In societies that have abstracted sex from reproduction, its views of both sex and children will be perverted. It will be possible to pursue sex without the obligation to raise children. It will also be possible to have children without copulation. It becomes possible to commodify sex by outsourcing it to institutions like pornography or prostitution. It also becomes possible to commodify children by outsourcing them to industries like IVF services. Because we have done these things, both sex and children have become multi-billion dollar consumer industries with large interest groups, larger consumer pools, and even larger numbers of people who are indifferent and disinterested in how these represent the downfall of their society.
When children are treated as commodities and accessories, it becomes almost impossible to not dehumanize them. At the first step on this slippery slope, future generations are sacrificed to Baal and Molech through birth registration and social security enrollment. On a jurisdictional level, their parents abandon them to subject citizenship under civil fathers who exercise the right to teach them in public schools, pressgang them into military service, provide for them with socialist welfare, and enslave them in corvée bondage.
After a few generations of breaking down the family in this way, children will start to be seen as even more expendable unto the point of even death, through surgical abortion and hormonal birth control; but also, as we will see, through IVF. We will also make the case for the fact that IVF is a wicked and dehumanizing process that will always result in the death of children. The practice must be abolished by a repentant people who learn to love their neighbor as themselves and want to be instruments of justice in a world that hates children.
IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization, stemming from the Latin for “Fertilization in the glass.” The first successful birth of a child conceived through IVF happened in July of 1978 in Manchester, England when Louise Brown was born to John and Lesley Brown. This occurred because doctors Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards, and Jean Purdy artificially fertilized, in a petri dish, gametes extracted from Lesley with gametes extracted from John. They created several new lives in this way, then injected one or more of these persons into Lesley’s uterus. Louise implanted, began to grow and mature through stages of development and eventually be birthed into the loving arms of her parents on July 25th, 1978.
But what about those children who had to compete with Louise for the claim to implant in her mother’s uterine wall? They died hungry, homeless, and unloved. And what about those children who were never injected in the first place? Many of them died, discarded as medical waste, also hungry, homeless, and unloved. The rest were frozen in cryogenic receptacles, icy prison;, many of them serving several consecutive life sentences in suspended animation without due process, as innocent victims of mad scientists and their own, uncaring parents.
One of these little snowflakes, Natalie, was later conceived by Lesley through IVF, four years later. Even though the girls were born years apart, they were the same age from conception. John and Lesley received two daughters in this transaction. The mad scientists received a Nobel Prize. So, who cares if several more children, the siblings of Louise and Natalie, had to die and be dehumanized in the process, right?
97,128 IVF “successful” cycles were started in the year 2021 in the United States. This tally does not number the amount of children implanted or the amount of children created, or the number of children that did not survive every stage of gestation. It only accounts for the number of children born. In 2021, a total of 238,126 mothers started 413,776 IVF cycles. That is almost two attempts per mother for one year, and less than half of the mothers carried one child to term out of two tries per mother. In the same year. This is just in the United States alone. Globally, the number of IVF cycles has risen to more than three million a year. It is common for anywhere from 10 to 30 eggs to be harvested and fertilized, and thus 10 to 30 children to be created in each cycle. It is plain to see that IVF invariably and statistically results in the mass murder of children, per cycle.
After fertilizing several eggs in a petri dish, and after five or six days of growing and maturing in the solution in which they were created, the 10 to 30 children reach the blastocyst stage and pass under the careful eye of the embryologist who looks at several factors such as cell mass and wall continuity, to determine which children will be given a chance to continue living and which will be either discarded, frozen, or sold for experiments. The embryologist grades children for the vitality like veterinarians examine horses for sale or, more saliently, like surgeons would prepare slaves for auction.
As such, out of the many children created, it is common practice to pick only two for implantation into the uterus. The survival (or implantation) rate for these children who are thrown like dice into the womb of their mother is less than 40%. It is not uncommon, however, to attempt more than two for implantation. If many celebrities have more than one child at a time (statistically, the rich and famous are attracted to the glamour of commodifying families) then that means, statistically, more than two children are injected at a time to produce two births.
If, for instance, in the case of “the Octomom,” someone gave birth to eight children, then more than eight children were competing for space in the endometrium to implant. It is optimistic that only two out of, on average, 20 children might be chosen for implantation at a time. Optimistically, both might survive. Realistically, most often none survive. Sometimes only one does survive. That leaves eighteen that are either discarded or slated to be imprisoned in a freezer.
If 238,126 mothers started IVF in 2021, and (on average) 20 embryos were created for each cycle, and only 97,128 IVF children were born in 2021, then that means, a median estimate of 4,665,392 children either died, were discarded, or have been trapped in a freezer. In one year. The number of mothers that attempt IVF has been geometrically rising since its first “successful” attempt in 1978. This means that the number of children dying or being frozen as a result of IVF has been geometrically, and disproportionately, increasing since 1978.
Placing one child in a frozen prison is dehumanizing, and worthy of 24-hour media coverage, mass protesting, and moral outrage from the entire population of the world. Placing millions of children a year for decades into a frozen prison is a statistic. Where are our priorities?
Roughly 625,978 children were murdered by surgical abortion alone in 2021. 4,665,392 children suffered under IVF in the same year. Of course, neither encroach on the insurmountable tally of children discarded in hormonal contraception. Which method is killing more children? Which method is more palatable to the culture? About which method are Christians not only more apathetic, but are happily engaging in and citing as “God’s blessing?” If you can be persuaded of anything here, let it be that Abortion and IVF are absolutely of the same branch of evil.
Although we have discussed that IVF is responsible for as many as, if not many more deaths than surgical abortion, but there are a multitude of other problems which make IVF intolerable. IVF goes directly against God’s sovereignty over the womb and usurps His role as the giver of not just life but of children, which He says are a blessing. It places yet another aspect of life over which Jesus should be King, and grants its jurisdiction to yet another man-made institution. It is yet another practice in which “christians” participate while taking Christ’s name in vain.
IVF dehumanizes children in a multitude of ways. They are trafficked wrongfully and without consent. They are often times held captive, frozen in cryo-prisons. They are often sold as lab rats to be used in embryonic stem cell research. They are most often discarded as nothing more than medical waste. Furthermore, even the embryos that are chosen for implantation were dehumanized as they were looked over through the embryologist’s microscope just as a buyer looks over livestock, jewelry, or some other piece of property or equity, like a plantation owner might inspect his slave for defect or undesirability.
IVF is a direct denial of the imago Dei, the inherent dignity that God has placed on his most favored creation, reducing him to a custom ordered designer handbag possessing favorable traits, and discarding the defects. It is a direct denial of the incarnation of Jesus. Our Lord, the word made flesh, entered the world as an embryo, as one of the least of these. To our shame, IVF is a summary explanation of how we have “done for the least of these.“
IVF helps to perpetuate the consumer mentality towards children, demanding that having children is a right, no different from surgical abortion reveals the mentality of demanding that murdering children is a right. It dethrones God as the arbiter of both life and death.
IVF abolishes the God-given instruction of adoption which he has providentially established as the model for his entire Kingdom, but also has historically used to bless barren couples with children, Because of the selfishness of many to perpetuate their own heritage, genes, traits, or any other outward thing, they rebel against God and misuse the means with which He has blessed them.
The average cost of IVF in the United States is between $14,000 and $20,000 including medications, genetic testing, cryopreservation, and storage fees. The average cost to adopt a child from foster care is under $2800. Instead of adopting five orphans for the same price, people who procure IVF decided to create twenty more and kill most of them in the pursuit of a single child.
Most professing Christians sympathize with the practice of IVF. When confronted with its synonymity with surgical abortion, most of them will say something to the effect of “you can’t equate abortion to IVF, they are completely different things done by completely different people for completely different reasons.” But the logic admits that while stabbing a child to death is not the exact same as starving a child to death, that they should both be treated and regarded as murder. The intention of the murderer makes no difference. The ends do not justify the means.
Another excuse that often gets made is that “IVF isn’t inherently evil, but rather is in need of regulation.” People have illustrated various fantasies in which only one child would be created at a time, and only one child would be implanted at a time. Obviously, this would still result in the same 40% implantation rate, meaning that 60% of the time the single child that is placed into his or her mother’s womb will die.
But what if, with the advances in science, that failure rate were to be dramatically reduced? What if in time it could be ensured that 99.9% of the children conceived through IVF and inserted into their mother’s wombs would successfully implant, grow, and be born? Would it be justifiable, then, even with all the other problems that I mentioned aside? Certainly not. It is an unjust society which will tolerate the dehumanizing destruction of one child so that 99 may exist through mad science.
Another excuse, perhaps the most common one: “Is the risk of mortality in IVF more reprehensible than the risk of miscarriage in a natural pregnancy?” Of course it is. Even if rates of miscarriage greatly surpassed the rates of IVF deaths, the latter would still be more egregious. Because IVF is the act of playing God with the creation of life, any failure in the process results in manslaughter at best, homicide at worst, and criminal negligence at every turn. Miscarriage, unless caused because the mother is also taking hormonal birth control, can only ever be regarded as accidental death or a natural death. A man falling off a cliff to his death is a tragedy in need of lament. A man pushed off a cliff to his death is a conspiracy in need of justice.
What is the right way?
The right way is obviously to trust God, always. He has a plan and purpose for the sparrow as well as for the human condition. If He blesses you with two biological children, then praise Him. If He blesses you with twenty biological children, then praise Him. If He does not bless you with any children, then praise Him. Trust God to grow or not to grow your family. Do not attempt to stop Him from blessing you with children, and do not attempt to force His hand at blessing you with children. Both are indicative of a wrong view of children, a wrong view of God, and an addition of insult to injury for all the orphans who yearn to be your blessing.
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
All the aforementioned indictments are important to mention when discussing IVF out in the culture or outside an IVF clinic, but it is important to note that the uncontrollable risk of death that is incurred by the embryo alone is why IVF must be abolished. It is likely that IVF is wrong for a thousand more reasons than what are listed here, but it seems evident to that if we do not clarify in our speech that IVF is an inherently murderous practice that we will not be effectively communicating the truth to our communities. We can at no point justify taking such a risk, at the expense of an embryo, who is both “a man and a brother.“
Abolish Human Archism 