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The Controversy of IVF
- Faye Barnhart
- May 30
- 8 min read
Updated: Oct 23
The President promising to expand IVF due to a shortage of babies causes a revisit to the controversy of IVF. Rather than expanding IVF to create more children, we have a moral obligation to stop killing the ones we have. We have a shortage of babies because we are aborting them.
On the other side of the same coin from abortion is In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Abortion doesn't trust in the goodness of God in creating a child, and IVF doesn't trust in the goodness of God in withholding a child. One doesn't want a child they have, while the other wants a child that they don't have. Both processes kill innocent human beings.
With the increase in abortions is the increase in infertility, as one of the consequences of abortion for many women is permanent infertility. Doctors may engage in both aborting and creating children in a kind of on-going cycle.
With the increase in abortions, there is a shortage of babies to adopt. Currently, there are 36 couples wanting to adopt a baby for every one baby available. More than 2 million couples in the United States are waiting to adopt a baby, and they may want to adopt more than one baby, if they could. There are approximately twice as many couples waiting to adopt a baby as there are abortions every year.
Like most temptations, IVF promises a shortcut to trusting and waiting on God for His answer and whatever God thinks is best for our life. IVF perpetrates power and control over the creation of a child, one's circumstance, natural ability, and attempts to circumvent dependence on God to produce children.
Little understood, the controversy around IVF is multifaceted. Here are some of the concerns:
A homosexual or infertile couple wants to bypass natural biological abilities to create a child outside the act of love making. A doctor, rather than the husband, implants a pregnancy inside the woman, disrupting the love making and bonding process that God gave to a wife and husband in creating a child together within a committed marriage relationship. God created a process where a child is to be conceived in love, birthed in love, and parented in love. God also created the process as a beautiful expression of His love and an opportunity for people to depend on and know Him. The creation of a child is the visible outcome and demonstration of two becoming one flesh.
Through IVF, the beautiful gift of expression within marriage is reduced to a biological process that attempts to eliminate God from the equation and treats humans as less than spiritual beings to give them what they think they want and cannot be happy in life without. The process violates the marriage bond and spiritual oneness of the union and replaces God with a doctor in the middle of the relationship. Believing we must have that one thing to make us happy - like that one fruit in the garden - more than obedience and trust in God identifies idolatry in our life.
Through IVF, a man - the husband or a man outside the marriage - is exposed to pornographic materials to produce sperm outside the relationship with his wife, an immoral act. A woman - who has all the eggs she will ever produce before she herself is born - is hyped up on dangerous amounts of hormones to mature an unnatural amount of eggs all at once to be harvested, instead of gradually maturing one egg a month throughout childbearing age (with the ability to come alive by meeting sperm six days in the month). These hormones can change a woman's emotions and behavior, causing harm to her physically, emotionally, and in her relationships (both short-term and long-term). The hormone imbalance for the wife and exposure to pornographic materials for the husband can put a heavy strain on any marriage.
Unlike adoption, where parents are heavily screened to know that they can provide a loving and safe home for a child, there is no screening for those purchasing children through IVF.
Through the process of IVF, more children are produced than will be implanted, and many of these children during embryonic development are inhumanely frozen, experimented on, or destroyed. More children are implanted than necessary in the womb, not all children are healthy, and children are electively killed through "pregnancy reduction" or "termination" (aka abortion).
Through IVF, human beings are purchased, bought, and sold as property, both the children during embryonic development and many biological parents who may be paid as sperm donors or surrogate mothers. Surrogate mothers are bound by contract to kill the child they are carrying if those contracting decide that for her. It's not her body anymore, as her body has been paid for.
At childbirth, surrogate mothers must give up the baby she has carried, and who has bonded with her, creating potential trauma for both her and the child. The child is removed from the surrogate mother's familiar voice, heartbeat, and the flavors of her cooking that the child has experienced through amniotic fluid in the womb and would experience in the milk that could provide the child comfort, healthy antibodies, and easy digestion that is biologically formulated specifically for the child. Children are born naturally loving the mother who gives them birth. They are removed from the only human contact they have known, from the familiar sounds and cadence of the mother's voice and heartbeat that the child has grown accustomed to prior to birth.
Men donating sperm do not know their children or how many children they have procreated. They don't know who is raising their children or what their children become.
These children may never know who their biological parents are if the donors are other than the parents raising them, and their actual biological parents may have never met each other. These children may never know their medical histories or extended relatives and siblings.
There may be more pressure placed on these children to perform up to their advertised potential if they are a "Designer Baby". The use of IVF to produce "Designer Babies" combines sperm and egg to produce children as commodities for the purchase of parents. These children are created to meet parents' standards, rather than loved for the unique person they are and as entrusted to parents by God.
While scientists can distinguish in a child's DNA if they are male or female, there is little known about the environmental versus biological correlation of talent and personality to guarantee that any combination of gametes (specialized cells from each biological parent) will combine in a way to produce a particular set of characteristics for the parents purchasing the child. We do know that children created biologically from other parents reduces the ability of the parents raising them from identifying with their child and the child's ability to connect with parents.
Only 3-7% of the children created through IVF result in a live birth. Nine out of ten (97%) of "test tube babies" have defects, are used for experimentation, are discarded, fail to implant, are "eliminated" through "pregnancy reduction" (aka selective abortion), are miscarried, or stillborn. Of those who make it to birth, they face a higher risk of fetal anomalies, including heart defects and cancers, specifically childhood leukemia.
There are more natural ways to work with the body to increase fertility that are healthier and more humane for parents and children (up to 70% improvement rate). Treating the underlying health issues which cause infertility produces healthier children (and parents) without the ethical and moral compromises or damaging consequences of IVF.
In short, IVF disrupts the love-making process, removes trust in the goodness of God in creating a child, and mistreats the humanity of these children deserving of dignity and compassion. IVF destroys more children than it creates. IVF by-passes laws against slavery, making it possible to own humans as property - both adults and children - through legal contracts. IVF creates ethical concerns as well as health concerns for both children and parents.
For those who cry out to God in time of need asking for the gifts we would like from Him, we come to know His character which is always good, loving, just, kind, patient, and right. We come to trust that He knows more of what we need - and do not need - than we do. (Jer 17:9) We stop demanding that the world give us what we think we cannot live without and is God's to give. And we start receiving from God what He knows is best for us and everyone around us. We can discover along the way what each of us needs most in our lives - Him.
"No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless." (Psalm 84:11)
Each of my beautiful daughters has trusted God with how many children they would have. One of our daughters has no children: she finds comfort in this verse (Psalm 84:11). She says, if a couple is walking with the Lord and the Lord does not give them a child, then the couple can be comforted that having a child would not be good for them, because God does not withhold anything good from His children. She teaches children in her home and considers all her students her children (Is 54:1, Ga 4:27). Her brother and his wife, who also do not have children, have chosen to provide abused children a safe home through foster care and adoption. We have four children, including an adopted special needs son, and five grandchildren.
LetterToPresidentIVF.pdf (with extensive endnotes)
Faye Barnhart is a Life Affirming Specialist and Co-Founder of the Colorado Life Initiative. She was a women’s advocate for 19 years, served four pregnancy care centers in two states, including CEO of the largest pregnancy care center geographically in the United States, and served in a federal think tank on the co-occurrence of adult and child violence. A prelaw student who interned at the state Capitol and in media, she graduated with honors and pursued master's work in Organizational Leadership and a career in Communications for international ministries. She began in the prolife cause in the 1980’s, raised her children as a single parent, and is now married with an adopted special needs son and enjoys each of her grandchildren, including a grandbaby who needed life-saving surgery at birth. She accepted Christ as her personal Savior and Lord as a small child and continues her walk with the Lord in daily dependence.
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