OP-ED: IVF is Mass Murder and an Abomination Before God

With the news that troubled Christian musician Israel Houghton and his wife recently became parents with a son through the use of a surrogate, which involved multiple rounds of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF,) we wanted to discuss something that should be uncontroversial: IVF is almost always mass murder and the wholescale slaughter of pre-born children.

This is because life begins at conception, and IVF conceives and then kills MILLIONS of babies. Not just by pagan women who have no regard for human life, but IVF is a scourge that has infiltrated Christendom too, with Christian couples bathing their hands in blood. 

According to the American Pregnancy Association, there are five steps involved in IVF:

1. Doctors stimulate the development of eggs in a woman’s ovaries by injecting her with hormones and fertility drugs.
2. The eggs are extracted from the woman’s uterus through an invasive surgical procedure.
3. A male donor produces and donates sperm.
4. A scientist mixes together the eggs and sperm in a petri-dish. Sometimes, the scientist will puncture the eggs and inject them with sperm (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection). The eggs are then monitored until they are fertilized and become embryos.
5. About 3-5 days later, the scientist places the embryos into the woman’s uterus with a tube (catheter). Implantation of the embryo into the uterine wall or womb is hoped to occur about 6-10 days later.

But IVF is costly, costing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because of the expense and the low probability of success upon the first implantation, especially when women are over the age of 35, doctors won’t just create, cultivate and implant a single embryo but rather frequently will extract 20-40 eggs at a time, which are fertilized with the man’s sperm.

Because of the high costs, it is extremely rare for a doctor to cultivate, combine, and implant a single embryo. Instead, they will get a few dozen going and then run genetic health tests and sift through them to find the “healthiest” embryos to implant, usually 2-5 at once, hoping that at least one “takes.” Doctors will monitor, and if “too many babies” are conceived, doctors will use the process of “fetal reduction” or “selective reduction” to eliminate the excess offspring.

What happens to the rest of the unused embryos? The other 25 or so they created and won’t have to use because the woman became pregnant on the third round after blowing through 10 other babies? They are treated as property. They are either destroyed or frozen for years until they are ultimately discarded because the couple gets tired of paying $1000 a year to keep them alive.

Only between 7-15% of all embryos artificially created ever come to term. The rest are all ultimately killed. Most estimates put the number of babies left in a perpetual frozen state until their demise to be between 400,000- 920,000, with millions murdered since the technology emerged.

Any Christian couple considering it or going through with it ought to be instantly put under church discipline, no different than if they plotted to have an abortion or stick knife in the neck of their six year old.

Abortion Abolitionist Jelaine Fondren summarizes the process of IVF and elaborates on its sinfulness.

The process of IVF creates many human beings (in the embryonic state) to then choose a few of the best ones to implant in a uterus. If more than one implant successfully, the mother is then offered to abort any extras. The leftover embryos are frozen for later use in case the first attempt is unsuccessful or the person wants to have more children. These extra embryos are treated like property, with the owners (parents) paying rent for storage space in the freezer. Most are abandoned to death via the thawing process or scientific experimentation.

The other reason it is sin is the selfishness involved. God opens and closes the womb for His purposes. Christians are called to care for orphans and widows. When we are so intent on having our own biological children at the cost of thousands of dollars and tens of extra babies abandoned to death instead of opening our hearts to orphans, we have indeed become lovers of self instead of lovers of God and our neighbors.

Abolitionist Toby Harmon adds:

In Vitro Fertilization is sinful for many compounding reasons. First is that we have a great need for parents to adopt already existing orphans. IVF says “I will go out of my way to ignore these orphans in order to unnaturally have my own flesh and blood children.” So, the IVF industry actually discourages the adoption of already born orphans in the world.

Second, IVF unnecessarily endangers human beings. They are created in a petri dish, and the “leftovers” that survive or are not weeded out, are frozen in liquid nitrogen to -196 degrees. If they were frozen prior to the newer freezing method called “vitrification” (a flash freeze process) they could have as low as a 50% chance thaw survival rate. With vitrification it is claimed there is as high as a 90% survival rate. But, needless to say, freezing humans you have unnecessarily created, with a good chance of death is inhumane and unethical.

The IVF industry also dehumanizes these preborn children by treating them like disposable commodities. They create large numbers of embryos, knowing that most of them will not survive (either through intentional discarding or unintentional death through freezing or miscarriage). When the parents and Doctors learn that one embryo implanted but the other 1 or 2 dies, they celebrate because that is all they really expected and were hoping for.

If parents have any kind of history of genetic or health defects themselves, they can opt to to PGD and/or PGS testing which tests the embryo (by taking a portion of it which can result in it’s death) and testing it for recessive genes that may result in that embryo being born with whatever disease the parent has. If the embryo tests positive, they are simply destroyed and “better grade” embryos are chosen for transfer and/or freezing.”

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