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The IVF gendercide

Critics of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) have long warned that the technology could be used to customize children, allowing parents and doctors to effectively play God. According to a recent Slate article, which sounded like a review of the movie Gattaca, those fears were well-founded. According to the article, "You can have a baby when it suits your career, thanks to egg freezing (or at least you can try). You can sequence your embryos’ genomes for $2,500 a pop and attempt to maximize your future child’s health (or intelligence, attractiveness, or height) ... you can even select eye color. There is a vast disparity between who gets to use IVF... and who is using it to create designer families." Another example is sex selection. Numbers vary from clinic to clinic, but one Los Angeles-based IVF clinic estimates that about 85% of its patients engage in sex selection. However, which sex is being selected is surprising. Historically, when parents choose between sons and daughters – think of China under its one-child policy or Romans who practiced infanticide by exposure – boys won out. Today, Americans using IVF are abandoning the sons in favor of daughters. “Abandoning” is the correct term when it comes to IVF. Standard procedure involves the creation of anywhere between five and 10 embryos that are then implanted either one at a time or in multiples. Embryos that are not implanted are frozen, donated to medical research, or worse, destroyed, a tragedy because every embryo is a whole life in its very earliest stage. Today, an estimated 1.5 million embryos are stored in freezers in the U.S. Why are Americans voluntarily abandoning these boys? According to the Slate article, “toxic masculinity” is a main concern for many women (even those who are already boy moms). Boys are, after all, more likely to be mass shooters and less likely to help break glass ceilings. Perhaps some parents think that raising daughters will be easier. While some have rightly noted that sex selection is inescapably sexist, underneath the practice is something far more insidious. Parenthood is widely seen as a consumerist activity. Children are viewed in the same way as pets or plants. They are objects to be acquired rather than persons whose intrinsic dignity must be respected. For many parents, children exist to serve their happiness, whether to be a parent’s “bestie” or to fulfill their parent’s hopes and dreams. It's difficult to imagine that some of the factors behind the dramatic increase of young females experiencing gender dysphoria are not at work here as well. Girls are thought to be more malleable, in terms of personality, appearance, and even identity. It may be consumerist parents prefer girls instead of boys for this reason. Whatever the motives, the practice of IVF is enabling a “gendercide,” a term used by The Economist in 2010 to describe why 100 million girls were missing in China, India, and elsewhere. Despite claims that IVF is all about “fertility” and bringing children into the world, the practice must be evaluated according to how it’s actually practiced – not just by what it promises. Infertility is tragic, but it does not warrant an “anything goes” kind of ethic or policy. It certainly cannot justify a push for designer babies and third-party parenting. Even the wonderful “ends” of a new life cannot justify unethical means. The lack of regulation around IVF is a recipe for disaster, a recipe already serving up more deaths than lives. This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Hayden. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. This is reprinted with permission from the Colson Center. Photo credit: IStockPhoto.com / Wirestock....

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Saturday Selections – September 14, 2024

Why not raise the minimum wage to $100? Transgender thinking has infected economics too, with politicians applying the same wishes-can-reshape-reality thinking as they hike the minimum wage. They've decided if they say workers are worth $15 a hour, then they will be. But if such wishing really did make it so, why not hike it to $25 an hour? Or $50? Or as this video (from 7 years back) asks, why not $100? It's because in the real world, the minimum wage is actually an employment ban on anyone who can't bring that amount of value to their employer. Inexperienced workers, handicapped workers, or elderly workers who might work at a slower gear could all be barred from employment. And if we made the minimum wage $100 an hour, that would ban a lot of people. But why is it okay when we ban smaller numbers of people at $15 a hour? And how did it become the government's role to decide not simply whether or not people should be allowed to offer their labor at a lower rate, but whether they should be allowed to work at all? Why did God create viruses and bacteria? While we don't understand all that bacteria and viruses might have done before the Fall into sin, some of their current useful functions give us some clues. 4 arguments against doctor-assisted murder These are 4 really good arguments to stack on top of the foundational truth that our lives are given by God, and therefore are not our own to dispose of as we would. As He has said, don't murder. Psychology of marriage There's an old joke about a band of scientists and researchers who set out to scale Mount Intellect, rising up from the valleys of ignorance. They scrape their way slowly up, and as they finally summit the highest peak, they find a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. God made us for marriage, for commitment, and thus that's so much better for us than "shacking up." And now some psychologists have discovered and explained how making the choice to commit is better for us. Welcome to the summit, gentlemen. A Christian’s practical guide to reproductive technology 3 key takeaways: Doctors create an average of 15 embryos in a single round of IVF. Unfortunately, only 3-7% of all created embryos result in the live birth of a child. The outcomes of IVF are not neutral. Children born through IVF have a higher likelihood of cancer, autism, minor cleft pallet, or a congenital heart defect. A diagnosis or season of infertility does not mean that a couple will never have children; only that it may require more work and time than they initially expected. Is Gen Z really the poorest generation?  God forbids covetousness in the 10th Commandment, and one powerful way to counter temptation in this direction is to count our blessings. So, yes, many are worse off than they were just 5 years ago. But even the struggling Gen Z is probably doing a lot better than their grandparents were in the 70s. This video is American, but there's a lot of transfer to what's going on north of the border. ...

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Saturday Selections – June 22, 2024

What's wrong with marijuana This is the practical case against marijuana. For the Christian case, check out "Is recreational marijuana sinful?". Mothers' milk is amazing If you believe in evolution, you have to credit everything to the interaction of time and chance. That includes something you may never have considered before: the origin of mothers' milk. We know God designed moms to be specially able to care for their babies this way, so Christians shouldn't be surprised to learn that the closer we look at mothers' milk, the more amazing we find it to be. But if you think it evolved from "a glandular skin secretion in synapsids" then you might think that the human-designed substitutes available on store shelves would be the superior product. You might think that; it'd be a logical conclusion based on evolutionary presuppositions. But it ain't so. If Satan was a marriage counselor... ...he'd sound a lot like a newspaper advice column. Your family needs you (and you need them) My kids make me happy, but when they don't, can I abandon them? And what of my parents? If they become a burden or trouble to me, isn't that a reason to cut such "toxic people" out of my life? That's what the world would tell you. But as John Stonestreet explains (in this older piece), God says something very different. Baptists come out against IVF At their annual meetings last week, the US's largest protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, passed a resolution formally opposing the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF). While the majority voted for the resolution, many of the delegates opposed it, and spoke to how they believed IVF was a pro-life procedure, since it created life. But as IVF is practiced, it leads to the creation of "excess" embryos – "excess" children – that will either be destroyed (ie. killed) or frozen, which treats the child as a thing, not a human being. Some of these frozen children will then be given away via "snowflake adoptions" where the embryo is implanted in the adoptive mother's womb. But while the couples doing the adopting are rescuing these frozen children, it is still wrong for the biological parents to have engaged in a procedure that would leave them with "excess" children. Adoption is a rescue, but parents should never deliberately create a situation in which their children would need to be rescued. Homosexuals & some professing Christians redefine "love" It's been said that the opposition shares our vocabulary, but not our dictionary – they define words like marriage, hate, gender, tolerance, pride, and love very differently from how God defines them. With Pride Month in full swing, Christians need to be able to share that it isn't love to celebrate what God hates for the very same reason it isn't love to affirm anorexia – we wouldn't be doing the person any good to affirm as right the wrong they are struggling with. It's for their sake and for their good that we don't want to encourage their rebellious lifestyle. ...

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29-year-old mom gives birth to 27-year-old baby

It’s a headline that seems better suited to National Enquirer, but it gets crazier still. The 29-year-old mother, Tina Gibson, doesn’t have just one baby almost as old as her, but two! The story starts back in 2016, when Tina’s father told her about a news story he’d seen on snowflake adoption – adopting, and implanting an abandoned embryo that has been left in cold storage since being conceived. After months of investigation and prayer, Tina and her husband Ben went forward – Tina was implanted with an embryo that had been frozen since 1992. Then, in November 2017, the Gibsons were able to welcome their daughter Emma Wren to the world. Now, three years later, Tina and Ben have another little girl to take care of, Emma’s biological sister, Molly. She had been frozen at the same time as Emma, and was born in late October, 27 years later. While secular news has covered this as an amusing, sweet story, LifeSiteNews.com shared the damage done to children when they are frozen: 25% don’t survive the unfreezing process, and those that do have a higher risk of genetic abnormalities. For these reasons and more, we should not freeze children. But some parents have inflicted this on their children, to the point that there are hundreds of thousands of frozen babies. That’s a tragedy. But just like God’s adoption of us, “snowflake adoption” is a rescue plan. So what a joy it is that Tina and Ben can reflect our Heavenly Father in bringing these two little girls into their family!...

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Saturday Selections - April 28, 2018

Rosaria Butterfield on hospitality On how hospitality is both easier and more radical than we know. And far more important too! Why I am a creationist Kenneth Gentry weighs in with a thorough response to the Framework Hypothesis, while, near the bottom of this page nine PhDs explain why they believe in a 6-day creation too. What Christians should know about embryo adoption Hundreds of thousands of children are waiting to be born. Here's what God's people can do to help these helpless children. Advice to guys who want to date my daughters "Do not tell her you 'like' her and put the ball in her court. Take some responsibility....Make a formal, in-person invitation. Since this is a 'date,' ask the girl to go out with you. Call her if you have to, but take the highest form of communication. Don’t be a coward and text it. Don’t post it on Facebook. Ask cheerfully. Ask privately. Ask clearly. And by the way, don’t just ask her to 'hang out.' What’s that?" What are the biblical warnings about government? "The debate about the size and role of government has huge implications for the lives of individuals all over the world. Important as the issue is, Christians are divided about what scripture has to say about government. What are some considerations that can help us frame this debate and work towards a conclusion? The Bible sets out four principles that can provide a foundation for the discussion." The deadly gospel of nice "...nice isn’t the same thing as love. True love is concerned with the good of the beloved, and can never be divorced from the truth of how God created us and intends us to live. When we ignore that truth, we can “nice” people to death."...

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26-year-old woman gives birth to 25-year-old girl

We start counting our age from the day of our birth, but if we think on that for a moment we realize that’s not, technically, accurate. Life begins at conception, not birth, so most of us are nine months older than we’ve been owning up to. But in the case of little Emma Gibson, the difference between conception and birth wasn't nine months, it was just over 24 years. When she was born this past November, she was already 25 years old because Emma had been conceived, via in vitro fertilization (IVF), back in 1992. And at that time her adoptive mother, Tina Gibson, was just 18 months old. Since 1992 Emma had been left in frozen storage. As WORLD magazine’s Jamie Dean reported, Emma isn’t the only child that’s been left waiting. At least 600,000 embryos sit frozen in storage facilities across the United States, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Some reproductive experts believe the number is closer to 1 million. Canadian estimates are hard to come by, but a 2014 CBC article put the number at 60,000. To the world, these hundreds of thousands of embryos are a legal headache. While they don’t acknowledge them as human, they do seem to recognize there is something special about them, which is why so many of these children are not being destroyed but being indefinitely stored, without plans as for what to do with them. Emma’s rescue underscores the opportunity Christian couples have to save embryonic children via what’s called “snowflake adoption" – a frozen embryo can be thawed, and if it survives that thawing, can then be implanted in its adopted mother’s womb and, hopefully, carried to term. But even as Christians are involved in rescuing children from this frozen state, what should we think about IVF for our own infertility treatments? When couples struggle with infertility, IVF is presented as a near miraculous means to help them get the baby they’ve been yearning for. IVF is all about babies, and we’re pro-life, so we’re all about babies too! On the face of it, IVF would seem a life-affirming medical procedure. But there is a reason hundreds of thousands of children are left frozen, waiting to be born. IVF, as it is commonly done, involves the intentional creation of “excess” embryos – the creation of more children than will be implanted in their mother’s womb. That’s not how it has to be done, but that’s how it is done most of the time for reasons of cost effectiveness. These embryos then face one of four fates: Any that seem abnormal are, as a rule, “discarded” – British numbers indicate that this happens to roughly half the children. Some are implanted in the mother. A small number are donated to science for experimentation (where they are killed). The rest are left in a frozen state, waiting to be born. But unless something dramatic happens – unless “snowflake adoptions" start happening by the hundreds of thousands – the most likely fate for these children is eventual death. Christian couples struggling with infertility need to understand that the IVF industry offers hope, but has a great darkness to it. We don’t think of IVF doctors as abortionists, but when we recognize that life begins at conception then it’s no slur to make the comparison. Abortionists kill half their patients and it seems the same, or worse, can be said about IVF doctors too. So, of course, to rescue babies like Emma, we’ll need help from this IVF industry – there is a right way that IVF can be done. But we mustn’t be naïve about the darkness underlying this industry, lest, in our ignorance, we get caught up in it....

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Saturday Selections - Jan 20, 2018

Parents, your teens are being pressured to ‘sext.’ Even at Christian high schools. Jonathon Van Maren asks parents to stop being naive – this is happening, even at Christian schools. God's creation big and small In this three-minute video we get a look at God’s creation on an unimaginably vast scale, and on an infinitesimally tiny scale too. Though the presentation is secular, it reveals His genius through and through. The damsel and villain The whole of history, in one 7-minute spoken word piece. Hope for the frozen unchosen What happens to the millions of babies who are created via IVF? As WORLD magazine reports, many (British numbers put it at more than half) never make it past conception – they are discarded as being abnormal. Some of the others will be implanted, but since the normal IVF practice involves conceiving many more embryos than will be implanted, "excess" children are discarded, or donated to science for medical experimentation, or, in most cases, left in a frozen state awaiting a yet undetermined fate. In the US there are somewhere between 600,000 and a million of these children frozen right now, and some Christians are working to provide these survivors a chance to be born. Free e-book: Scott Klusendorf's The Case for Life If you're willing to fill in a 10-minute survey on your Bible reading habits, Crossway books will give you a free e-book copy of Scott Klusendorf's fantastic pro-life "how-to" manual for defending the unborn. There's no such thing as a free education With the increasing push for free university education, the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics thinks it's important we understand how a free education's costs are considerable....