This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.

Hello friends, welcome to The Case for Life podcast. We’re glad to have you with us. We aim to help you defend your pro-life views in an increasingly secularized culture. Have you ever had a friend say this to you: hey, my husband and I used IVF and we had leftover embryos and we donated them to research. Are you saying we committed murder? Is that what you’re saying? I’m going to answer that question in this episode. First of all, if you have not joined us on our social media Pages, please go there, like our page and refer it to friends and spread the word about what we’re doing here.

You know, IVF in vitro fertilization is going to become a very big pro-life issue in 2025 and beyond. In fact, it’s very clear that the Trump Administration is out to support it, despite some pro-life advocacy principles they communicate. What should Christians do when a friend says to them: hey, we’ve used IVF and we had leftover embryos and we chose not to implant them. Does that make us murderers? I actually had someone ask me that last week and I want to give you some tips on how to respond, and what I want to do today is give you five key words that will help you think biblically about a technology like inv vitro fertilization.

Now, let’s say up front that if you just go to the Bible and look up in vitro fertilization, you’re not going to find it there. There’s nothing in the Bible that talks about assisted reproductive technologies at all, for a very simple reason: they weren’t available back then when the Bible was written, so it’s no wonder there’s no mention of them. Scripture is written to specific people in specific context, during specific historical periods, and the scriptures are aimed to address their needs, their relationship with God.

It’s not a complete ethics book that handles everything we deal with today. However, it does not mean that there are no principles we should look to in the scripture to help guide our decision making on things like invitro fertilization or abortion or physician assisted suicide or a number of bioethical issues. But specifically with IVF in vitro for ization there are principles we can learn from scripture, and I’m going to give you five key words today that will give you an easy memory way to hang the biblical truths that we’re going to look at today on.

You’ll be able to say: wow, that word triggers what I need to think about that, and hopefully that will give you away an easy handle for recalling this for when you have discussion with friends, when you are dealing with people who are asking the questions I was asked last week. So let’s jump in. First of all, let me define invitro fertilization. Invitro fertilization is where we take and we give a woman, very heavy hormonal drug treatments so that she releases multiple eggs in a given cycle.

We then Harvest those eggs through a surgical procedure which, by the way, is no, no Cakewalk. It’s a tough thing for a woman to go through. We Harvest those eggs surgically, we then extract sperm from the male, whether it be a donor or her husband and we then combine the sperm and egg, not in the woman’s body, as happens in normal conception, but we do it in a test tube in the lab, and then we take the resulting embryos and we implant them in the pregnant woman’s uterus in hopes that at least a few of them will take.

Now here’s the interesting thing: these treatments are horrendously expensive. You we’re talking here around of IVF could cost up to $100,000, and so, to help reduce the risk of having to do it more than once, what scientists do is they will create multiple embryos. They won’t just create one or two, they will create up to 15 perhaps, and then they will freeze the ones that are not immediately implanted. Now there’s another step in here, and this one, as we’ll see in a moment, is very problematic for the Christian.

These embryos are then screened for possible defects and they’re actually given a gradient rating a grade b-grade, c-grade as to their likelihood to become viable pregnancies, and only those with the highest gradient rating are implanted. The rest are discarded and or donated to research, but they are not implanted in the woman’s uterus. That’s the essential method of IV, how IVF is done, and up to I think it’s 3% to 7% Max. Of these embryos that are created are actually brought to birth.

Only 3 to 7%. The rest are left over. The rest are left on ice or donated to research. Only 3 to 7% actually result in live births. So, as you can see, one of the initial problems is that there are a lot of excess embryos. In fact, that’s the first key word: excess IVF treatments result in multiple embryos, more than the couple can reasonably bring to birth during a given reproductive lifetime. That’s a problem for the Christian, because what do we do then with all these leftover embryos?

And doctors will generally try to get the couple to do one of two things: if these embryos are not going to be implanted, they will urge the couple to either just discard them or, more likely, donate them to medical research. Will the where the embryos will be destroyed in the process of researching infertility, researching genetic defects, stem cell research, whatever but these embryos will be destroyed through the research. Now I want to say up front that whenever a friend comes to you and says to you: do you think I’ve committed murder because I used an IVF technology and I did not implant all the embryos that I created in fact, we donated 10 of our 15 embryos to research are you saying we are murderers because your pro-life view seems to point that way?

I would encourage you at that point not to take the bait. Don’t go to the murder question. Do this instead. Very first thing: Express that you understand the pain of infertility, that you realize that this is not an easy thing for people to go through. In fact, I think it’s one of the most painful things, emotionally, that a couple will ever face. So you can acknowledge that you’re not compromising your principles, to acknowledge what is a real pain for millions of Americans suffering from infertility, then I would simply say this: I am not interested in making a judgment on you as an individual.

I just want to look at this thing and get it the truth. I want to look at it biblically, I want to look at it rationally, I want to understand the logic that’s in play and I can judge a behavior being wrong without judging you being wrong, and I have no interest in making a judgment on you. I’m going to leave that with the Lord to do. I just want to look at what’s the right thing to do and look at the best AR arguments pro and con, and stop there.

And that’s how you should always approach this. By the way, this works with abortion. When somebody says to you: okay, well, I’ve had an abortion. Are you calling me a baby murderer? I would not answer that question directly. I would again go back and say: look it. I’m not interested in labeling you. I am interested in getting at the truth about what’s right and what’s wrong, and I’ll leave the judgments to God, and I think you’re within your rights to do that.

In fact, I think you’re safe to do. Do that, and it allows you to focus on the evidence and the reasoning rather than getting people defensive because you’re judging them all right. So the first key word is excess. When IVF treatments are used, the embryos that are created far exceed the number the couple can reasonably implant and bring to birth. And so you have all these leftover embryos, the majority of which are going to be discarded, either through research or simply being let to die.

Now there is a third thing that could happen to them: they are stored indefinitely on ice. But again that still raises the question: what do we do with them? So that’s a problem. Excess. That’s the first keyword. Here’s the second keyword when it comes to IVF screen. In other words, once these embryos are created, they are not simply all implanted. No, no, no. What happens is the IVF technicians will screen them for defects. It’s literally a search and destroy mission. They will go in and test each of the embryos to see how fit they are to become a viable pregnancy, and those that are deemed unfit will be discarded or they will be donated to research.

And that is again an ethical problem for the Christian, because the biblical worldview is very clear: all humans have value because they bear the image of God. And because they bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood, meaning the intentional killing of an innocent human being is strictly not allowed in scripture. Exodus 23:7 teaches this, Proverbs 6:16 to19 teaches this. Matthew 5:21 teaches this, and a host of scriptures where God calls his people to moral account for indulging in shed Shing of innocent blood or hands that shed blood.

And those scriptures are multiple and we can’t go into all of them today, but they are there all right. That then raises us one question to answer: are these embryos human beings? And the unequivocal answer is yes, they are. Now, some Christians might say: well, wait a minute. These embryos were created through an unnatural means. In other words, instead of regular procreative methods of husband and wife coming together and, in their unitive relationship, producing offspring, these embryos were created through the manual method of combining sperm and egg in a test tube and therefore they’re probably not image bearers the way all of us are.

Nothing could be further from the truth. All human beings, regardless of the means of their coming to be, are living human beings who bear the image of their Mak, and this is true for these IVF embryos. They are human beings in the earliest stages of development. What else could they be? You couldn’t come up with a cat. You couldn’t come up with a dog. What would these embryos be actually, if not human beings? Of course they’re human beings. Their parents were human.

Human parents produce human offspring, whether that’s through natural means or through technologies like IVF. So these are living human beings, all right. So then, the next question is this: if they’re living human beings, why wouldn’t the commands against shedding innocent blood apply to them, like they do everybody else? And, of course, the answer is: they do apply to the embryos created through IVF, because, if they’re living human beings, they are image bearers in the earliest stages of development and therefore, to intentionally kill them through research or destruction in the lab is the same as abortion or doctor assisted suicide.

You are intentionally killing an innocent human being, and scripture would prohibit that for the reasons I just gave you. So, biblically speaking, these are embryos who bear the image of God, but there’s something else we need to think about as Believers, and it’s this: that there’s a worldview behind the idea of using excess embryos for medical research or simply discarding them, and that worldview is this: body self dualism. Now, don’t panic, I know that sounds like a graduate level term, but I’m going to unpack it for you.

Here’s what we mean by body self dualism, and you’ve all seen examples of this in your own conversations with people. Body self dualism says that the real you has nothing to do with your body. So in the case of embryos, the argument would be: look, the embryo may have a body, but it has no identity until it has thoughts, desires, conscious awareness, the ability to interact with its environment and with other people. And on body self dualism, what defines you has nothing to do with your body.

Rather, what defines you is your thoughts, your desires, more more to the point, your cognitive self. So the argument would: be well, these embryos don’t have a sense of self yet because they don’t have thoughts, they don’t have desires. They may have a body in the form of an early embryonic cluster, but they are not persons. There’s no identity there was no you there at that stage of development, because you didn’t have immediately exercisable thoughts or desires. That’s body self dualism.

Now I think you can see how that concept of the human person applies not only to embryonic stem cell research, not only to IVF, not only to abortion, but also the whole debate over transgenderism. A guy could say: I’m a man, but I’m really a female. I’m a female trapped in a man’s body. Notice what that assumes, that there’s a distinction between a person and their body. That is not the biblical view. The biblical view is we are a dynamic Union of body and soul, and God is in the process of redeeming both of them.

Our ultimate Destiny as Christians is is not to be free floating Spirits. We are going to have bodies. When Jesus rose from the dead, he did not rise as a ghost. He rose with a glorified and perfected body, one that will never again be subject to injury, death, Decay, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen to all of us. Paul is very clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that when we rise, We rise the same way Christ did. Christ was the first roots of all who believe in Jesus.

They will be, they will rise from the dead with glorified and perfected bodies. So the Bible puts a very strong emphasis on the importance of the body. It is only our secular culture that wants to bifurcate between the two and say there’s a distinction between a person and their body. The body is just mere physical matter. You can do whatever you want with it. The real you is your thoughts, your desires. So when couples go for these counseling appointments before they engage in things like IVF, and they raise questions about: well, what do we do with these leftover embryos we’re going to create?

Often what researchers will say to them is: well, don’t worry about it. These embryos have no thoughts, they have no feelings, they’re not self-aware, they don’t feel pain, there’s no identity there for you to worry about destroying. Well, that is not the biblical worldview and it’s certainly not the pro-life view, where we recognize that there’s a tight integration between body and person. They’re not separated the way our secular culture separates them. Now, what’s also interesting about this is, every time people want to separate person from body and justify destroying the body.

Here’s the problem. They always pick out traits that they never argue for as being decisive. For example, people will say things like: well, these embryos don’t have thoughts, yet they don’t have self-awareness, they don’t value their existence. Over time, to quote someone like Peter Singer or Michael Tulie, okay, well, wait a minute. Why are those traits value giving in the first place? Why do I have to value my existence? Not to be killed? A suicidal person doesn’t value their existence, but we still try to save them from taking their own lives right.

A Slave could be conditioned not to value his freedom not to value his life. He may be conditioned to see himself as utterly worthless, but that doesn’t mean he is worthless. Our desires sometimes do not align with reality. But on body self dualism, your immediate desires determine your identity and therefore your rights spring from your identity, not what you are ontologically now, on the pro-life biblical view, what you are ontologically is a human person from the moment you begin to exist.

We don’t distinguish body from person. We see them as unified. But on body self dualism, of course we segregate these things out and the results can be terribly destructive. Let me give you just a few examples. If your rights are based on, having desires, for example, there would be nothing wrong with indoctrinating a slave so he no longer desires his freedom. There would be nothing wrong, for example, with a surgeon altering the brain of a developing embryo before it has the capacity to desire anything and alterate, altering that brain to the point where that child will never have desires.

And then, when the child is 5 years old, he is killed so his bodily organs can be harvested. There’s nothing wrong with that. On body self-d dualism, because, after all, if the real you is your thoughts, your identity and your desire and you don’t have any, then there’s no you there. All there is is a body. But that seems to be the logic that’s in play here. We justify discarding these embryos or donating them for destructive research on grounds that there’s no person there yet, because there’s no thoughts there’s no identity there.

It’s just a body and we’re free to do whatever we want with physical matter. So that’s a very problematic view of the human person. I would also add that often times what parents are told is: well, these children haven’t implanted yet, and until they implant there’s no human being present. That’s just wrong from an empirical point of view. Human life does not begin with implantation. It begins when you combine the sperm and egg together and once that fertilization process is complete, sperm and egg die, they cease to exist and you have rise to an ontologically new being that is neither the mother neither the father, not sperm, not egg, but a distinct, living new human being.

That’s the science of embryology. So parents are often being misled at the worldview level. They’re being told: hey, these embryos have no sense of self yet it’s okay to kill them. There’s no person there. Or they’re being told factually wrong scientific evidence. They’re being told: oh, these kids haven’t implanted yet. These embryos aren’t implanted, therefore they’re not human beings yet. That’s simply false. Human life commences at conception and the medical literature is absolutely conclusive on that point. So it’s very important that parents understand that they are going to be told a lot of misinformation about these excess embryos.

So that first key word is excess. And then the second key word, as I mentioned a moment ago, is screen. What people want to do is screen these embryo for defects and say, Well, they’re not persons anyway, so we’re not destroying anything. We’re just grading the embryos based on their Fitness for survival. That may work in a darwinian universe. It does not align with a Christian worldview. Third thing you need to think about, or third key word that will help you here, is the word support.

Very important that we understand that when we engage in something like IVF, we are supporting an industry that has an absolute callous attitude toward human life. That industry is absolutely fine with creating human life and discarding it when it is no longer useful to the parents or the researchers. And that raises an important point: should Christians support an industry that is hellbent on discarding human life without a trace of remorse if it’s useful to do so? Should Christians support that industry?

And I think we have to say no now. I can sense the push back right now. People could say: well, nothing you’re telling us at the moment proves that IVF is intrinsically wrong. It’s only contingently so, it seems. What you’re saying, they say to me is that what makes it wrong is how we treat the embryos in question. And that’s true. I suppose you could think of a possible world where IVF technology could be used in ethical ways. But that doesn’t mean that the contingent case is not without Merit, and sometimes we face situations in life where it might not entail an absolute prohibition, but the contingencies are weighted so heavily against doing something that we ought to, if we’re of sound mind and we have a moral conscience.

Point to the fact that the contingencies simply rule us out from making the choice we might make otherwise, and I think this is one of those cases. The contingent wrongs here are so massive and so numerous. It raises the question: should we even go there now? Somebody could say, for example, what if we use IVF to create only one embryo at a time and if that embryo successfully can be implanted? We only implant one embryo at a time, so there’s never a risk of leftover embryos never a risk of excess, where the woman cannot carry more than one embryo and we have to go in and selectively reduce the embryos that are left over for the sake of her health.

What if we could do it successfully that way? All right, there could be a case where that could work, but again the cost will be horrendous and almost no one could afford to do that. You’re talking multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars involved if you go through multiple rounds of trying to have a successful pregnancy through IV F. But I also think we need to ask this issue and this leads us to our fourth important word: lessons. What lessons does IVF teach us about how we view human life?

And here’s my concern. Technology is not neutral. It teaches us lessons about things. Instead of viewing children as gifts that we receive and nurture, a lot of these assisted reproductive technologies, especially the ones that screen early embryos for defects and only select the ones with the traits most likely to be quote fit for survival, they teach us that human beings are Commodities. And not only are they Commodities, they are Commodities we intentionally create for the sake of Parental fulfillment. So children are no longer viewed as gifts that we receive, but Commodities that we construct so parents can be happy.

That’s something Christians need to look at as a worldview consideration as we look forward to 2025 and beyond, and what some of these assisted reproductive technologies are going to mean for informing the abortion debate, for example, and other important issues. Christians need to think deeply about this question: what makes humans valuable in the first place? And the clear biblical answer is this: humans are valuable and they have a right to life simply because they’re human, because all humans bear the image of God.

Therefore, if you are human, you have a right to life. You are an image Bearer, you have intrinsic value. It does not matter how gifted you are, how intelligent you are, how good-look you are thank God, It is based solely on the fact you are a human being. That’s what qualifies you as an image Bearer, and pro-life. Christians need to get that clear in their thinking as we move forward into this new Administration and as we move forward into an era when technology is far outpacing our moral thinking.

Thank you for joining us today. I hope you’ll like us on social media and recommend us to friends, and I look forward to seeing you the next time we gather.