On February 18, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Expanding Access to In Vitro Fertilization.” Americans expected this action; Trump promised during his campaign to advance IVF.
Infertility, of course, isn’t new to humanity. The Bible records seven couples who struggled to have children, beginning with Abram and Sarai in Genesis 15. Perhaps the most well-known biblical account of infertility is that of Hannah, who “was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly” (1 Sam. 1:10).
Some reading this are all too familiar with praying and weeping as Hannah did. My wife and I certainly are. When we began trying to build our family, we received a diagnosis of infertility, making us part of the approximately 15 percent of couples who today face this issue. After initial tests, interventions, and treatments failed, we were encouraged to consider IVF.
Value of Every Human Life
The rightful ache for a child of one’s own that we and so many others share with Hannah is a key reason why reproductive technologies like IVF were developed. Trump’s executive order appropriately recognizes the importance of family and the government’s role in helping promote and support the bearing and rearing of children.
However, the executive order makes the mistake of promoting the idea that because IVF produces some live births—albeit fewer than most people realize—it’s a good thing and, thus, something that should be expanded.
To be clear, the children born through IVF are gifts. Like all other human beings, they’re created in God’s image. Several places in Scripture speak to the great worth of human beings, how God knows each facet of our lives. Psalm 139, for example, details his intimate knowledge of us: “You know when I sit down and when I rise up.” God has known us since the beginning of our lives. God “formed [our] inward parts” and “knitted [us] together” in our mothers’ wombs. These promises—and it’s promissory that God knows us and cares about every detail of our lives—apply equally to all human beings without exception as God sovereignly rules over every person regardless of the circumstances of their conception.
Moreover, out of his great love for us, God the Son was incarnated as one of us, fully God and fully man at the same time. Luke recounts that the angel Gabriel told Mary, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son” (Luke 1:31). It’s amazing to think that the incarnation began with Jesus Christ as an embryo.
Hidden Reality of IVF
Few people know that 93 percent of all embryos created through IVF don’t result in a pregnancy. Some embryos don’t survive long enough to be transferred into a womb. Some fail to implant when transferred, and many are left frozen indefinitely.
Supporters of IVF point to the fact that embryos are also lost in the ordinary course of human procreation and question whether this might mitigate the fact that, as recent headlines affirm, “Embryo Loss Is Integral to IVF” and “Discarding Embryos Is Inherent to the IVF Process.” It’s worth asking, though, whether there’s a difference between what happens in the normal course of events in a fallen world and what happens in the work of a technician in a lab. I would contend that there is a moral difference between the possibility of natural embryo loss and the intentional use of a laboratory technique we know will result in embryo loss.
It’s amazing to think that the incarnation began with Jesus Christ as an embryo.
In January 2025, MIT Technology Review reported, “Millions—or potentially tens of millions—of embryos created through IVF sit frozen in time, stored in cryopreservation tanks around the world. The number is only growing thanks to technological advances, the rising popularity of IVF, and improvements in its success rates.”
This should be deeply troubling to Christians, but too often, it isn’t. We, too, may think IVF must be a good thing because it sometimes leads to live births. But a closer look at what IVF entails raises questions of whether it’s wise for Christians to engage in it. As it’s generally practiced, not only does IVF result in the creation of many embryos who will never be given an opportunity to grow and flourish, but the technique frequently involves testing, grading, and ranking embryos by their fitness or even by sex. Those embryos who don’t meet the parents’ expectations or desires are either frozen indefinitely or discarded.
These embryonic assessments turn what should be the reception of a miraculous gift into, frankly, the manufacture of new human beings who are immediately subject to quality control measures. IVF moves human beings from begetting or siring to the “metaphor of the factory, ‘re-production.’”
Celebrate Life While Questioning the Method
The most common objection I hear is that in calling IVF into question, I’m somehow calling into question the lives of the children born through IVF. But we rightly celebrate their lives just as we do the lives of all children, no matter the circumstances of their conception. No one doubts that a child born to teenage parents is of inestimable value and worth, yet teen pregnancy isn’t something we wish to encourage.
Similarly, with IVF, we can have deep reservations about the practice even while we celebrate the lives of those born by this method. However, we must also celebrate the lives of those embryos who even now await their opportunity to grow and flourish.
A closer look at what IVF entails raises questions of whether it’s wise for Christians to engage in it.
A first step in addressing the ethical issues is for Christians who engage in IVF to refuse to freeze any embryos, without exception, even if they think they’ll transfer them into the womb later. Next, parents with embryos in frozen storage should prayerfully consider retrieving and transferring them, if at all possible.
There are many obstacles to this, not least the cost of the transfer process, which may be prohibitively expensive. Then there’s the creation of a larger family than the couple initially intended, further increasing the economic burden. Churches could see this as an opportunity to support these families, but many churches, particularly smaller ones, will have only modest resources available.
In addition, not all families with frozen embryos will be able to transfer them into the mother’s womb. Medical complications, for example, may prevent it. I’ve written elsewhere about the options available when this is the case.
Personal Journey with Infertility
The destruction of embryos and the production of frozen embryos are only two of the many problems with IVF. Several Christian writers have addressed other ethical issues and whether Christians should engage in IVF at all (for example, see my arguments and those from Oliver O’Donovan and Matthew Lee Anderson).
Thankfully, other options exist, even though they aren’t well known. Techniques based on fertility awareness and restorative medicine are well-developed approaches that seek to address the underlying causes of infertility rather than sidestepping them through technologies like IVF.
My wife’s and my experience of infertility and the offer of IVF led us to additional prayer and much research. Ultimately, our conviction was that IVF wasn’t for us. We believe “the process of generating new life” shouldn’t occur in the laboratory.
And so my modest suggestion is that we mourn directives like “Expanding Access to In Vitro Fertilization,” grieve with those who suffer the pain of infertility, and champion avenues that look for ways to heal the body rather than exclude the body from bringing new lives into the world.
The Gospel Coalition