What do Lutherans teach about IVF?

Making babies in glass (in vitro fertilisation [IVF]) is widely accepted throughout the world to address the problem of infertility, which is an issue for around one out of six couples. Since the world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978, almost 4 million babies have been born through IVF. In developed countries today, between 3 and 4 per cent of births begin in IVF clinics.

An LCA statement on human reproductive technology was adopted by General Synod in 1987 and can be found on www.lca.org.au/csbq. In brief, the two key ethical concerns with IVF are the lack of respect for embryonic human life and the tendency to treat a baby as a consumer good to be sold to any single or couple who wants one.

What does IVF involve? In the simplest version the husband provides the sperm, the wife provides the egg, and the two are united in the laboratory to create an embryo which is placed in the woman’s uterus. About one in four embryo transfers will succeed to grow into a live-born baby, similar to the success rate with natural procreation.

For the woman an egg collection can mean daily hormone injections, daily blood tests for one week of each month and a general anaesthetic each time the eggs are harvested. Another visit for the chosen embryo to be placed in the uterus, and then the anxious wait to see if a pregnancy has begun.

When twelve to 20 eggs, for instance, are harvested from a woman’s stimulated ovaries, usually all will be fertilised in the laboratory, and one (the one judged best) will be implanted in each cycle. After a couple achieve their one or two live births there are usually ‘surplus’ embryos, tiny human lives kept in frozen storage. After 30 years of IVF in Australia there are tens of thousands of human embryos in this suspended animation.

I see no easy moral solution for dealing with these embryos that become ‘surplus’ once couples decide they want no more pregnancies. Few parents are willing to donate their embryos to other infertile couples. Discard them? Donate them for stem-cell research? Once we make the mistake of creating surplus embryos, for those who respect human life there is no good answer. Nowadays, Christian couples do have the option of requesting that their eggs be frozen and only be fertilised to make an embryo when needed for immediate implantation at each cycle.

When our Lord Jesus made the deliberate choice to come into our human world as an embryo (Luke chapter 1), I believe he was teaching us to respect human life from conception onwards.

Personally, I believe that Lutheran couples can make use of IVF technology, with due consideration of the moral issues involved. However, we humans have a bad habit of sliding down slippery slopes on all the life issues, and I would proceed with care.

Response by Dr Robert Pollnitz, chair of the LCA’s Commission on Social and Bioethical Questions.

This question appeared in the RAQ (Rarely Asked Questions) column in the July 2011 edition of The Lutheran. While responses to RAQ questions are supplied by LCA leaders or theologians, they should be treated as personal opinions and not as official statements on behalf of the church.