When faced with infertility, Amanda and Jeff Walker had a baby through in vitro fertilization but were left with extra embryos — and questions. Tori and Sam Earle “adopted” an embryo frozen 20 years earlier by one other couple. Matthew Eppinette and his wife selected to forgo IVF out of ethical concerns and haven’t any children of their very own.
All are guided by a powerful Christian faith and imagine life begins at or around conception. And all have wrestled with the identical weighty questions: How do you construct a family in a way that conforms along with your beliefs? Is IVF an ethical option, especially if it creates more embryos than a pair can use?
“We live in a world that tries to be black and white on the topic,” Tori Earle said. “It’s not a black-and-white issue.”
The dilemma reflects the age-old friction between faith and science at the center of the recent IVF controversy in Alabama, where the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos have the legal status of youngsters.
The ruling — which decided a lawsuit about embryos that were unintentionally destroyed — caused large clinics to pause IVF services, sparking a backlash. State leaders devised a brief solution that shielded clinics from liability but didn’t address the legal status of embryos created in IVF labs. Concerns about IVF’s future prompted U.S. senators from each parties to propose bills aiming to guard IVF nationwide.
Laurie Zoloth, a professor of faith and ethics on the University of Chicago, said arguments about this contemporary medical procedure touch on two ideas fundamental to the founding of American democracy: freedom of faith and who counts as a full person.
“People have different ideas of what counts as a human being. Where to attract the road?” said Zoloth, who’s Jewish. “And it’s not a political query. It’s really a spiritual query.”
For many evangelicals and other Christians, IVF will be problematic, and a few call for more regulation and education. The process is “inherently unnatural,” and there are significant concerns referring to “the dignity of human embryos,” said Jason Thacker, a Christian ethicist who directs a research institute on the Southern Baptist Convention.
“I’m each pro-family and pro-life,” he said. “But simply because we will do something, it doesn’t mean we should always.”
THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF IVF
Kelly and Alex Pelsor of Indianapolis turned to a fertility specialist after attempting to have children naturally for 2 years. Doctors said her best probability for a baby was through IVF, which accounts for around 2% of births within the U.S.
“I used to be truthfully very scared,” said Pelsor, who believes life begins as soon as growth starts after sperm and egg meet. “I didn’t know which technique to go.”
Pelsor and her husband talked and prayed. She began attending a Christian infertility support group called Moms within the Making. She said she began to feel “this inexplicable peace about moving forward with IVF.”
Pelsor, 37, underwent a retrieval procedure in March 2021 and got five eggs. Three were in a position to be fertilized, and two embryos grew to the blastocyst stage and were in a position to be frozen. One was transferred to her womb in July 2021, and her daughter was born in March 2022.
“I really imagine she’s a miracle from God,” said Pelsor, who works for a nonprofit that features a nondenominational church. “She wouldn’t be here without IVF.”
Pelsor miscarried the opposite embryo after it was transferred last 12 months. So she never needed to personally face the moral quandary of what to do with extras.
Amanda Walker of Albuquerque, New Mexico, did.
She and her husband turned to IVF after trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant naturally for five years after which having a miscarriage.
She wound up with 10 embryos. She miscarried five. Three became her children: an 8-year-old daughter and twins that can turn 3 in July.
That left her with two more, which she agonized and prayed about.
She said she often wonders what number of other women find themselves in the identical position she did after the egg retrieval, “where they’re just naive concerning the process at first,” fertilizing too many eggs after which not knowing what to do.
“We didn’t need to destroy them,” said Walker, 42. “We imagine that they’re children.”
CONSIDERING THE ETHICS OF IVF
When Matthew Eppinette, a bioethicist, speaks about IVF, he hears many similar stories.
Couples tell him, “’Well, we got way into the method, and we had these frozen embryos, and we just never realized that we were going to should make decisions about this,’” said Eppinette, executive director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity at Trinity International University, an evangelical school based in Illinois.
“There’s a big educational component to this, each I feel inside the church, and perhaps even inside the medical community, to be certain that individuals are aware of what all is encompassed in IVF.”
Dr. John Storment, a reproductive endocrinologist in Lafayette, Louisiana, said he talks with patients about such issues, and a few with similar beliefs about when life begins take steps to attenuate or eliminate the danger of additional embryos. For example, doctors can limit the variety of eggs they’re prone to get by giving less ovary-stimulating medication. Or they’ll fertilize two or three eggs — hoping that one embryo grows — and freeze another eggs. If just a few eggs must be thawed and fertilized later, he estimated that may cost around $5,000 on top of the standard $15,000 to $25,000 for a round of IVF.
Another option is to transfer one or two embryos to the womb immediately without freezing any embryos or eggs. But if that doesn’t work, a patient could face one other costly egg retrieval.
Thacker said that kind of “fresh” transfer is more ethically permissible than freezing embryos for an uncertain fate, “but I still don’t think it’s advisable.”
Religious scholars say the IVF issue is basically under-explored amongst evangelical Protestants, who lack the clear position against the procedure taken by the Catholic Church (even when individual Catholics vary in whether or not they adhere to the church’s teachings on reproductive ethics).
Still, Eppinette said most evangelical leaders would advise couples to create only as many embryos as they’re going to make use of and never leave any cryogenically frozen indefinitely. In his own life, Eppinette goes further, saying “my personal conviction is against IVF.”
That’s why he and his wife weren’t willing to try it once they faced infertility within the Nineteen Nineties and her one pregnancy led to miscarriage.
ADOPTING EMBRYOS CREATED BY IVF
Some couples and spiritual leaders find a solution in embryo adoption, a process that treats embryos like children in need of a house. Snowflakes, a division of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, has offered this service to greater than 9,000 families since its inception in 1997, with greater than 1,170 babies born. Executive Director Elizabeth Button said they got an influx of inquiries after the Alabama ruling.
“We were established for the only purpose of providing a way for individuals who have remaining embryos after doing IVF to then give you the option to gift those to an adoptive family,” she said. “Embryos are children waiting to be born.”
For the Walkers, Snowflakes offered an ideal probability to support life and help others. They selected an open adoption that allowed them to select and get to know the family that may be adopting their embryos.
The adopting mom miscarried one embryo but gave birth to a daughter with the opposite. The two families now touch base weekly. They even plan to vacation together.
Couples on the opposite side of the adoption arrangement say it’s been a very good solution for them, too.
The Earles of Lakeland, Florida, learned about Snowflakes through an adoption agent they were referred to by a fellow church member. They had struggled with infertility for years and were considering traditional adoption. IVF wasn’t an option due to concerns about leftover embryos.
“We’re believers,” said Tori, 30, who belongs to a Baptist church where her dad once was pastor. “So we just prayed about it, and we asked the Lord to only sort of guide us.”
The idea of embryo adoption resonated. They see embryos as lives in need of a spot to grow, and Tori desired to be pregnant. They adopted 13 that had been frozen for 20 years by one other couple. One became their daughter Novalie, born last April. They have 11 more embryos — one didn’t survive — and hope to have one other three or 4 children, knowing that not every embryo grows right into a baby.
“God can use every part to His glory,” said Sam Earle, 30. “There’s actually a side that you think about with IVF: the ethics of freezing more embryos than you wish. … But for families who struggle with infertility, it’s a gorgeous opportunity.”
Tori views pregnancy with a donated embryo as nurturing “what was already established,” she said.
Amanda and Ryan Visser of Sterling, Colorado, feel the identical way. When they faced infertility after having a toddler naturally 14 years ago, they were uncomfortable about IVF. “At some point,” Ryan said, “you are feeling such as you’re playing God an excessive amount of.”
They fostered and adopted two children, and later heard about Snowflakes on the evangelical podcast “Ask Pastor John.” They adopted three embryos, and two became their twin boys, born in October. They plan to make use of the one they’ve left or donate it to another person.
“God creates families in so some ways,” said Amanda, 42.
MOVING FORWARD
Caroline Harries isn’t sure how she and her husband Colby will ultimately construct the family they need. They’ve never done fertility treatments and aren’t pursuing any options immediately as Colby undergoes chemotherapy for testicular cancer. But they’re open to numerous ways of becoming parents.
Harries continuously talks with other couples facing infertility because the founding father of Moms within the Making, which has 90 groups worldwide. She said she’d never personally tell members pursuing IVF what to do with extra embryos, but “as a corporation, we’d recommend, hands down, to not discard them or to donate them to science.”
She said the recent IVF controversy in Alabama raised vital issues. “It adds this level of responsibility for each the clinicians and the patients to think through: OK, what are we going to do with these embryos?” she said. “It perhaps even adds this level of awareness to the gravity of the situation that these couples find themselves in.”
Other Christians who faced infertility agreed, and a number of other said they support the Alabama court deeming embryos “extrauterine children.” When Amanda Walker heard about it, she said, “my heart was jumping because that’s my belief.” Amanda Visser said she hopes it “paves the best way for more states to think about the dignity of human embryos.”
Still, no couples said IVF needs to be stopped, although some wondered whether more regulation or education is required.
But Matthew Lee Anderson, an assistant professor of ethics and theology at Baylor University who wrote an argument against IVF, said tighter controls seem unlikely after the Alabama decision.
“There’s going to be no path toward providing accountability for fertility clinics because any effort to speak concerning the need for regulation or oversight goes to be viewed as an try to shut in-vitro fertilization down,” Anderson said.
He said the anti-abortion movement hasn’t done enough to take care of the political implications of the concept that human rights are conferred at conception.
Zoloth, the Chicago scholar, said the lack of IVF can be huge and “really unfair” if it “was only due to a spiritual argument held only by one section of the population.”
Even amongst Christians who see embryos as treasured lives, religious experts say there’s a large spectrum of complicated views on IVF. Kelly Pelsor, for one, doesn’t need to see it threatened anywhere.
“When clinics began pausing their services and it looked uncertain for a moment, it broke my heart,” Pelsor said. “I’m continuing to wish for a way forward that IVF access would remain open to families — and anything is feasible.”
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Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky; Stanley from Washington, DC. Religion author Peter Smith contributed from Pittsburgh.
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