Editor’s note: In order to protect the privacy of this family, the names have been withheld. I personally know this wonderful family and the writer is a pastor of a Tennessee Baptist church. Due to the negative publicity this resolution generated in June, I wanted to give Tennessee Baptists a perspective from a family who has experienced the heartbreak of infertility. See pasge 8 for more information on the resolution.
In the aftermath of this year’s SBC annual meeting, many headlines were written claiming that the SBC came out in opposition of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) after passing of a resolution “On the ethical realities of reproductive technologies and the dignity of the human embryo.”
Many emotions were triggered by those headlines from people whose families have been touched by the struggles of infertility. As someone who was in the room when that resolution was passed and has personally experienced the utter heartbreak of infertility, I wanted to speak to why I voted in favor of the resolution.
Infertility is a thread that is woven into my wife and I’s story — a thread that has produced mountains of grief but inspired depths of trust in the Lord that we would not have had if we had not experienced it.
When my wife and I decided to start a family, it took us almost a year to get pregnant with our son that was born in 2018. My wife underwent a few different tests before becoming pregnant, and we were on the verge of testing for me when she became pregnant.
After the birth of our son, we experienced secondary infertility, which was a new grief that we had never experienced. We longed to have another child, and after months, and eventually a few years of trying, it became evident that was unlikely to happen naturally.
While we always prayed and hoped for the Lord to do a miracle, we pursued testing for both of us and were advised by doctors to pursue IVF. However, this did not settle well in our hearts. I am a pastor, and my conviction is that life begins at conception which means that all the embryos that are created in IVF are human lives created in the image of God.
I could not preach that conviction to my church and then abandon that conviction in my personal life because I wanted to grow my family. That would be the pragmatic approach, but my wife and I were convinced it was not the morally right approach for our family.
The reality is, just as the resolution describes, that many times in the IVF process, more embryos than necessary are created and many end up destroyed. Estimates are that there are roughly 1.5 million frozen human embryos in the United States according to the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville.
I want to recognize that many Christian couples have the same pro-life conviction and have sought to use IVF in ways that honor the dignity of the human embryo. However, my wife and I were convinced that this was not the path for us to add to our family.
We did not want to add to that growing number of frozen embryos. We also never felt a strong calling to traditional adoption. This left us at a crossroads in our journey with infertility and questioning whether our family might be complete.
After a few months of rest and processing our grief, and with a continued yearning for more children, my wife heard about embryo adoption through a woman that she was attending Bible study with. This woman had three of her four children through embryo adoption through the NEDC. It was the first time that we had heard about embryo adoption
Embryo adoption involves taking frozen embryos from couples who have donated them after IVF and transferring them to the adoptive mother. Almost immediately upon learning about this process, we felt drawn to it. We immediately identified with the mission and vision of NEDC to “protect the lives and dignity of the human embryos” and “to share the love of Christ through the life-affirming process of embryo adoption while striving to place every donated embryo into a loving home.”
We saw it as an opportunity to be on the redemptive side of reproductive technologies. We pursued this adoption through NEDC, and each appointment confirmed our decision and renewed hope within us to grow our family. We had a daughter through embryo adoption in July of 2023. She was frozen as an embryo for almost five years, and though she has no DNA from either myself or my wife, she is wholly ours and has completed our family in a way that just a couple of years ago, we could have never imagined.
Infertility is a searing pain. We should be thankful to God for the advancements made in technology that have eased that pain for many families. However, we should not use those technologies as a means to an end while ignoring that every human being is made in God’s image, even frozen embryos.
I recognize the wide range of views among the SBC community on this topic, but I am personally thankful for the resolution that can help couples ask the right questions and make more informed decisions about these technologies. May we all stand up for the dignity of life, lament with those walking through infertility and point them to hope we have in Christ Jesus. B&R
