Demonstrators with signs of U.S. Supreme Court Justices during an abortion-rights protest in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, May 3, 2022. Abortion rights suddenly emerged as an issue that could reshape the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of Congress, following a report that conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court were poised to strike down the half-century-old Roe v. Wade precedent. Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images
On Wednesday, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to oppose in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The move by the nation’s largest and most politically powerful Protestant group signals the beginning of a turn on the right against IVF, an issue that many conservatives view as the “pro-life” movement’s next venture.
The vote comes as Democrats in Washington pushed vote on legislation to protect IVF to drive a wedge among Republicans. GOP members blocked the bill in the Senate. The procedure was recently scrutinized after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022.
Wednesday’s decision declares that IVF “most often participates in the destruction of embryonic human life” and urges Southern Baptists to adopt and “only utilize reproductive technologies” that uphold “the unconditional value and right to life of every human being.”
While the resolution may be nonbinding, almost 13 million Southern Baptists across 45,000 churches now face pressure to push against IVF.
Though Catholics have been known to oppose the procedure, many Protestant denominations have ignored it and focused on abortion instead. This has changed in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in February that deemed frozen embryos created during the process of IVF should have full personhood rights.
Some evangelicals now believe their stance that life begins at conception must be applied to IVF, as well.
However, the debate poses a challenge for Republicans who do not want to alienate the majority of their constituents who accept IVF as an acceptable way to conceive. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Southern Baptist, has publicly supported IVF while declining to comment on whether the destruction of embryos should be considered murder.
As the topic becomes more commonly discussed amongst evangelicals, they seem to be falling into two categories: those who believe IVF can be practiced ethically if no embryos are destroyed and those who think IVF is inherently unethical because it is not the natural way to conceive.
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