In the debate over the ethics of invitro fertilization, while Southern Baptist messengers at the Annual Meeting in Indianapolis considered a resolution denouncing the practice, one moment stands out.
Daniel Taylor from Paris, Michigan, asked messengers to amend the resolution to soften the language, citing friends who had children through IVF. “In its original form, the resolution would castigate and condemn the entirely moral and ethical actions of these two friends of mine, calling their faithful sacrifice, struggle, and blessing a wicked thing,” he said.
Messengers voted down his amendment.

Zach Zahadak, a messenger from Fairborn, Ohio, spoke against the IVF resolution at the SBC Annual Meeting Indianapolis. Screenshot WFYI
Then Zach Zahadak from Fairborn, Ohio, came to the floor mic. “I’m against the idea that this technology is so wicked that it cannot be employed,” he said. “I have a son because of IVF. I have another son, 20-weeks-old, in my wife’s womb because of IVF,” he said. They also have more embryos in frozen storage. “I have ten embryos that I love and with every bit of my being we will have or see born into a Christian family.”
A third messenger’s story was probably the most surprising. Monica Hall from Paducah, Kentucky, opposes IVF completely. “There is no way to describe the treatment of embryos at any point of the IVF process as ethical or dignified,” Hall said. She told how she had “adopted” four frozen embryos and attempted to gestate them. None survived.
Messengers approved the resolution calling 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, especially in the number of embryos generated in the IVF process.”
The resolution was drafted after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered unborn children for the sake of civil lawsuits. Two facilities in the state were sued after an employee destroyed frozen embryos in 2020. Medical providers in Alabama stopped IVF treatments for a short time, until the state passed a law protecting them.
But the status of the unimplanted embryos remains an issue. And the ethical handing of the multiple unused embryos required to produce a single pregnancy is where medical ethicists, theologians, and SBC church members come in.
And there are the people who simply want to have children, by whatever means possible.
Those who stood to speak at the June convention often said they believe in the sanctity of human life. But there were clear differences among them whether that extends to frozen embryos.
“We need to slow down,” said Jason Thacker, an ethics professor at Southern Seminary’s Boyce College. He served as an adviser to the Resolutions Committee that brought the resolution. Christians are using IVF without considering the ethical implications of unused embryos, the committee contended. Thacker said they hoped for “the end of IVF as routinely practiced.”
Southern Seminary President Albert Mohler was a co-author of the resolution, along with Professor and Illinois native Andrew Walker. “Restricting abortion is not a pro-life victory,” Mohler said to the Danbury Institute prior to the vote, and as reported by Religion News Service. “The pro-life victory is the elimination of the murder of the unborn. And that means in every stage of fertilization all the way to natural death.”
Mohler called IVF an engineered system that results in destruction of embryos. “That is as immoral as anything we can imagine,” he said.
8 million stories
For couples who desperately want children, the ethical issue may be less clear and less a deciding factor in their quest for family.
Kayti Christian and her husband, Anthony, “banked” embryos in their attempt for a successful implantation. The Los Angeles couple contends that it was their only option if, in their 30s, they have any chance to a bear a child. Their doctor told them there is a 60% chance that one of their embryos will result in a pregnancy.
In 2018, the American Center for Reproductive Medicine Associates reported that three embryos are required to produce one that will survive to live birth. But in the California couple’s case, retrieval of 19 eggs had not yet produced a pregnancy.
Christian disagrees with the SBC resolution that views IVF as an artificial intervention in God’s design. “Was it God’s design for my husband and me to have difficulty conceiving?” she asked in an essay published by the “Today” show.
“I think about how my parents raised me to believe that God can heal and perform miracles,” said Christian, who was reared in two Southern Baptist churches, but has since left.
“According to the Bible stories I learned as a girl, Jesus walked on water and raised Lazarus from the dead,” she said. “But my parents also taught me that God created the brains responsible for inventing modern medicine and that ignoring the medical interventions available to us would be like choosing to drown despite a nearby life raft.”
Those who pastor couples wrestling with infertility will recognize the heartache, and for some the attempt to reconcile ethical conflicts. Mohler called it “compromise in our churches,” where couples say they believe in the sanctity of human life, yet embrace IVF.
Among American adults, 70% want couples to have access to IVF, but only 50% find the resulting destruction of embryos morally acceptable, according to Pew Research. Pew found around a third (35%) believe “human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights.”
This resolution was not the best answer for infertile couples, Pastor Andrew Hebert of Longview, Texas, told RNS. “Because they are pro-life, they desire to have children and love them and they are looking for an opportunity to do that,” he said. “To have a statement that says we’re against this is a confusing signal to many in our churches.”
Hebert said there have been couples using IVF in every church he has pastored. In fact, 2.3% of births in the U.S. result from IVF. That’s more than 8 million children since little Louise Brown was the first “test tube baby” in 1978.
No easy answers
With those numbers, pastors can count on questions from possible parents and hopeful grandparents about the ethics of IVF. It’s often asked this way: How does God feel about IVF?
“Those conceived in a lab are fully made in God’s image, but that doesn’t diminish the rupture to our theological anthropology that IVF requires,” Walker wrote for The Gospel Coalition.
At the time the resolution was presented in June, Walker posted on X (formerly Twitter), “Southern Baptists can no longer be silent or sit on the fence about IVF.” Pressed by a public radio station in Indianapolis, Walker said while the resolution does not advocate forbidding IVF, that is a stance he holds.
“Protestants, I fear, have unwittingly acquiesced, with the greatest of intentions, to an industry that promises life by also tampering with it. Given what is happening in the culture, now is as good a time as ever to speak with biblical clarity,” he posted.
Meanwhile, the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has called on Congress for increased regulation. “…While we lament the deep pain caused by infertility, we cannot remain silent about the ethical problems posed by in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART) as currently practiced in the United States,” ERLC President Brent Leatherwood wrote to U.S. Senators as they considered the IVF Protection Act. Senate Republicans blocked the bill twice last summer.
Speaking for Southern Baptists, Leatherwood wrote, “We must redouble our efforts to create a culture where the preborn–even at the earliest stage–are seen as essential neighbors in our society worthy of being saved, where parents are served, and where families can flourish.”
—with additional reporting from Baptist Press, ERLC, NBC, RNS, WFYI
Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in the Southern Baptist Convention is January 19. Download free resources from the ERLC.