Following an emotional debate at the annual meeting on Wednesday, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted to adopt a resolution opposing the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF). The resolution, put forth by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler, cited a right to life “from the moment of fertilization until natural death” and ethical concerns over the “destruction of embryonic human life.”
The crux of the resolution states, “The messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention … call on Southern Baptists to reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage, and to only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation.”
The resolution also affirmed that all children are a gift from God, regardless of how they are conceived, and expressed sympathy for couples facing infertility.
“I’m really glad this other Baptist Convention was so clear in this resolution, very happy about that,” Mohler told The Federalist. “I think we’re starting a process and we’re gonna have to make moral arguments and make them persuasively right.”
The IVF process requires the fertilization of multiple eggs to increase the chance of laboratory conception and successful implantation. Couples who have leftover embryos they no longer wish to implant may choose to discard or freeze the embryos, often indefinitely. Estimates on the number of embryos currently considered “surplus” in freezers range from 600,000 to 1.5 million in the United States alone. A large percentage of embryos are eventually discarded.
The resolution makes these statistics
