IVF and the GOP: Keeping the right to life as the ‘North Star’

The so-called “Right to IVF” Act failed to pass the Senate this past week with a vote of 51-44, with only two Republicans voting in favor. Every Democrat voted for it, but many politicians on both sides of the aisle are pushing for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) access and the expansion of other problematic, life-destroying artificial reproductive technologies.

So, what exactly is in this bill, and why does the conversation around IVF matter?

The Right to IVF Act would make artificial reproductive technology (ART) a “right” for everyone, providing federal funding for fertility procedures, including for transgender individuals and same-sex couples to create a child through ART. The bill has very little to do with IVF and a whole lot to do with bolstering the multibillion-dollar artificial reproduction industry that is even more destructive to preborn babies than abortion.

This bill would further open the door to three-parent embryos, human-animal chimeras, experimentation on embryos, commercial surrogacy nationwide, and the buying, selling, and destruction of embryos. In other words, this bill promotes eugenic experiments and dystopian procedures on human embryos, and will lead to the trafficking of children, allowing babies to be commodified in the name of “science” and “family.” 

A more apt name for it would have been the “Human Embryo Exploitation and Destruction Act.”

Playing politics with the preborn

Good on Senate Republicans for blocking its passage, but many politicians on both sides of the aisle support IVF, as this highly lucrative but destructive procedure is being politicized to exploit sympathy and garner votes.

Democrats and Republicans are playing politics with the lives of the countless human embryos on the brink of destruction. When it comes to artificial reproductive technologies like IVF, Democrats have never been the party of life, so it’s not surprising they are supportive of anti-life procedures. “Pro-life” Republicans, however, need to wake up and become more thoughtful about the issue at hand, unashamedly standing for the preborn lives they claim to protect from conception.

Data shows only 7% of IVF embryos will lead to pregnancy, while the rest will either be destroyed, fail to implant, or are frozen in perpetuity. An estimated 1.5 million human embryos created from IVF are being stored on ice nationwide, not counting the “excess” embryos destroyed or who didn’t make the grade during each cycle of IVF. 

The fact that the fertility industry was quaking in its boots when Roe was overturned and the Supreme Court affirmed no constitutional “right” to abortion says a lot because this industry often relies on the “freedom” to destroy preborn life.

In the case of surrogacy, which is in lockstep with IVF, a baby can be created with the egg of one woman (its biological mother), gestated in the rented womb of another woman, and “purchased” by a stranger. Surrogacy is often employed by LGBT couples who cannot biologically have a child; thus they “buy” an egg or a sperm, “rent” a womb, and “create” a child or “designer baby” with traits to their liking. 

This process of surrogacy necessarily creates a broken situation by purposefully removing a child from its birth mother and can submit a child to motherlessness or fatherlessness. In the case of a donor egg, a donor sperm, or both, children are orphaned by one or both biological parents.

None of this is what the “party of life” should stand behind.

Moral implications of IVF

We should not support an industry that uses eugenic procedures and profits from the intrinsic longing of parents, who are often naive or simply unaware of how they and their children are being exploited in this process. 

Access to IVF is not a “right.” Instead, the fertility industry robs many children of their rights, namely the right to life and the right to both a mother and father.

The fertility industry in the U.S. is referred to as the “Wild Wild West” because it’s largely void of any regulation. Thus, countless human embryos are carelessly created to maximize profit, and then subsequently cast aside or destroyed.  

Germany, however, has some of the strictest laws when it comes to ART, largely because the history of eugenics and human experimentation under Nazism is present in the national psyche, understanding the weight of creating human life and the danger of choosing characteristics to suit one's own desires. German law prohibits the fertilization of more than three eggs, the “donation” of egg and sperm to third parties, embryo experimentation, and surrogate motherhood.

A life created through IVF is precious, just as any child conceived naturally. But, we must ask ourselves the implications of such a procedure and how many human embryos are harmed, cast aside, or forgotten along the way (as the fertility industry currently operates).

Instead of promoting problematic “solutions” that enrich the fertility industry and threaten human life, we should seek healing solutions to the infertility epidemic. The RESTORE Act (Reproductive Empowerment and Support through Optimal Restoration) from Sens. James Lankford and Cindy Hyde-Smith is a bill that would help parents have children by expanding restorative reproductive medicine and addressing root causes of infertility.

Consider, Christian

As Christians, it is important that we operate through a biblical lens, and it is inconsistent with the Bible to celebrate a life-destroying industry that often harms individuals made in the image of God. From a biblical worldview, any artificial reproductive technology that destroys human life is morally wrong. 

In any discussion about natural law and human rights, the right to life of each human embryo from fertilization should be the “North Star” guiding ethics and policy creation. Because when it comes down to it, human beings are the ones who are hurt.

Ultimately, this bill was never about building families, and it’s certainly not about helping children. It’s about bolstering the multibillion-dollar artificial reproductive technology industry.

Christians, as well as leaders on both sides of the aisle, should wake up to the human rights abuses being perpetrated by the fertility industry and stop playing political games with the lives of preborn humans inside (and outside) the womb.