On IVF: A Lutheran Theological Perspective

Editor’s Note: In recent months, there has been a renewed national conversation around in vitro fertilization (IVF), as politicians debate insurance coverages for the procedure on a national level. Many have pushed back against this, advocating for other methods of infertility care that do not come with the moral questions of IVF. Amid all this conversation, Lutherans may well wonder what we ought to think about IVF.

Recently, Dr. Donna Harrison wrote a piece unpacking the ethics of IVF from a medical perspective. In this piece, the Rev. Dr. Scott Stiegemeyer, professor of theology and bioethics at Concordia University, Irvine, further investigates this topic from a theological perspective.

To seek to understand IVF from a theological perspective, it is important first to look at God’s design for marriage and procreation. After God created Adam, He said that it was not good for the man to be alone (Gen. 2:18). Of course, in a fundamental sense, Adam was not alone. He lived in perfect communion with God. It is not possible that Adam was lonely or unhappy. To say that it was not good for him to be alone was to say that he was designed for comprehensive intimacy with someone like himself, someone who did not yet exist. The one thing that Adam could not do by himself was have a family. Therefore, the Creator made Eve, brought her to Adam for their mutual delight, and wed them together.

After that first wedding, when the Father gave the bride and groom to each other, He charged them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. We see that getting married and having children is part of God’s grand design.[1]

The service of Holy Matrimony in the Lutheran Service Book mentions several of God’s intentions for marriage (p. 275). One is: “Marriage was … ordained [by God] so that man and woman may find delight in one another.” Delight does not only refer to sexual intercourse, but it surely includes it, because the ceremony elaborates on this point by saying, “Therefore, all persons who marry shall take a spouse in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, for God has not called us to impurity but holiness.” The word “therefore” in between those two statements reveals that the delight of marriage is tied to sexual holiness. The very next reason listed is: “God also established marriage for the procreation of children who are to be brought up in the fear and instruction of the Lord so that they may offer Him their praise.” So, the holiness and honor of the marriage bed is linked in the eyes of God with the procreation of children.

Our sexual bodies are intended for a person of the opposite sex. There is only one system of organs in your body that cannot fulfill its created purpose by itself. Your skeletal system is fine on its own. Your circulatory system and your digestive system are whole and complete in themselves. This is not true in the same way with your reproductive system. Not only do you need a partner in order for this natural bodily system to function, but you need the kind of person whose biological makeup complements your own. One man and one woman, by God’s creational intentions, can achieve a bodily union which two men or two women cannot.

Marriage and this one-flesh union are designed to result in children, who are a gift from the Lord. Thus the desire for children within a marriage is a holy thing (Gen. 1:28). However, what about married couples that long for children but are unable to conceive naturally? The pain of infertility for a couple who desire to have a baby can be intense (Gen. 30:1–2). In vitro fertilization (IVF) may seem like a godsend to many people, because it can assist them to produce a natural family.

Unpacking IVF

One of the primary moral problems with the way that IVF is usually done is that many embryos are created in the laboratory that will not, in the end, be transferred to the woman’s uterus. In order to make a successful implantation more likely, multiple embryos are created (read Dr. Harrison’s article for more on this.) Creating human embryos knowing that many will be discarded and killed is a violation of the inherent sanctity of human life.

Because they are created and given life by God, each and every human, without exception, has the right to life — and anyone who murders another transgresses God’s Law (Ex. 20:13). And since every human life, including those in the embryonic stage of development, has the right to life, the rest of us have an obligation to support and defend their lives (Prov. 31:8–9; Matt. 7:12). And since creating surplus embryos dooms most of them to die, this practice must be avoided.

In order to understand the theological and ethical issues presented by IVF, we have to start by recognizing what we are dealing with. For instance, if the pre-implanted embryo is merely a cluster of cells that has the potential of becoming a human being, then the amount of respect it is owed would be relatively small. Yet on the other hand, if the pre-implanted embryo is truly a fellow human being, one to whom the Golden Rule applies (Matt. 7:12), then the amount of respect he or she is owed is equal to the amount of respect you wish to be shown yourself by others, not to mention the amount of mercy God has shown to all of us by creating and preserving our lives.

From a strictly utilitarian perspective, of course, the outcome may be the same whether a particular child is conceived by sexual intercourse or IVF. While the children of IVF do not directly result from the sexual embrace and union of husband and wife but rather from rational and technological interventions of a third party, there is no implication that these children are any less precious or loved by their parents than any others. A living human person comes into existence at the very moment of fertilization, wherever that occurs.

The intimate union of two persons and the procreation of children by means of that union, by God’s design, should not be divided into two separate acts. Dividing the generation of new human life from the joyful one-flesh bond of two persons risks altering our view of the children we bring into the world. We may begin to see them as the results of technology and science rather than as gifts and miracles of God’s abundance. We may begin to think of children as made, not begotten. This is also why the term “procreation” is preferred over “reproduction.” In the first case, it is clear that sexual intercourse participates in God’s work of creation. But with the other term, the child is a product.

Every pre-implantation human life is treasured by God and has been bought from sin’s bondage “with [Christ’s] holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.”[2] And every human being, without exception, must be respected regardless of his or her location or stage of development. “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need,” wrote Martin Luther in his Small Catechism explanation of the Fifth Commandment. Our duty to aid and defend our neighbor has no exceptions, which is why discarding human embryos created in a laboratory is objectionable.

The church has the obligation to teach and confess the purpose and delight of marriage, sexual purity, and godly childrearing in an age when all of those things are being degraded. Arising from that confession comes the call to love our neighbors as ourselves, including pre-born human beings, those conceived by means of technological interventions, parents who employed IVF, and those men and women who pray to be able to conceive. The fruit of the Gospel is a life that pursues the most loving actions which respect the lives of every human individual, without exception.

[1] This is not to say that only those who marry and have children are fulfilling God’s plan for humanity. Single people and couples who experience infertility live in many ways that glorify God as their Creator, apart from marriage and/or having children of their own. Nonetheless, humans are the kind of beings who are designed to glorify God by the self-giving and fruitful loving embrace of two persons in the context of marriage, even though not every individual human being has that vocation (1 Cor. 7:1–9).

[2] Luther’s Explanation of the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed.