Pro-lifers grapple with fertility treatments

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It… pro-life groups take on in vitro fertilization.

For years, the pro-life movement has focused on protecting the rights of unborn children killed in abortion. But in the past year, IVF has emerged as a new front in the national debate.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers are advocating for the reproductive technology. That demands a response from pro-life leaders and voters alike.

WORLD’s Leah Savas brings us a story on pro-life groups working to raise awareness about the risks and the ethical concerns.

NARRATOR: Welcome to build a baby, where anyone who wants a baby can build one.

LEAH SAVAS: That’s the opening of a satirical YouTube short film about IVF. In the video, a crane slowly lowers the smiling face of a baby onto an infant’s chubby headless torso as smokestacks puff out small clouds. 

NARRATOR: In our state-of-the-art facility, using state-of-the-art technology, we can build your state-of-the-art baby!

In the next scene, a conveyor belt of babies scrolls across the screen. In less than three minutes, the video describes the IVF process. It involves fertilizing human eggs in a lab and transferring some of the resulting embryos back into a woman’s uterus. In a tongue-in-cheek way, the video critiques some of the factors that give pro-lifers pause about the technology.

NARRATOR: All embryos will be graded, and we’ll discard any defective or genetically imperfect babies before you even know it.

The video is from the Christian media group Choice 4-2. They’re known for videos critiquing abortion, like this one from 2018.

LAURA KLASSEN: Human rights. You make think you’ve always had yours. But you would be wrong. So how did you get your human rights? From the magical birth canal, of course!

Texas pastor Jon Speed helped research for the Build-a-Baby video before its original release in 2023.

JON SPEED: we've always felt that the video, when we released it was, didn't really get the play that it should have to begin with.

So when national news on IVF broke last week, it seemed like the perfect time to re-release the video.

ANCHOR: President Trump has signed an executive order calling for lower costs and expanded access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

Here’s Speed again.

SPEED: He's been a dilemma for the entire pro life movement, … because he just completely dropped the life issue from his campaign. … And now with this … He clearly doesn't understand or doesn't care, one or the other about the human lives that are lost in IVF.

Before researching for the Build-A-Baby video, Speed didn’t know much about the IVF process.

SPEED: I didn't hardly know anything, but the main thing was that I did not understand how much human life we were talking about. … The scope of it is shocking.

According to national data from 2022, there were more than 400,000 recorded IVF cycles that year. Each likely involved conceiving an average of ten embryos each, which is an estimated total of 4 million embryos. But fewer than one hundred thousand infants were born through IVF that year. That means roughly 3.9 million other embryos were either frozen, destroyed, or discarded… or died in some other way. And that's just 2022.

NARRATOR: Contact us, and build your baby today. Choice for Two is not the only pro.

Choice4-2 is not the only pro-life organization speaking out against President Trump’s order calling for the expansion of IVF.

HAMRICK: Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, has taken a position of tremendous concern and reluctance and great reserve about IVF for at least six years... It's not a new development for us.

Kristi Hamrick is vice president of media and policy at Students for Life.

HAMRICK: That's part of the thing that we'd like to President Trump about. When he says he supports IVF, what exactly does he mean? Because there needs to be more regulation. I don't believe that he supports a sloppy business that allows preborn children to be destroyed accidentally. I'm sure he does not support all the mistakes that are being made.

One of the mistakes she’s referring to also hit the news last week, the day President Trump signed his executive order.

ANCHOR 1: Alright, a wild story now at noon. A Georgia woman suing a fertility clinic that she used to help her get pregnant.

ANCHOR 2: Yeah, she claims the staff workers implanted the wrong embryo in her and she gave birth to a baby that was not biologically hers.

KRISTI HAMRICK: This industry is so full of stories like that, of horror stories where people lose children, where mistakes are made, where the wrong sperm is used. There's a failure to be willing to discuss everything that's going wrong, the lack of safeguards.

At the same time, lawmakers in Georgia are considering a bill that would codify a right to IVF. Six Republicans are listed as cosponsors on the bill, and it has the support of the Republican Speaker of the Georgia House.

The pro-child organization Them Before Us has been working with pro-life groups in the state to oppose the bill. Here’s engagement director Patience Sunne.

SUNNE: So when something gets framed as a right, you know, something that we saw when abortion was considered a right was that regulation on a right is very difficult, and that expansion of a right is almost inevitable.

Sunne is concerned that legislation like this would prevent pro-lifers from effectively regulating the industry—such as by limiting the number of embryos an IVF provider can create or by prohibiting genetic screenings.

SUNNE: I think any of those regulations and limits would be framed and approached as a threat to that right.

Back in Texas, Jon Speed with Choice4-2 used to stand outside of abortion facilities to try to talk women out of getting abortions. Now that abortion facilities are closed in his state, he spends a couple hours each week standing outside of fertility clinics, trying to talk couples out of pursuing IVF. He said he sometimes runs into pro-life people who are going through the process.

SPEED: I've asked them, Do you believe that life begins at fertilization? 99% of the time? They agree. Yes, it does. And then when I start walking them through each stage, I've had them, you know, real, I think they're real Christians, you know that they break down in tears because you're just by asking questions, you're bringing it to their front of their conscience.

Christians stand outside of a fertility clinic in Fort Worth, Texas. Courtesy of Jon Speed

But his hope is to catch people before they’ve started, since many people have no idea what’s actually involved in IVF until they’re already in the middle of it. Just last week, he spoke to a young woman who he said soaked up what he was saying like a sponge.

SPEED: She had very gentle spirit. She wasn't argumentative. She just nodded her head a lot and listened quietly and said, thank you for talking to me. You know, you know, I'll look into this. I'll read this stuff, you know.

Speed wants her and others to understand what’s at stake for tiny humans in the IVF process.

SPEED: I look at it from a Christian perspective, and I look at it from a child sacrifice perspective. And if you look at the numbers, you're talking about, maybe 25 to 30 human embryos destroyed for every one live birth. That's worse than abortion, and it's really it's devastating.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas.

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