How churches can address assisted reproductive technologies

More and more pastors and ministry leaders are walking alongside couples facing infertility and the difficult questions surrounding assisted reproductive technologies. For many couples, the good longing for a child is accompanied by deep grief, complex decisions, and quiet heartache. Often, these struggles remain largely unseen within the life of the church. 

To equip churches, the ERLC recently released a new resource, “Desiring Children: A Practical Guide to Addressing Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Church”. 

On today’s episode, we’ll be discussing the ethical and moral considerations around assisted reproductive technologies and how church leaders can counsel couples on this issue with clarity, conviction, and compassion. Jason and Evan also share several scenarios from the guide that reflect the kinds of questions pastors and ministry leaders are increasingly hearing from couples in their churches.

Episode Transcript: How churches can address assisted reproductive technologies

Narration:

Welcome to The ERLC Podcast, where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues. I’m RaShan Frost, and today, we’re talking about assisted reproductive technologies. 

More and more pastors and ministry leaders are walking alongside couples facing infertility and the difficult questions surrounding assisted reproductive technologies. For many couples, the good longing for a child is accompanied by deep grief, complex decisions, and quiet heartache. Often, these struggles remain largely unseen within the life of the church. 

To equip churches, the ERLC recently released a new resource, “Desiring Children: A Practical Guide to Addressing Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Church”. 

Today, I’m joined by the guide’s co-authors, Jason Thacker, ERLC senior fellow and director of the Research Institute, and Evan Lenow, associate professor and chair of Christian Studies at Mississippi College.

On today’s episode, we’ll be discussing the ethical and moral considerations around assisted reproductive technologies and how church leaders can counsel couples on this issue with clarity, conviction, and compassion. Jason and Evan also share several scenarios from the guide that reflect the kinds of questions pastors and ministry leaders are increasingly hearing from couples in their churches.

Now, let’s turn to my conversation with Jason Thacker and Evan Lenow.

RaShan Frost:

All right, so I am here with Drs. Jason Thacker and Evan Lenow, and they are the principal authors of the actually newly released church guide on assistant reproductive technologies. If you guys can just briefly introduce yourselves, starting with you, Jason, just tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Jason Thacker:

Yeah. My name is Jason Thacker. I serve as a senior fellow in bioethics here at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and also oversee our Research Institute. I also teach ethics and philosophy at Southern Seminary and Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky.

Evan Lenow:

I’m Evan Lenow. I’m associate professor and chair of Christian Studies at Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi. I also oversee the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary extension center that meets on our campus, and I teach ethics, philosophy, theology, and those programs. And I’m a member at Morrison Heights Baptist here in Clinton as well.

RaShan Frost:

Thanks for joining us guys. And so, you know, it’s interesting as we talk about the guide that we just released, you guys also wrote a white paper leading into this church guide. And so why is the topic of assisted reproductive technologies relevant for churches today?

Jason Thacker:

Yeah, I would say first and foremost, it’s long been relevant. This isn’t a new issue per se. Southern Baptists especially have been talking about these things, writing on these things. Even the ERLC has been publishing many materials for churches for decades on a lot of these technologies. But the technologies are changing. There’s quite an innovative pace, and especially about the ways that these technologies are being spoken of today in the public square. We want to come alongside churches and especially alongside pastors, to equip them because whether you know it or not, there are countless couples in our local churches who are struggling with infertility and wondering, they have this godly desire for biological children and are being told by many to say, well, you should do this or do this and this. And it seems very overwhelming, especially when you’re sitting in one of these clinician offices and not really sure what to do per se.

And so that’s the heartbeat behind the work in general. And one of the things I’m really glad that Evan could join together on, because to put two heads together to think through these things and to do so to equip the local church for the ministry that God’s called her, to encourage ministry leaders and pastors to come alongside these couples as they grieve, and also to give them hope in the midst of their loss, in the midst of the pain and suffering that they’re facing. And then help them to think through the moral aspects of a lot of these reproductive technologies because they’re not all the same. And we need to be thinking through them, especially through that lens of the sanctity of life.

Evan Lenow:

And I think another piece of that as well is as we think through issues related to infertility, this is a situation where if we go back 20-25 years, people didn’t talk about it as much. If they were struggling with infertility, they weren’t having open conversations about it. But that’s shifted in our culture and within the culture and the church, people are more open and talking about it. And so as a result, we have more open conversations about the reproductive technologies that are constantly evolving and advancing. And so for that reason, we need to have conversations within the church. We need to be prepared as pastors and ministry leaders to come alongside and disciple the people in our congregations to help them think through this biblically.

RaShan Frost:

And so as we think through it biblically and as we think through it ethically, what are the ethical considerations that Christians should consider when thinking about ARTs, infertility, and the like and their relationship with one another? What are the frameworks in the categories that we should be using and thinking about these things? 

Evan Lenow:

Both in the white paper that we were able to write and in this church guide, we try to lay out several theological principles that guide how we should think about this. And everything starts with the image of God. You know, bring this back to Genesis 1:26-27, where we see God creating mankind in his image. And so that’s where we begin. And so that image of God theological principle applies not just to the child who is the product of procreation, but also to the individuals taking part in the reproductive technology. And so we begin with that. We also, we think through the sanctity of human life, which is going to play into the conversation there as well. And we also have to recognize that there’s also the sanctity of the marital bond that’s perhaps the theological principle that sometimes gets lost in the conversation, especially when we start thinking about the introduction of third party donor gametes, donor sperm or eggs.

And so we have to think about the sanctity of the marital bond. Also, we need to have a very godly and biblical perspective on children as a blessing from the Lord from Psalm 127. And then the last thing we don’t want to forget, it’s not an add-on, it’s really the bookend with the image of God is God’s sovereignty over the procreative process. I think sometimes we get wrapped up into these conversations about assisted reproductive technologies and forget that God is sovereign and God is the one who opens and closes the womb. And so we need to lay out those theological principles in a way that speaks to how we should think about this particular issue.

Jason Thacker:

And just as Evan said, that last principle about the sovereignty of God not just applies to the sovereignty of God over the procreative process, but also it’s a deep comfort and hope to those struggling with infertility. And because often, especially when you’re struggling with infertility and my family knows this, is that you feel isolated, you feel lonely, you may even feel abandoned. You may feel like something’s wrong with me, or I’m not good enough, or God’s upset with me or angry with me. And when you have that gospel lens of understanding who God is and what he’s done for us through the Person and work of Christ, it can help reframe that conversation and say, you’re not actually alone. If you’re in Christ, the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity dwells in you and he is with you. You are not alone, you are not isolated.

But also he has created the church as a community to come alongside you. And I think often, especially pastors and ministry leaders can feel quite overwhelmed. Many of us, when we have some type of seminary training or Bible college training or theological education, you may have a single ethics course, maybe two at the most. And in that course you may have a single class or a single lecture at times on assisted reproductive technologies. And so what happens, though, is that when you’re sitting in a counseling room and you’re not really sure what to say and what to do, you are being reminded of the sovereignty and the goodness of God. That his Word is sufficient for us to navigate these challenges. And I think that helps to reframe not only the pastoral conversation, but also for those struggling with infertility, to know that God sees them, that he knows them, that he remembers them, especially amidst their pain and suffering. He has a good plan for them, even when it’s hard to understand exactly what the Lord is doing.

And so that’s the heartbeat even behind the work, not just in the sense of the sovereignty of God as a theological principle, but deeply applied to all of life and the entirety of these kinds of debates and controversies that we need to step into. It’s not like this is something we may need to get to in the future. We have people in our congregations. Statistics say one to one in five or one in six couples are struggling with infertility. This is a widespread issue, and we need to acknowledge that in our churches, from our pulpits, but also in the counseling rooms and also with our friends to sit down and be guided by the sovereignty and be reminded and have that hope in the sovereignty of God, the goodness of God, especially as we face really uncertain circumstances.

RaShan Frost:

That’s really helpful. And both of you guys mentioned something that I think we’ll unpack a little bit later in kind of a next step question. But before I get to that question, Evan, you mentioned something that I think is worth diving into a little bit deeper. And it’s the idea of the sanctity of the marital bond. And we understand that the desire to have children is a good and beautiful thing, a gift from God, the desire to fulfill the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, that desire is a good desire. And we don’t want to lose sight of that, but obviously by talking about the assisted reproductive technologies and the bevy of options available now with the complexities of all these things ethically, the relational aspect of the marital bond and the further relational bond between parent, child, siblings, and all of that gets lost in the conversation. And so can you just unpack that a little bit? Evan, this one’s going to be directed to you, and then the next question, I’ll direct to you, Jason. But can you just unpack that a little bit about the importance of the sanctity of the marital bond in this process? 

Evan Lenow:

Yeah, so you know, you’ve already mentioned it a little bit when we see in Genesis 1:28. God gives the man and woman a mandate to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. And so that’s the introduction there of this whole idea of procreation. And the context for that is then played out in Genesis 2. We see that God creates, has created the man. There’s not a help suitable for him, so God is going to create the woman. Genesis 2:23, we see that God presents the woman to the man and he then responds, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.” And then verse 24 is the key verse there where it says, “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

So Genesis 2:24 becomes the foundational verse really. Even as we stretch all the way into the New Testament, we see that both Jesus and Paul are quoting from Genesis 2:24 as they’re teaching on marriage. And so that’s the context in which procreation is designed to happen. It’s within the context of marriage. And this is to be a marriage between one man and one woman, designed to endure for a lifetime. And it’s directed toward the rearing of the next generation. And so since that’s the context that God created, what we have to be careful about when we introduce the ideas of assisted reproductive technologies is that there are some technologies and some components of technologies that can actually violate that marital bond. So we’re talking about the introduction of donor eggs and sperm. If we do that, we’ve now introduced a third party into the procreative process. 

And so whether that’s a donor sperm, and so now that the husband and the person who will be raising this child as the father is not actually biologically connected to that child, and it’s done intentionally by the introduction of donor sperm. And go the opposite direction with donor eggs. And so then the mother potentially is not biologically connected, and you’ve introduced another person into the procreative process. Or you can even take both donor sperm and donor eggs. And so now we’ve introduced two extra people. And then lastly, you have the idea of surrogacy, which raises a whole other set of questions where you may have the biological child of the mom and dad, but that child is now being carried by a surrogate who is going to carry that child for nine months and then give that child up immediately after birth.

And so all of those things, pieces of the technological puzzle, run the risk of violating the marital bond. And so we see in Scripture this idea that God has designed marriage as one man and one woman. And so if that’s the case, we don’t need to be introducing third parties into the conversation, despite the fact that we have this longing for children, and that’s what we can’t get away from. That longing for children and longing for having our own children I think stems from Genesis 1:28. And so I think it’s a God-given desire; it’s a God-given longing. We just have to be careful not to introduce violations of other things that God has deemed as sacred or important in order to accomplish something else. So in other words, it’s not about just a means to an end. We have to be concerned about both the means and the end and make sure that we’re not violating God’s principles related to the relationship between a husband and a wife.

RaShan Frost:

So moving along those lines, understanding the complications of it. And Jason, you touched on it briefly, knowing all the things that we’re dealing with, all the complexities of it, and now both of you guys are in ministry serving the local church. I’m thinking about that pastor right now who has a couple who is just absolutely devastated who they’re struggling with infertility and the desire, the longing to have children. They’re sitting in front of that pastor. How can church leaders help council couples who are struggling with infertility and how can this guide be a resource to provide categories and a trajectory of thought to help couples struggle through this?

Jason Thacker:

Yeah, it’s not a one conversation type of thing. Counseling is going to be an ongoing thing. And I think first and foremost, I mean pastor ministry leader, if you have someone sitting in your office sharing these things, the first words out of my mouth are going to be, “Thank you for sharing that.” This is such a deeply emotional and personal issue. It’s an intimate issue. You don’t often like to speak of these things. Especially sometimes how we may unintentionally, even at the church at times, equate something like becoming a mom or a dad as a normal thing that everyone does. And then when you aren’t unable to have children, you think something’s wrong with me, even though that’s not actually what’s being communicated. It often feels that way. And you can hear it in that lens. You think of a single person who longs to be married and somebody says, “Well, why don’t you just go ahead and get married? There’s lots of nice young women and men.” That can feel very painful. Similarly with children, especially on a Father’s Day or a Mother’s Day, but really throughout all of life and ministry throughout the calendar year. 

And so first and foremost, I’m just saying thank you for sharing that. They didn’t have to share that with you, but they chose to. They trust you. They’re asking sometimes for counsel, but I would say the first thing, one, acknowledging that and then two, letting them know that you’re there and that you just continue to ask questions. I think that’s one of the best things we can do right out of the gate. I mean, think of James 1:19-20, it says that we are to be slow to speak, we’re to be slow to anger, and quick to listen. And then in verse 20, he tells you why. He says, “because the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” And I think that idea of being slow to speak, especially, is important in this conversation because they’re not often looking for you just to tell them what to do. They’re inviting you into a deeply personal emotional experience that they’re facing and challenge that they’re facing. 

So you acknowledge that, I think obviously saying thank you, acknowledging that, saying that you want to be there with them, you want to ask questions, you want to hear more of their story, more of what’s going on. That also is a great opportunity to hear a little bit of the motivations in terms of why they’re wanting to pursue these types of technologies. Because one of the key questions, and we draw it out in the guide is we can do a lot of things. That’s a basic principle. You can do a lot of things, especially with technology today, but the question is, should we. 

That slows us down to say, yeah, we can, but should we be doing this? Is this right? Is this good? Is this what we ought to be doing? And align with the theological and ethical principles? That, in itself, is probably more than one conversation. That’s multiple conversations, just to understand the gravity of the challenge they’re facing, the diagnosis that they’re facing and the options being laid before them. But on top of that too is to guide them through it. Because often when a couple who’s facing infertility– and that language really matters is the couple who’s facing infertility, not an infertile couple–we need to be very clear on our language when a couple is facing this type of challenge. They’re often going in, they’re going through a lot of testing, it’s deeply emotional, it’s also really, really expensive.

We need to be aware of that. Infertility costs are outrageous. And you sit in these clinics and they’ll just roll out all the options and it’s like a fire hydrant of information. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now. And they’re like, okay, so you know, you can go home and think about this. So they often feel overwhelmed and need to process and speak through and talk through those things. But the pastor or ministry leader can be up to date and aware of things like intrauterine insemination and IUI process or before that, often even certain types of drugs that help to boost egg production or to increase the possibility of fertility. Then also you have things like IVF, in vitro fertilization, which often, all of these options are laid out to a couple as if they’re all morally the same.

It’s all good. Look, we want to help you grow your family. And that language is often used by these clinicians to say, yeah, they often do really care about you. They do want you to grow your family, but we need to be asking, is it by any means possible. Should we be doing this versus just can we? And so I think that’s at least some first initial steps for pastors and ministry leaders and also just friends and moms and dads and brothers and sisters who are helping walk alongside these couples strongly with infertility to understand what’s going on, their story, the emotional aspects of it, but also a little bit of their desires, their intention, what they’re hoping for. And that really, I think, will help to frame the conversation in a good way, rather than just rolling out some theological principles and just saying, well obviously you need to do this. I don’t think that’s the best way to approach this conversation, especially with the couples who are struggling with infertility.

Evan Lenow:

I want to highlight something that Jason just said there too. And I think we sometimes lose sight of this. This is not just happening in the pastor’s office, you know, during some type of formal counseling, this very well could happen around your family dinner table or Thanksgiving or Christmas or something like that or just a hallway conversation in church. And that leads into more conversations, as Jason said. You know, it starts with just a little comment and then that deserves a follow up and another conversation and another conversation after that to help these couples think through what all is available to them and at the same time to think through what God’s design for their lives should look like as well.

RaShan Frost:

Well that’s really helpful. You know, I think as we approach this subject and engage with couples who are struggling with infertility, it is always first to lead with compassion and lead out of a disposition of love and hurt for those who are struggling. And so that’s kind of the tone, if you will, of the guide itself. And I think that’s one of the beauties of the guide is the tone by which you guys approach this subject. And so with that being said, obviously our guides are divided up into two portions, the ethical and theological principles, which Evan, you kind of outlined, but also the practical scenarios. And so what were the types of scenarios that the guide addressed and, you’ve touched on it tangentially and briefly, but a brief deep dive. What do these scenarios address?

Jason Thacker:

Yeah, most of the scenarios really address questions that we’ve been asked in ministry. I serve as a pastor, I know Evan served in ministry, RaShan you serve in ministry as well. And one of the things we did when we were writing this, I took an informal poll of some of my best friends serving in ministry as well. What kind of questions are you facing? What kind of questions do you feel ill-equipped to answer? Because the goal behind this was not just to have another resource, but to have a resource that’s helpful for the local church pastor, ministry leader, counselor, or friend, mom, and dad as we’re navigating some of these things. And so these are real-life questions that we’ve been asked or maybe we have faced even on our own, ranging just from, someone’s been recently diagnosed with infertility and they’re wondering next steps.

So a broad kind of approach to it. Some who may feel something’s going on here, I’m not really sure what’s going on. And so it’s kind of even before an actual diagnosis of infertility ranging to things like intrauterine insemination, IUI, which is very prevalent and something that I think is less morally problematic than something like an IVF, but it does have some of its own kind of areas and questions that we need to be asking as we navigate that. Obviously, many questions about IVF running the gamut of just IVF in general, what many will refer to as an ethical version of IVF and navigating some of those challenges, especially in light of that sanctity of the marital bond that Evan brought up earlier. But then also getting into questions about cryogenic freezing. It sounds crazy if you haven’t been part of this conversation to say, what do you mean cryogenic freezers?

Well, when human embryos are created, often a larger cohort, you know, the question is, if you only transfer one or two at a time, you may have an abundance of embryos. So what do you do with those? Or even just recently, I had a student share with me, part of his story of him and his sister were actually created via IVF about 20 years ago, and his mom and dad actually had multiple other children. If you believe that life begins at fertilization, these are human lives, their brothers and sisters, and they were in cryogenic freezing for a very long time. Or what happens about donation, about embryo adoption, some of those questions that are really prevalent now, whether  it’s a good thing to go about embryo adoption or the discarding of these children in terms of whether it’s scientific experimentation or actually just discarding them in general.

Then getting into questions of surrogacy. I mean, you can just imagine the gamut of questions we’re trying to address, partially because we want to start a conversation. This is not the end all, be all resource that answers every single jot and tittle or answers every question you could ever have. Our goal is to start the conversation that’s already been happening, but to be part of that conversation in the local church, to equip pastors to go deeper and then giving some additional resources after the scenarios to say, if you want to go a little bit deeper, go here, here, and here, and continue this conversation as you seek to equip the saints for the ministry that they’ve been called to. And whether that’s in their personal lives or whether that’s more in the church’s life or even in that of the public square, to start this conversation early and often because this is something that’s widespread, not only in our churches and our community, but it’s a conversation that we’re having from anywhere from our local city council all the way up to the federal government. We need to be speaking about these things and be equipped to navigate them both with truth and grace. And those are never at odds with one another. We must speak  bold, uncompromised truth, but also in a gracious loving tone just as our Lord and Savior did truth and grace, not either or. And I think that really matters as we frame up these conversations.

Evan Lenow:

We couldn’t cover everything. To cover every possible scenario, this guide probably would’ve been easily two or three times as long as it is now. But there was an attempt to try to address something related to almost every issue that we have identified as questions being asked. Just as Jason said, these are real questions, these are real questions that pastors are getting. These are questions that have been coming into the ERLC, and so we’re trying to address something related to everything. And then I think what you’ll find that I find a little bit interesting here is as you walk through these scenarios, there’s a few of them where they build on each other. And so there’s a particular scenario and that has an answer. And then the next question actually comes back to that same exact scenario, but with a slight twist to it.

It’s the same couple who is struggling with the same questions of infertility, but this time they’re approaching it from this angle versus the previous question. So I think if you walk through these scenarios, what you’re going to find is you’re going to find a lot of help for the various categories of questions that are going to be asked and the types of scenarios that you’re going to encounter. What types of couples are going to come and want to have a conversation about this? And so my hope is that you find this useful and even though it doesn’t answer every question, it helps you start thinking in the right direction so that as you get a question that’s not exactly what’s laid out in the guide but still is connected, that you can then see, alright, here’s the type of conversation that I need to have moving forward.

Jason Thacker:

Yeah, and to say one other thing on that too is this resource is designed to compliment the other resources that the ERLC has produced and other resources that we have drawn from and benefited from, not only with this resource. As we said, it’s comprehensive, but it’s not everything. It’s not going to answer every single question somebody has but at least start the conversation. But even the white paper that Evan and I wrote prior to this, that in some sense kind of spawned this project itself, goes in a little bit deeper on some future ideas of ART type of technologies that are on the horizon or being thought about. And also the reality, too, is that some of what we address here, there are older forms of ARTs that we don’t actually address head on partially because they’re not as in use anymore.

And I think that actually reminds us that we’re dealing with technology and innovation, especially biomedical technologies, and it’s shifting and changing every day in many ways, or at least it feels that it’s such an intense pace of innovation. And so I think often ministry leaders, pastors, friends, moms and dads, brothers and sisters can feel completely and utterly overwhelmed when facing these types of challenges. And that’s not withstanding the couple themselves that are often feeling utterly overwhelmed and not really sure where to go. And so know there’s a compliment of resources, not only in a guide like this, some books that we recommend, articles we recommend, the white paper itself, other ERLC resources, things like this podcast, and others as well as for those who are active in the public square who may serve in government, who may serve in a public policy kind of NGO type of mentality to say, we should be thinking about these things on that level as well.

It’s not those at the exclusion of others or the personal at the exclusion of the social and political. It’s to say, no, we need to be involved in that. So policy recommendations coming out from our D.C. office there in Washington, D.C., from the ERLC. We’ve had many countless offices on Capitol Hill share with us, that we’re one of the few organizations who are helping them think through not just the pragmatic concerns, but some of the theological and ethical principles. So knowing that the resources the ERLC’s producing is first and foremost for the church. That is our mission. That is our goal. That’s what we’ve been commissioned to do by the Convention is to assist churches in doing the ministry that she’s been called to do, but then also coming alongside couples, but then also speaking into the public square and the political issues as well. And so the goal in this guide is to be equipping the local church, resourcing the local church, as you’ve long said, RaShan, the heartbeat of the research area within the ERLC is resourcing the church to go about the ministry that God’s called her to do.

Narration:

Many couples quietly carry the burden of infertility, and the questions surrounding assisted reproductive technologies can add another layer of complexity. Our hope is that conversations like this help pastors and churches think carefully and compassionately about these issues with both biblical wisdom and pastoral care.

We hope today’s conversation, and our ART Church Guide, serve as a helpful resource as you seek to think biblically and care well for those facing infertility in your church. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of The ERLC Podcast. Join us next time for another conversation on how to think biblically about today’s cultural issues.