Things that were science fiction only a few years ago are fact today.
Human life can be “manufactured” outside the womb. Wombs can be borrowed or bought. Embryos that have been in frozen suspension for decades can be implanted into an adoptive mother’s womb, which can often mean the developing child has existed longer than the woman who is carrying him to term.
As a pro-life apologist, I fielded questions about in vitro fertilization (IVF) occasionally for years, most often in private conversations following a pro-life training event. Since 2024, however, I am openly asked about IVF at every pro-life event.
The IVF ethical suitcase—biblical foundations, individual intents, procedures, and consequences—must be unpacked. The stakes are high, because when it comes to this technology, tiny image-bearers can be both the joyful products and the tragic victims, which leads us to the quintessential question: “Just because we can, should we?”
A few key factors are driving the recent uptick in controversy surrounding IVF. With a growing demand for access to the technology comes pushback from the pro-life community about the morality of IVF, a response that’s creating confusion in the culture. It’s as if the nation is looking at this conundrum, saying, “Wait! You’re the pro-family crowd. Why all the pushback against a technology that helps people have more babies?”
Because the pro-life community consists of more than Christians, a myriad of views surround IVF and other artificial reproductive technologies (ARTs). For pro-life Christians, though, there’s a narrower spectrum of views—from those who oppose IVF outright for theological or moral reasons to those who might permit the technology within strict biblical boundaries.
Even for Christians who find more conservative uses of IVF morally acceptable, conventional IVF practices frequently push past those biblical boundaries. Though the pro-life community is certainly in favor of having babies, the means used to bring new lives into the world matter. To form a thoughtful, careful approach is not inconsistent but consistent with the pro-life argument that every human life is unspeakably valuable from the moment of conception.
For the church to be able to navigate our cultural moment on IVF well, we must know what it is, consider the events that have sparked growing dialogue about it, and walk through various views held by the Christian pro-life community regarding it.
What Is IVF?
“In vitro” simply means “in glass.” With in vitro fertilization, the mother’s egg is fertilized in a lab, and the resulting embryo is inserted into the uterus through the vagina in hopes it will implant and result in a live birth.
IVF is fairly new. The first “test tube baby” was Louise Brown, born in England in 1978. As many as 12 million IVF babies have been born since Ms. Brown.
ARTs, like other forms of progress, are a morally mixed bag. IVF helps infertile couples bear children of their own when just a few decades ago the only alternative was adoption. However, as with so many advancing technologies, bioethicists have been slow to carefully consider the consequences of the means being used to bring about the desirable end: a healthy birth; and we still do not yet know if there are long-term effects for those children or their progeny as they age.
The pro-life view finds its happy home in the clear and beautiful doctrine of the imago Dei, which means that all human beings are endowed by their Maker with immeasurable worth. Reproductive technologies, through God’s grace and human dominion, can and do limit the impact of evils like infertility; but the same technologies can also attempt to supersede God-given human limits with disastrous, painful results. To say we need Christian voices at the table is an understatement.
Why the Latest Hubbub?
Three recent events have propelled IVF to the forefront of “life” conversations in the last couple of years: an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that sent shockwaves through the nation, an initiative from the Trump administration, and a California insurance mandate.
In February 2024, an Alabama Supreme Court ruling in LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine recognized embryos created through IVF as full-fledged children. The ruling was issued nearly four years after a rogue patient in a hospital wandered into the fertility clinic storage unit through an unsecured door and removed five cryogenically frozen embryos from a storage container. When the subzero temperature of the smaller storage tubes burned the patient’s hand, he dropped the embryos and they were killed.
The couples who lost the embryos sued for wrongful death under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The clinic claimed the act did not apply to embryos outside of the womb. The case was dismissed by a county circuit judge whose ruling was later overturned by the Alabama Supreme Court. Justice Jay Mitchell called the wrongful death act “sweeping and unqualified,” stating, “It applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation.”[1]
The cultural backlash was immediate and aggressive, though the humanity of the embryos was never in question since that had already been acknowledged by Alabama voters when, prior to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2023, they adopted a constitutional amendment directly aimed at protecting all unborn life. The LePage decision simply—and justly—applied the wrongful-death ruling to those embryonic children located outside of the womb when they died.
The ruling rippled through conventional media and social media like wildfire and resulted in a frenzy of immediate—and uninformed—reactions. A few fertility clinics in Alabama even canceled services temporarily, worried that the ruling might expose them to similar lawsuits because of the risk involved in handling embryos, fresh or frozen. In response, the Alabama legislature passed a law granting civil and criminal immunity for IVF clinics.
However, questions about the morality and legality of IVF still abound, and rightly so. If embryos created through IVF are full-fledged members of the human community, it is inevitable that practitioners be scrutinized and held accountable for human lives injured or lost, even though the technology helps couples conceive and deliver children who are biologically theirs.
The Trump administration stepped into the fray and, in October of 2025, released a two-part initiative to increase access to IVF and other fertility services. The president promised to lower the costs of popular fertility drugs and encouraged companies to include IVF coverage for employees. The targeted project was in part meant to alleviate the decreasing birth rates in the U.S.,[2] as well as the rise in infertility. According to a White House report, as many as one in eight couples is unable to conceive, and many of those are unable to afford IVF.[3]
In January of 2026, on the heels of the Trump initiative, California passed an IVF Insurance Mandate (SB 729), which requires fully insured health plans to cover the diagnosis and treatment of infertility. As for IVF, eligible California plans are obliged to pay for as many as three completed egg retrievals and unlimited embryo transfers, as well as any necessary fertility preservation, such as freezing eggs or sperm prior to cancer treatment. The coverage extends beyond married couples who are struggling to conceive and includes single individuals, LGBTQ+, and others who cannot conceive for non-medical reasons.
Naturally, the ability to create human life in a lab is inextricably connected to other major ethical concerns. In a secular society that has systematically taught that we can and should exercise god-like control over nature, we are steadily working to conquer human nature. As C.S. Lewis concluded in The Abolition of Man, “The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?”[4]
The true story of reality tells us that humanity, marriage, sex, and natural rights are real and purposeful and were set in place by an almighty Creator. We cannot expect to alter them without catastrophic results.
Is IVF Wrong?
Technologies that aid in procreation didn’t exist for women like Rachel and Hannah during Old Testament times. As Christians think through how biblical principles apply to ARTs, or whether they even should be used at all, there are bound to be understandable disagreements among those committed to biblical authority.
Some pro-life Christians are opposed to IVF outright for either theological reasons, moral reasons, or both. The traditional Roman Catholic view takes issue with all forms of ART because they remove the procreative element of the husband/wife sexual union from the unitive element. By God’s design, my Catholic friends argue, sex between a husband and wife unites the couple both physically and metaphysically in a true one-flesh union and must include the possibility of new life. Their opposition extends to many forms of contraception for the same reason. By surrendering the procreative activity to scientists in a laboratory, God’s design for married sex is violated.
Many non-Catholic, pro-life Christians agree with the Catholic position. Many argue the other side of the same coin—that by placing such emphasis on making a baby, ARTs strain the unity of the married couple and marital intimacy suffers. Still others oppose IVF on moral grounds. The ends may not justify the means, they say, especially as IVF is commonly marketed and practiced.
Conventional IVF raises a number of ethical alarms.
On average, having a child by IVF costs between $20,000 and $75,000, depending on medications, the possible use of donor eggs or sperm, and specialized procedures and/or testing that might be required.
Since children can only be conceived by egg-and-sperm fusion, collecting those gametes is the first step. Though it’s possible to extract sperm surgically, most often it’s collected in a sterile container through masturbation in a private room at a clinic or at home. Pornography is commonly promoted in fertility clinics to achieve “better” outcomes.
Extracting a woman’s eggs is more complicated. During normal ovulation, an ovary releases one mature egg. For conventional IVF, a woman is given strong fertility drugs that stimulate her ovaries to bring more eggs to maturation for release when she ovulates. Those eggs are typically collected surgically while she is sedated or under anesthesia. They can either be used “fresh” for an IVF cycle or frozen for later use or donation. It is not uncommon to see advertisements on university campuses asking college-aged women to consider egg donation for money, especially if they possess certain traits or abilities.
Since the average global success rate of IVF for all women is only 38–42 percent (approximately 55 percent for women below age 35 and as low as 5–8 percent after age 42), and because the process of creating embryos in the lab is costly, conventional IVF practitioners advise couples to produce as many embryos as possible. The reason is obvious. The more embryos, the more likely one might survive to birth. Once the embryos are produced, they undergo quality “grading” and are classified into roughly three categories: the strong, the average, and the weak. The strongest are chosen for transfer first. Many of the weak never make it that far.
There is no legal limit to how many embryos can be transferred to the uterus at once, but the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends no more than one to three depending on the patient’s age and other factors. Transferring more than one embryo can lead to risks and complications associated with carrying multiple babies such as premature birth, lower birth weights, or recommendations for selective termination (i.e., abortion) to decrease the number of fetuses in the womb during pregnancy.
If IVF can be pursued in a morally sound way, each step of that process must fall within biblical boundaries.
Biblical Boundaries for IVF and Other ARTs
Christian bioethicist Scott Rae writes about “biblical fenceposts” that provide boundaries when considering technologies that aid infertility.[5]
The first involves a theological perspective on technology. We have been creating and developing technologies since the garden to assist us in our dual mandate to rule and to cultivate. Since the fall, those technologies, when wielded wisely, can be good gifts that limit the impact of evil. ARTs that operate within biblical boundaries can reverse infertility, which is no less a result of the fall than heart or liver disease.
A second biblical fencepost is the unquestionable imago Dei status of the unborn. Scripture tells us that every single human being bears God’s image. Embryology, the branch of science dedicated to the study of embryos, establishes the humanity of the unborn from the moment of conception. Philosophy bolsters the science. There is no morally relevant difference between the embryos we once were and the adults we are today that would have justified killing us back then but not now.
These lines of reasoning form the basic structure of the pro-life argument. Their implication for ARTs, including IVF, is clear. Any technology that intentionally harms or kills an innocent human being is wrong. Once embryos have been created, they ought not be “graded” as more or less valuable. All should be allowed to be carried to term. None should be discarded, because God’s image-bearers are not disposable, even when they’re small. Selective termination, which is nothing other than abortion, is not permissible.
Given the way it is normally pursued, conventional IVF is out of the running, leaving only more conservative approaches for Christians who are not altogether opposed to ARTs for theological reasons. Minimal stimulation IVF results in the production of fewer embryos. If a couple decides an IVF route is viable, they should not produce more embryos than they are willing and able to carry to term. Finally, there is natural cycle IVF, which only creates a single embryo from the egg a woman releases during her normal ovulation cycle.
A third fencepost is the biblical understanding that procreation is intended by God only within the bounds of marriage. Covenantal marriage is marked by exclusivity (one man and one woman), permanence (one lifetime), and sex that is oriented towards procreation (one flesh). This doesn’t mean that every time married individuals have sex a baby is conceived, but it does mean that, by design, sex between a man and a woman is naturally oriented toward the possibility of new life.
This boundary means that third-party (or donor) gametes are not a morally permissible option for any couple. Same-sex couples, whose union is sterile by nature, cannot produce a child without donor sperm or a donor egg and a surrogate. Additionally, in each of the latter scenarios, at least one “parent” is biologically excluded.
This fencepost excludes pornography altogether.
A fourth fencepost deals with the way ARTs impact how we view children. Children are not commodities, and no one has a “right” to a child. The ability to create life in a lab automatically comes with the risk of commodifying the “products.” The more the technology progresses, the more technicians assume mastery over nature and demand the ability to manufacture children on their own terms. The fertility industry is big business. Paired with a society in which the average age of marriage has increased startlingly in just a few decades[6]—and with it the average childbearing age—more men and women are delaying having children until they’ve established their educational and career goals. Their biology betrays them, though, especially with women. The likelihood of having a baby decreases greatly in their later 30s and 40s.
Additionally, with the ability to freeze genetic material and create embryos for anyone able and willing to pay for the services (or have their insurance policy do so), a perceived “right to children” increases. Single women or men who want a baby but not a spouse are able to arrange having one. Same-sex couples who want children but are unable to create them naturally claim a right to have a family like everyone else.
Nowhere in Scripture do we read that anyone has a right to have children. They are gifts, not commodities for sale.
As an addendum to this fencepost, there is a clear ethical difference between adopting an existing child in need and creating a child for the sole purpose of adopting him or her out. There are millions of children who do not belong to a family, born and unborn. One consequence of conventional IVF practices is that at least 1.5 million embryonic children exist in a state of frozen suspension. For each of these children, adoption must be viewed as a legitimate rescue mission. Organizations like Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program have addressed the real problem of “leftover embryos”—embryos created through IVF that couples would not or could not carry to term for a variety of reasons—by developing means to adopt embryos in storage. In these cases, adoptive mothers receive their adopted children in the womb and give birth to them.
Finally, there must be a fencepost that keeps God’s goodness and sovereignty in clear view even in the midst of brokenness. If it becomes clear it’s not possible to have a baby that is biologically yours, that reality must be accepted with grief and with grace. The pain of infertility is real and is often suffered privately. Even within the church, couples who have not been able to have a child tend to feel that pain acutely when children are spotlighted on Mother’s and Father’s Days, annual Christmas pageants, baby dedications, etc.
While the church can do more to care for couples who struggle with infertility, it’s clear that when individuals decide to have a baby no matter the cost, a good desire has become disordered. Idolatry is a sneaky sin, but it is real, nonetheless.
Final Thoughts
These biblical boundaries are unbending and rightly so. Valuable human lives hang in the balance.
Given this reality, many Christians are learning more about IVF and speaking out about the very real risks, the tremendous loss incurred when at least half the embryos created through conventional IVF never make it to birth, and the hubris of creating more children than a mother can bear only to freeze them indefinitely. Even informed Christians who advocate more conservative forms of the technology are hesitant to recommend it at the outset.
When it comes to IVF, your voice is needed more than ever to graciously inform others about what’s at stake with our God-granted, imago Dei status.
[1] Howard Koplowitz, “Frozen Embryos are Children, Alabama Supreme Court rules in couples’ wrongful death suits,” AL.com, February 22, 2024, https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2024/02/frozen-embryos-are-children-alabama-supreme-court-rules-in-reviving-couples-wrongful-death-suits.html.
[2] In 2024, the U.S. had an average birth rate of 1.6 children per family, much lower than the 2.1 children per family necessary to sustain the population. Rachel Walsh, “Does the U.S. Have a Fertility Crisis?” John Hopkins University, January 6, 2026, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/is-the-us-birth-rate-declining.
[3] “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Actions to Lower Costs and Expand Access to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and High-Quality Fertility Care,” The White House, October 16, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/10/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-announces-actions-to-lower-costs-and-expand-access-to-in-vitro-fertilization-ivf-and-high-quality-fertility-care/.
[4] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001; first published 1944), 59.
[5] Scott Rae, “Ethics at the Beginning of Life, Part 2” in Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics, 4th ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2018), 165–200.
[6] From 21 for women and 23 for men in 1970 to 28.6 and 30.5 in 2022. Brad Wilcox and Alan J. Hawkins, “The Marriage Paradox,” Institute for Family Studies, August 30, 2024, https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-marriage-paradox-.