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INDIANAPOLIS (LifeSiteNews) — The Southern Baptist Convention voted to oppose in vitro fertilization (IVF) this week, demanding the “government to restrain” the industry. The Protestant church condemned IVF both on account of the large-scale destruction of human life involved in the process and because it separates procreation from the conjugal union of spouses in marriage.
With more than 13 million members across the U.S., the Southern Baptist church’s condemnation of IVF could have a significantly positive effect of pressuring politicians to restrict or eliminate the baby-manufacturing industry that kills millions of children in the name of “producing” a baby by artificial means.
The Southern Baptist denomination firmly holds that personhood begins at the moment of conception. With a consistency that has shown to be lacking in purportedly “pro-life” Republicans, Southern Baptists declared after the Alabama court ruling against IVF that they were “opposed to the willful destruction or even donating to scientific experimentation of non-implanted human embryos wantonly created in the typical IVF process.”
READ: Jailed pro-lifer Joan Andrews Bell urges Ted Cruz to reverse support for child-destroying IVF
In a May 21 press release, the Baptist Press condemned IVF both on pro-life grounds, given the destruction of human embryos that takes place even when an embryo has been successfully implanted, and because the practice separates procreation from the sexual union of spouses in marriage, ordained by God as the proper and only moral way of begetting children. The Protestant church further argued that the practice of IVF commoditizes children in a manner contrary to their human dignity.
The Baptist Press wrote, “At a very basic level, the way IVF is routinely conducted now, which includes over fertilization of eggs without a clear plan for implantation, freezing of leftover embryos, and even the destruction of these human embryos once a couple has succeeded in getting pregnant or no longer desires to keep them, is extremely problematic. It is within the jurisdiction of the state to promote the good of families and restrain the evil of treating these human beings as disposable or simply a means to an end.”
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Likening the willful destruction of fertilized embryos to abortion, the Baptist Press continued, “The selective reduction of embryos based on the chances of implantation or pregnancy to term clearly violates human dignity and the guidance from Scripture. Though it does not necessarily occur in the womb, the willful destruction of fertilized embryos conducted in the typical practice of IVF is not theologically different from abortion procedures.”
Considering IVF further in relation to marriage and the way in which the sexual union of the spouses is ordered toward the procreation of children according to God’s plan for the family, the Southern Baptist church argued that IVF “severs” what God intends to be united in “the marriage covenant.”
Praising the Catholic prohibition on the practice of contraception for keeping “unified sexual act and procreation,” the Protestant church insisted it is “theologically problematic to separate procreation from the sexual union of the man and woman in the marriage covenant.”
READ: ‘Embryo adoption’ is a false solution to the mass destruction of children through IVF
The Baptist Press wrote, “Christians should also weigh whether the practice itself violates certain theological principles. Namely, the question of severing procreation from the sexual union, and the anthropological question of ‘making’ children as commodities rather than ‘begetting’ them as gifts from God.”
Christians must take seriously the teleological and biological orientation of sexuality and reproduction. While procreation is not the only good of sexual union (among which we might include intimacy, companionship, relational restoration, pleasure, etc.), it is clear that the sexual union of one man and one woman is teleologically oriented toward procreation.
When God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, that command entailed the possibility that it could be fulfilled, namely through the sexual union of the couple. Protestant denominations have typically been less prone than Catholics to keep necessarily unified sexual act and procreation.
… It is theologically problematic to separate procreation from the sexual union of the man and woman in the marriage covenant.
Warning against a mentality that denigrates the humanity and inherent dignity of every child, the Southern Baptist church denounced the “treatment of children as mere disposable commodities” as a natural result of “treating them as products to be manufactured” that underlies the practice of IVF.
“A discussion of the process of IVF creates a new way of thinking about children from previous generations. The term ‘test-tube baby’ reflects this new reality in that the child was created not in the sexual union of mother and father but from biological components brought together in a lab,” the Baptist Press wrote.
“The treatment of children as mere disposable commodities, possible only within a framework in which they are already devalued, is a natural outflow of a process that began by treating them as products to be manufactured rather than people that were begotten.”
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It has been estimated that more than a million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States after IVF and that as many as 93 percent of all embryos created through IVF are eventually destroyed.
The Catholic Church teaches, based on natural law, that IVF is gravely immoral because it separates the sexual act from procreation and violates the right of the child to be born of a conjugal union.
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Pray for an end to IVF and the protection of human embryos: Join our prayer pledge