According to Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, “The Trump administration’s IVF policy unveiled on Thursday is perhaps the least bad that we could have hoped for … but least bad is still bad.” The long-awaited (or dreaded) follow-up to an earlier executive order, the President announced a plan to dramatically reduce the cost of IVF, provide insurance coverage for fertility treatments including IVF, and increase access to it. According to the President, “You can’t get more pro-life than this.”
IVF is not pro-life. Despite what was said during the President’s press conference last Thursday, IVF is not even pro-fertility. Yes, born children do result from IVF, but the way it is overwhelmingly and almost universally practiced means that far more lives are lost in the process than survive. As Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins posted on X in response to the announcement: “The IVF Industry kills more preborn babies than the abortion industry, doesn’t cure infertility, and practices eugenics.”
Embryos produced by IVF are subjected to screening prior to implantation, which checks for everything from the desired sex of the embryo to potential genetic and health conditions. Embryos deemed not “viable” are destroyed.
Advocates of IVF can call this widely accepted and practiced step whatever they want, but the best word for it is eugenics.
After the screening process, “viable” embryos are prioritized for implantation. If pregnancy is achieved, the remaining embryos are considered “excess,” a population that numbers in the millions and exceeds the number of embryos born. Most are stored and frozen, literally suspended in time. Many are destroyed. Some are donated to medical research. A very small number of these little image bearers will be given a chance at life through embryo adoption, also known as “snowflake adoption.”
The ethical problems with IVF do not end there. Legally, embryos created through IVF are considered “property,” and therefore without rights. Thus, they are frequently fought over in custody battles. More significant is the lack of oversight and regulation. During IVF, embryos are thoroughly screened, but the adults are not. Virtually anyone can choose to participate in creating more embryonic image bearers for any reason. While many operate from a good, God-given desire to have children, some are more nefarious. Also, any individual or relational arrangement can participate, which can rob a child of his or her mother or father.
As Ryan Anderson summarized in an article at First Things,
The bulk of the Trump IVF policy entails two main features: lowering the prices on IVF and other fertility treatments by lowering the costs of key drugs through Most Favored Nation (MFN) pricing, and creating a new optional employer fertility insurance benefit.
But making IVF cheaper and more accessible, while expanding insurance coverage for the practice, will increase the number of children that are discarded, frozen, and orphaned from their mother or father. IVF in America is not, in fact, about fertility. It’s an industry, a radically under-regulated selling of goods and services. In the vast majority of cases, what is being sold as goods and services are people. The good intentions of some who participate cannot change what this under-regulated, unethical, and dehumanizing industry has become.
To be fair, there are four positive aspects to the President’s plan. First, there is no IVF mandate for employers or insurance policies to cover IVF, as President Obama attempted in his contraception mandate. Second, nothing in the plan is to be paid by taxes. Each of these things protects conscience rights. Third, there was no aspersion cast on people of conscience who oppose IVF on ethical grounds. Fourth, the new employer fertility benefit can be customized to not include IVF but to instead include ethical fertility treatments, such as restorative reproductive medicine.
Still, at heart, the President’s plan is to make this industry cheaper and more efficient, which demonstrates that this administration did not listen to the critics of IVF. It is far more efficient to collect as many eggs and create as many embryos as possible. That has led to more lives being lost annually through IVF than in all the Planned Parenthood abortion clinics combined. A far more ethical approach would be to create and implant one embryo at a time, but that would not be efficient or cost-effective.
When that kind of language is applied to a person, something is seriously wrong. A former professor of mine often said that whenever you put a price tag on something priceless, you cheapen it immediately. Every single life created through IVF is priceless, made in the image and likeness of God. As one couple who’ve allowed two children a chance to live and thrive through snowflake adoption told me, children should never be made and sacrificed so adults can get what they want.
Image credit: ©Getty Images/Antonio Marquez lanza
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
