Amid an continued national dialogue around IVF after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling, efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to “protect IVF”, and Tim Walz’s Stolen Vitro discussion, the Dallas Morning News published,” I’m a pro-life priest. IVF made it possible for me to father. It was reprinted by Fox News. Even though the artist, Jeremiah Johnston, has a Ph. D., M. A., M. Div., and B. A., he gets both science and Christianity bad.  ,
As usual with issues of marriage and family, the child structures himself ( and his family ) as patients. Johnston particulars the anguish that infertile women endured. Although infertility is very painful, when we receive IVF incorrectly or in any other parental issues, it’s the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been discarded and frozen by the fertility business who are the true victims, not the adults.
I do n’t know what his pastoral duties have involved, but my Baptist pastor-turned-Navy chaplain husband and I have been in ministry for 30 years. And I’ll show you anything true: All experiences. This call it” a thorn in their side,” which God says” My grace is sufficient for you” applies to almost all Christians I know. Whether that’s unwanted same-sex attraction, unwanted singleness, longing for a healed marriage, a wayward son, a disabled daughter, chronic illness, or infertility — it’s hard to name a Christian to whom God does n’t seem to be saying,” Not on this side of heaven” . ,
Our desires, even for great things, are not a license to get matters of life, à la Sarah and Hagar, into our own hands — because the result is the exchange of suffering from adult to child. Yet that’s the path Johnston and his wife traveled, pursuing” the modern medical miracle of IVF” and even suggesting that God “inspired]them ] to do everything]they ] could to become pregnant” . ,
Johnston makes clear that God’s plan for his folks is mistake. Regardless of the cost, the Lord does no “inspire us” to satisfy our individual needs, especially if it makes the fragile to make a sacrifice for the powerful. Instead, God mandates that his citizens defend children.  ,
In the first century, child safety required rejecting contraception and murder, adopting youngsters who had been “exposed”, and standing against the gender and abuse of children. Now, we find ourselves manifesting our “pure and divine faith before God” in the same way: rejecting pregnancy, adopting children, and standing against their gender and misuse. While we are no longer defending children’s right to life by battling the horrible first-century process of child “exposure”, we are battling the 21st-century danger of lab-created babies who are being mass-produced, debased, and treated to eugenic-level screenings by a nearly regulation-free, multibillion-dollar industry. Christians are not permitted to play any part in it.
Johnston continues the” I am the victim” narrative by describing how they had to accept the “financial and emotional risk” of IVF, but he does n’t provide any details about the large number of children who lost their lives as a result. This is the crux of the anti-IVF position. We do n’t dispute Johnston and his wife’s parents ‘ desire for children or reject their parenting. I assume they are. Because we are aware of the unfathomable destruction that this industry causes in our smallest citizens, numbers that make the abortion industry envious.
Johnston then erects several well-stuffed strawmen. The apologist asserts that “women struggling with infertility are being shamed with religious jargon, with which some claim that IVF lacks the” mystery of natural conception” or that children conceived through IVF are less than humans.
I work closely with the most staunch pro-life, and therefore IVF-critical, voices including Allie Beth Stuckey, Lila Rose, the Colson Center, Kristan Hawkins, Seth Gruber, and 97514860″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>Stephanie Gray Connors. I looked through my notes and discovered that a total of zero said or believed that IVF babies are “less than human.” In fact, we’ve been told repeatedly that each child born through IVF is precious and deserving of protection. We have the audacity to say that every child created through IVF deserves protection, even the 93 to 97 percent of those who do not survive this process. Because of this, we are so committed to protecting child dignity.
Christian critics oppose IVF not because it lacks” the mystery of natural conception” but because ethicists and theologians, in both Catholic and Protestant circles, understand that God intends for sex, marriage, and babies to be an indissoluble triad. Children are always the victims when a man tore apart one of the other two. The 1.5 million embryos in perpetual frozen storage, the undisclosed number of little lives donated to research, and the small humans discarded because they were not genetically “fit” or the wrong sex demonstrate that is certainly the case with IVF. It’s not a “mystery” problem. It’s a child victimization problem.
Then Johnston adds something I can only hope is a typo. ” An embryo is not synonymous with a child”, he tells us, noting that “attach]ing ] in a mother’s womb” is the actual sacred moment, not conception.  ,
A Christian ethicist friend remarked that by this bizarre logic, an embryo born via a ( thankfully not-yet-existent ) artificial womb would not be a child. His justification is neither thoughtful nor Christian for a man like Johnston who wants to “teach Christians to become Thinkers and Thinkers to Become Christians.” When a supposedly “pro-life” pastor must use abortionist talking points, something else happens.
Sure, there was a time when our origins were more mysterious, so we charted life as beginning at “quickening”, when a woman could feel the baby move. However, Johnston lives in the 21st century when he can open an embryology textbook or type a few words into Google and discover that biologists agree that a new human life is born at fertilization rather than birth, quickening, or even even implantation.
When sperm and egg meet, a new genetic code is created, and at that moment life begins. Call it what you will, the very earliest stages of human life are unquestionably the same origin that I, you, Mr. and Mrs. Johnston, his five living IVF children, and the undisclosed number of his IVF embryos that were deselected for implantation all share.  ,
How could Johnston not refute the idea that embryos are lost during the IVF procedure? Fertility doctors unashamedly broadcast that grading, selecting, and discarding embryos are critical to their business model. Instead, Johnston explains that some natural pregnancies fail as well, so it’s acceptable to throw out any unwanted lab-created babies.
Although it’s true that not all babies born the old-fashioned way will ever become adults, 100 % of those babies at least have a chance of life. This contrasts starkly with the lab-created babies, who will be frozen or discarded before they ever understand the warmth of their mother’s womb. There is a significant difference between spontaneous miscarriages and adults deciding whether their little lives should live or die, both ethically and biblically.  ,
But then Johnston stumbles into truly unscientific territory by asserting that the “female body does naturally]create multiple embryos ] throughout its life …” Here the reader, or homeschooled sixth grader, will note that the female body does not create multiple embryos, nor even single embryos. The female body needs a contribution from a male body for that. But at this point, it’s clear Johnston is reaching for any justification for his anti-life, anti-Christian choices. And he does so by deviating from biological reality.
He then draws inspiration from pro-life advocates by attempting to redefine the role that mothers and dads play in their God-given ability to raise their children.
Hm. NO. Because adult desire is being elevated above their fundamental right to life, the whole point of pro-life is to protect children’s lives from forces who want to snuff them out. And unfortunately, when it comes to embryonic children, the baby-making industry of IVF is racking up numbers that surpass the baby-taking industry of abortion.  ,
He concludes by saying that “prohibiting IVF will indeed prevent children from entering our world.” IVF intentionally prevents the vast majority of the children it creates from already entering this world, which is a stomach-churning reality. Only a small portion of the children who were born through IVF today have had their unfortunate beginnings in a laboratory. That is compared to the 2 percent of those who were born through IVF. The majority of the lives it saves are fatal as a result of IVF.
If he were honest, Johnston’s headline would have been,” I wanted a thing, therefore biology and theology needed to bend so I could have it” . ,
Christianity has a name for that. It’s idolatry.
