Amid an ongoing national conversation around IVF after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruling, attempts by both Republicans and Democrats to “protect IVF,” and Tim Walz’s Stolen Vitro controversy, the Dallas Morning News published, “I’m a pro-life pastor. IVF allowed me to become a dad.” Fox News reprinted it. Even though the author, Jeremiah Johnston, has a Ph.D., M.A., M.Div., and B.A., he gets both biology and Christianity wrong.
As usual with matters of marriage and family, the adult frames himself (and his wife) as victims. Johnston details the suffering they experienced due to infertility. While infertility is incredibly painful, when we get IVF wrong — or any parenthood question — it’s the hundreds of thousands of lives discarded and frozen by the fertility industry who are the actual victims, not the adults.
I don’t know what his pastoral duties have involved, but my Baptist pastor-turned-Navy chaplain husband and I have been in ministry for 30 years. And I’ll tell you something true: Everyone suffers. Nearly every Christian I know has some longing — let’s call it “a thorn in their side” — to which God says, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Whether that’s unwanted same-sex attraction, unwanted singleness, longing for a healed marriage, a wayward son, a disabled daughter, chronic illness, or infertility — it’s hard to name a Christian to whom God doesn’t seem to be saying, “Not on this side of heaven.”
Our longings, even for good things, are not a license to take matters of life, à
