About 15 minutes to read
This page is about the grief of infertility and the moral questions in IVF. If the empty cradle is breaking your heart, start with the grief Scripture names. If you have embryos frozen in a clinic, read the part for you. If you were conceived by IVF, or you are raising a child who was, read this part first, and know that nothing here makes that child less. If embryos of yours were thrown away, there is full pardon in Christ. If children have never come, there is a word for you. If the sorrow has you thinking of ending your life, call 988 or text 988 tonight.
The Grief Scripture Names
This grief comes a month at a time, and the people around you may never know. Scripture names the barren womb among the things that are never satisfied, beside the grave (Proverbs 30:15-16). Sarah waited for a son until she was old. Rachel was loved by her husband more than her sister was, and it did not ease the ache.
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
Genesis 30:1 (KJV)
Jacob answered in anger, Am I in God’s stead? (Genesis 30:2). It was true, but it was not tender.
Hannah’s rival mocked her year after year, until she wept, and did not eat (1 Samuel 1:7). Her husband asked, am not I better to thee than ten sons? (1 Samuel 1:8). He meant it kindly, but he did not understand. So Hannah prayed at the house of God until the priest thought she was drunk.
And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord.
1 Samuel 1:15 (KJV)
That is what you may do. Hannah went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad (1 Samuel 1:18), before she had any answer at all. Her prayer did not change her womb that day. It changed where her grief was resting.
Elisabeth grew old with no child (Luke 1:7). When at last she conceived, she said God had taken away my reproach among men (Luke 1:25). God had seen that shame, and he sees yours. Husbands, this is your grief too. Weep with your wife, and pray with her out loud.
Not a Punishment
Zacharias and Elisabeth were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless (Luke 1:6). The next verse says they had no child. Scripture sets those facts side by side so that no one will join them as cause and effect.
God did once close the wombs of a household in judgment (Genesis 20:18), but he said so in his word. He has not said it of you. When the disciples asked whose sin had made a man blind, Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents (John 9:3). If that fear keeps coming back, read I think he is punishing me.
A Gift, Not a Right
Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
Psalm 127:3 (KJV)
A heritage is given, never owed. The longing for children is good, but no one has a right to a child, not even the most faithful couple in the church. A Christian may ask God for children with all his heart, and must still let God be the giver.
A childless marriage is a whole marriage. They shall be one flesh (Genesis 2:24), and God makes that union at the wedding, not at the birth of a child. Of the purposes the Confession gives for marriage, the mutual help of husband and wife comes first (WCF 24.2, and see Why God Gave It). A husband and wife without children are not a family waiting to begin. They are a family.
Seeking Help From Doctors
God, in his ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at his pleasure.
Westminster Confession of Faith 5.3
The skill of physicians is one of those means. Isaiah had a lump of figs laid on Hezekiah’s boil (Isaiah 38:21), and Paul called Luke the beloved physician (Colossians 4:14). The Larger Catechism counts a sober use of physic, or medicine, among the duties of the sixth commandment (WLC 135). So tests to find the cause, surgery to repair what is damaged, and medicine to help a body work as it should are lawful, no more a lack of faith than setting a broken arm. Treatments that help a husband’s seed reach his wife within her own body raise far fewer questions than IVF. And keep praying. Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren (Genesis 25:21).
Watch your heart too. Give me children, or else I die, can harden from a cry into a demand.
What Is Wrong in IVF as It Is Commonly Done
In IVF a woman takes drugs so that her body ripens many eggs at once. Doctors draw the eggs out and join them with sperm in a laboratory. The embryos grow for a few days, and then one or more are placed in the mother’s womb.
Everything turns on what those embryos are. Scripture treats a human being as a person from conception, made in God’s image, as What God Says About the Unborn shows. An embryo in a dish is not a possible child. He is a child, very small. David said to God, Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect (Psalm 139:16). Unperfect means not yet formed. God saw David at that size, and knew him.
Measured by that, much of what clinics do as a matter of course breaks the sixth commandment.
- Making more embryos than will be transferred. Children are made with the plan that some will never be given a chance.
- Freezing them without end. Many are never claimed, and a child is left neither allowed to grow nor allowed to die.
- Discarding them. Embryos judged weak or no longer wanted are thrown away or given for research. That is the taking of a human life.
- Testing to select. Clinics test embryos and transfer only those judged healthy, or of the sex the parents want. The rest are set aside. A child with a weakness bears God’s image as fully as any other (Exodus 4:11).
- Selective reduction. When several babies begin to grow at once, doctors may offer to end the lives of some so that others may be born. It is abortion.
Each of these treats an image-bearer as material to be sorted, stored, and spent. The Larger Catechism forbids whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any (WLC 136).
Donors and Surrogates
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis 2:24 (KJV)
Donor eggs, donor sperm, and a surrogate mother all bring a third person into what God made for two. When Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham, and Rachel gave Bilhah to Jacob (Genesis 16:1-4, 30:3-4), Scripture records the jealousy and sorrow that followed. It never commends the choice. A Christian couple should refuse these, however strong the longing and however kind the offer.
Where Faithful Teachers Differ
Some couples ask about IVF within strict limits, using only the husband’s and wife’s own cells and making only as many embryos as will all be transferred, with none frozen or discarded. Reformed ethicists differ on whether that can be done in good conscience. Many counsel against it. They note that it parts conceiving a child from the marriage bed (see Tenderness in the Marriage Bed), and that once the process begins, clinics press hard for more embryos. Others permit it, with every limit kept and every embryo welcomed as a son or daughter. This page will not settle what faithful teachers have not. Do not go near it without your elders’ counsel, and do not take one step your conscience cannot take before God. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23).
If You Have Frozen Embryos
Perhaps you have embryos in storage from IVF years ago. This is one of the hardest places a Christian couple can stand. Those embryos are your children. So you may not have them destroyed, and you may not give them for research. Leaving them frozen forever is not a safe middle way.
Christians have sought to give such children life in two ways. The first is to have them transferred to their own mother’s womb, even if you thought your family was complete, and even at great cost. The second, if that cannot be done, is embryo adoption, where another married couple receives them and the wife carries them as her own. Some believers hesitate over this too. But it brings no third person into the making of a child. The child already exists and needs a mother to live, and many see it as a rescue.
Not every embryo survives thawing, and not every transfer takes. When a child dies that way, it is a real death to grieve, and not one you caused. If your baby died before birth is for you too.
Do not decide this alone. Go to your elders, find out what your clinic will do if the fees stop, and make sure nothing is done without your word. Ask God for courage to do what is costly.
Children Conceived by IVF
If you were conceived by IVF, you are fully human and fully loved by God, no less precious than any other child, and nothing on this page lessens you. God saw you in a dish as clearly as he saw David in the womb, and you bear his image.
God never counts a child less for how he came. Perez was born of Judah’s sin with Tamar, and he stands in the line of Christ (Matthew 1:3). The worth of a child is set by the God who made him, not by how he was conceived.
If brothers or sisters of yours were made with you and never born, you may grieve them. If a donor’s egg or sperm was used, you may mourn a parent you have never known, and that is not ingratitude. God is a father of the fatherless (Psalm 68:5), and you may bring all of it to him.
Parents, if you used IVF without knowing what was wrong in it, you may confess what was wrong without regretting your child. You can repent of how something was done and still thank God every day for the life he gave. If a donor was used, your child is still fully yours to raise. Love him without a shadow over him. He did nothing wrong by being born.
Pardon for Embryos Destroyed
Some of you agreed to let embryos be discarded, or tested and set aside, or reduced in the womb. Many were never told those were children. Some knew. Either way the guilt is real, and this page will not call it nothing.
Paul once hunted Christians to their death. Afterward he wrote, I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief (1 Timothy 1:13). Ignorance did not make his sin innocent, but he received mercy. If you knew what you were doing, there is mercy for that too, for Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).
As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:12 (KJV)
Christ bore the wrath of God for every sin of all who trust in him, and he rose from the dead. If you have never come to him, read The Gospel, and come today. Confess the sin by name, and believe him, for there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Leave those little ones with the Judge of all the earth, who will do right (Genesis 18:25). If the guilt keeps returning, read What I did is too great to forgive.
Adoption and the Family of Christ
Adoption Is Not Second Best
People sometimes say just adopt, as if adoption cured grief. It does not, and no child should be brought home to fill another’s place. But adoption is not a second-best way to have a family. It is the way God made his own.
But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Galatians 4:4-7 (KJV)
Every Christian is adopted. God planned it before the world began, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself (Ephesians 1:5). We have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15). An adopted son has a right to all the privileges of the sons of God (WSC 34). He is not a lesser son in God’s house, nor in yours. Adoption and foster care carry real losses, for the child above all, and are not every couple’s calling. But they let a home show what God has done in Christ.
If Children Never Come
For some, no child will come, by birth or by adoption. God has not passed you over. The eunuch could never have a child and feared he was a dry tree (Isaiah 56:3). God made him a promise.
For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.
Isaiah 56:4-5 (KJV)
A dry tree pictures a life that bears no fruit and leaves nothing behind. God answers that fear with a real promise. In Israel a man’s name lived on through his sons. God says he will keep yours himself, in his own house.
When his mother and brothers came for him, Jesus looked at those around him and said, whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother (Mark 3:35). In his church you are not on the edge of the family. There are children and young believers there who need a father or mother in the faith. Paul had no children, and he called Timothy my own son in the faith (1 Timothy 1:2).
The ache may stay with you all your life, but it will not have the last word. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes (Revelation 21:4).
What to Do This Week
If You Are Waiting for a Child
- Pour out your soul before the Lord, as Hannah did. You do not need fine words.
- Talk with each other. Decide together, before you are worn out, how far you will go with treatment and where you will stop.
- Ask your elders for counsel before any treatment beyond tests, surgery, and ordinary medicine.
- Refuse what is wrong, however it is offered. No embryos made to be frozen or discarded, no testing to select, no donors or surrogates, and never selective reduction.
How the Church Should Care for the Infertile
- Weep with them that weep (Romans 12:15). A baptism may be a hard day for someone near you. Keep rejoicing, but notice who is quiet.
- Stop asking when. You do not know what a couple is carrying. And do not hand out cures. Just relax, and just adopt, are not comfort. Pray with them instead.
- Remember Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. If your church marks these days at all, they can be the hardest of the year for the childless and the bereaved. Do not ask every mother to stand. Pray also for those who long for children.
- Make room in the family. Bring childless couples into your home and your children’s lives as aunts and uncles in the faith. Stand by those who adopt and foster.
Paul bowed his knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named (Ephesians 3:14-15). If you are in Christ, you belong to that family now, with or without children of your own, and he will bring you home.