow their spouse, or their children to become merely a commodity for the booming IVF industry. Be mindful that “you are not your own, therefore glorify God with your body”(I Cor 6:20), protecting too the embryonic bodies of your children, as their parents, parenting them from the outset, protecting them at every turn, and protecting your marriage. Pursue IVF guided by these three biblical mandates. They will make all the difference.
Lynne Marie Kohm is professor and John Brown McCarty Professor of Family Law at Regent University School of Law.
