Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz recently stated that Minnesotans have a “golden rule” when it comes to reproductive “rights”: “Mind your own damn business.” But those of us who honor children’s natural right to life and believe children ideally should begin their lives as gifts begotten in the love of the one-flesh unions of their mothers and fathers, will not mind our “own damn business.”
The in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process, which mixes sperm and eggs together in a laboratory to create numerous embryonic persons, is fraught with the loss of human life, as only 2-7 percent of lab-created children are born alive. Combining the numbers of embryonic persons who do not survive the transfer process, are disposed of, do not survive the thawing process, or are donated to research, IVF disposes of millions of human beings.
Many will argue that IVF is permissible if only one egg is extracted, fertilized, and implanted each time, as is the case with the Christian clinic Rejoice Fertility in Knoxville, Tennessee. The center conducts “mini-IVF” and “natural cycle” IVF with a “no discard” approach. Mini-IVF elicits fewer eggs for retrieval, resulting in fewer leftover embryos, and the natural cycle approach fertilizes the woman’s single ovulated egg each month.
Though a Christian approach to IVF is commendable, even if only one embryo is created and transferred, trial and error with that one, full person, is still occurring. Participants are then responsible for the death, if this occurs, of that one human person, a blame
