“In a culture that wants babies without boundaries and life without limits, Christians must ask: Are we building families God’s way—or manufacturing them our own?”
Setting the Stage
IVF (in vitro fertilization) is a practice becoming more widely accepted, even among Christians. But just because something is common doesn’t make it righteous.
Likewise, just because infertility is a heartbreaking reality for couples, this does not justify going outside of God’s providence and forsaking obedience to his revealed will.
In a world ruled by emotions, our convictions must be shaped by God’s Word and a theology of life, family and human dignity.
Living in a fallen world means that couples will struggle to conceive children. Infertility is a painful problem experienced globally by both believers and unbelievers.
The advent of technology that allows for alternative means of fertilization has given barren wombs a chance for the hope of having children.
Image bearers of God are alive today that otherwise would not be.
But at what cost?
Do the ends of having children justify the means used to create them?
These are the questions that must be answered.
The Process and the Problems
IVF is a procedure that helps individuals or couples conceive a child by fertilizing an egg outside the human body.
The process begins when a woman is given hormones to produce multiple eggs. These eggs are then surgically removed from the ovaries and combined with sperm in a lab.
This results in the creation of several human lives (embryos). The embryos are monitored, and the most viable ones are selected to implant into the woman’s uterus.
Embryos are graded for desirable characteristics and selected based on the grade they receive. The remaining embryos are cryogenically frozen for future use, donated for research, or completely destroyed. For every child made in a single cycle, 10-20 more are created in the IVF process.
It is not uncommon for several embryos to be transferred to increase the chances of implantation. Since this can lead to complications, IVF practitioners manage the risks by recommending reduction, which is a euphemism for intentionally killing one or more babies during the pregnancy.
This is normally done in the first trimester by injecting potassium chloride into the heart. The goal is to achieve an “ideal birth,” even if it means sacrificing other small humans along the way.
This process presents grave ethical considerations for concerned Christians, especially couples desiring to conceive. Here are five reasons believers must reject the practice of IVF.
1. IVF Destroys Human Life
Creating additional human beings, most of whom will die, be frozen in cryogenic slavery, discarded, or used for research is an egregious infraction against the sanctity of life.
The bible is clear that life begins at fertilization (Psalm 139:13-16). Each embryo killed in the IVF process is a unique, image bearing person in need of protecting (Genesis 1:27).
Destroying embryos for the sake of “successful” pregnancies violates God’s command: “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13)
2. IVF Commodifies Children
The sanctity of human life means that all people are worthy of dignity, value and honor. IVF treats children as products, manufactured through technology, selected for desirable traits, and discards them as objects.
God’s Word says that children are gifts to be treasured and blessings to be stewarded in accordance with God’s covenant law (Psalm 127:3). Children are not a right or a commodity. We are not entitled to them because they are a gift of pure grace, from the time they are conceived(Ruth 4:13).
Reducing human life to something we purchase, design, or get rid of tramples human dignity and God’s authority over life.
3. IVF Violates God’s Design for Procreation
IVF often separates procreation from the sexual union between man and wife. In bypassing the marital union, it introduces third-party sperm, eggs, or surrogates.
It also enables homosexual couples who cannot conceive naturally to further shore up their rebellion against God and places children in a home under a lifestyle of perversion.
God’s blueprint is clear: children are to be conceived through the covenantal, one-flesh union of husband and wife (Genesis 2:24).
Separating procreation from marriage undermines both the family structure and God’s intended order.
4. IVF Fuels Modern-Day Eugenics
Christians recoil against the exploits of human rights abusers like Margaret Sanger and the rise of abortifacient mechanisms. But they cannot rightfully reject her eugenics stances as evil while participating in the practice of IVF, which enables genetic screening, leading to the elimination of embryos deemed “imperfect” or “undesirable.”
This quiet form of eugenics devalues lives with disabilities or genetic abnormalities. These arbitrary characteristics have no bearing on the value of these people that society deems less worthy of protection.
Discriminating against human beings on the basis of something arbitrary violates the command of God to show no partiality (James 2:8). Christians must resist any system that declares some lives worthy and others disposable.
5. IVF Reflects Idolatry of Control, Not Trust in God
God opens and closes the womb (Genesis 29:31; 1 Samuel 1:5). The desire for children is good—but IVF often reflects an unwillingness to trust God’s timing and providence (Genesis 30:22).
Pursuing the creation of human life by any means necessary, even at the expense of others, can reveal a deeper idolatry of fertility, where personal desires are put before obedience to God.
We are not to do evil that good may result. The ends do not justify the means (Romans 3:8).
Christians are called to receive life on God’s terms, not manufacture it on ours. Loving Him above all means that obedience to him, above and over our own desires, is our highest priority.
Conclusion and Encouragement
IVF crosses moral boundaries that Christians must not ignore: It creates and destroys human life. It disrespects God’s design for marriage, sex, and family. It elevates personal desire over obedience to God’s will. It treats human beings as products, not as sacred image-bearers. Christians are called to uphold the sanctity of life from the moment of conception and to trust God’s timing, power, and wisdom in matters of family—even in the pain of infertility.
This demands that Pastors and church leaders be sensitive to the struggles of infertile couples. They must acknowledge the real grief and suffering that accompany the inability to conceive.
The church must be prepared to walk alongside these couples with compassion. If they are unable to have children naturally, couples should be encouraged and equipped by the local church to pursue adoption and other ethical means of having a family.
When it comes to IVF, believers should examine their own hearts and be prepared to repent in areas where they have embraced cultural norms over Biblical truth, particularly in conservative communities.
We cannot remain uninformed, misinformed or willfully ignorant about the IVF industry and the problems with the practice or we will become accomplices to injustice through our participation and support.
Championing equal protection for all human beings from fertilization in the legislative sphere should be on the agenda of every Christian in order to push back against the idolatry of the human will and the degradation of human life in society.
“The call of the Christian is not to build life on our terms, but to receive it on God’s.
