It took Andrew and I a long time to make peace
with in vitro fertilization (IVF). We had been trying to get pregnant for a
couple of years. We'd had two losses. I know that a lot of people double,
triple, even quadruple our waiting years, but we knew that the heartbreak had
gone on long enough and we needed to take the next step - IVF.
Moving forward with IVF requires all sorts of
decisions, conversations and sacrifices. It's a major financial burden. It's a
hefty physical undertaking. It's a serious time commitment. But it was the
spiritual aspect of IVF that had us completely and utterly stuck.
In our faith community, there's a healthy
skepticism about reproductive technology. I count myself among those who
wrestle with the implications of our country's big science and small God. So
when we felt ourselves inching down the path that leads to IVF (a place we
never, ever thought we'd be), we entered into a wrestling match of our own.
Obviously, this is our journey. Only ours. I am
not making any recommendations here. I am not providing a theological lesson. I
am simply explaining how Andrew and I made peace with IVF. I have come across many people along the
way who feel much differently than we do about these issues. It's such a
personal thing, an individual choice, but one that’s important to dialogue
about.
Our biggest concern with fertility treatments
was whether IVF was sin. In the beginning, we asked so many questions -Are we
not trusting God enough by moving forward with this? Does the procedure itself
take God/marriage/love out of the equation and remove God's blessing? When
embryos die as part of IVF, how close is that to abortion? These were very
difficult questions for us to answer, so difficult that many of them went
unanswered. But even with unanswered questions, we eventually came to a place
where we felt very comfortable and at peace moving forward with it, and we have
never once looked back.
The freezing/cryogenics part of IVF was a
tough issue for me to wrap my head around. It sounded really scary and weird at
the beginning and was one of my biggest problems with the process, but I've
become more comfortable with the idea over the last couple of years as I've
learned more about it. I was fascinated to learn that some clinics have found
that frozen IVF cycles can often be even more successful than fresh cycles! Also,
some women respond much better to frozen cycles than fresh.
All of this is to say that freezing embryos
doesn't necessarily mean that they are less likely to turn into viable
pregnancies. If you research miscarriage rates, they’re all over the board, but
they’re generally higher than we’d expect. That’s because many women think
they're just having a late, heavy period when really, they're miscarrying. I
have heard doctors say that the embryos that don't survive the thaw are the
ones who may have been chemical pregnancies. I know they can't know that for
sure, but it really makes sense to me. Also, even after a baby is inside of you
(via IVF or a more natural method), there are all sorts of things that can
cause problems - deli meat, car accidents, soft cheeses, overly hot showers,
seat warmers in cars, laptops, etc. You do your absolute best to protect them,
but there are threats everywhere it seems. For us, the cryogenic process was
one of those potential threats. So, we felt like it was important to do
everything that we could to protect our embryos (choose a reputable clinic with
a good lab, decide ahead of time what we’d do with our remaining embryos, etc)
and then pray for them like crazy. We knew we couldn't completely protect them.
That part took a lot of faith.
One of my very best friends told me the most
freeing thing during one of our conversations about spirituality and IVF. I was
going on and on and on about the science behind everything, and she eventually just
said, "Em, this is all gray area. God hasn't given any specific
instructions about embryos, infertility procedures, etc. You have done your due
diligence in educating yourself on the subject, and you've still ended up in
the gray. There's just so much we don't know. This is one of those situations
where you have no other option than to align your heart with God's and ask Him
to show you the way. Ask Him to put a peace in your heart if He wants you to
pursue IVF and ask him to put an uneasiness in your heart if He wants you to go
a different direction."
So that's what we did. We had already
researched like crazy and had tons of conversations to get people’s opinions
about what we should do, and we kept ending up in that gray area where there
are no clear answers. So we stopped focusing on the science and the debate surrounding
IVF and put that energy toward our relationships with God. We spent extra time
reading Scripture. We talked to God all the time. We made sure that our hearts
were as aligned with His as they'd ever been, and we begged Him to take away
the peace that He had already placed in our hearts if He didn't want us to do
IVF.
At one point during our decision-making
process, I pictured myself in heaven having a conversation with God. I imagined
Him telling me that the IVF that brought us Harriet was a sin. This probably
sounds a bit heretical to even say, but I imagined myself stating my case to
Him. I imagined myself describing the way that I put myself out there and
pursued Him like crazy and sought His heart and mind on this issue. I imagined
myself asking Him why He didn't take away that peace. I just couldn’t imagine
God frowning on us for doing something that we had decided to do after such
soul-searching and while really, truly, fully pursuing holiness in this. That
imagery of having that conversation with God gave me an even more intense peace
about it.
Lastly, when we finally decided to do IVF, we
created very firm parameters around it. We decided that we would give every
single embryo the very best chance at life, whatever that looked like. We
decided that we were uncomfortable with the idea of selective reduction. We
felt like God had been very faithful in leading us to this decision, and we
wanted to be just as faithful in our part of it.
I was talking to a friend about the spiritual aspects of IVF
this past summer, and she made an excellent point, one I’d never considered
before. She said that what is sin for one person isn't always sin for another
person. So the fact that we did IVF and have a peace about it and some friends
of ours have decided against IVF for spiritual/ethical reasons doesn’t necessarily
mean that anyone is going against God’s direction. Maybe, for whatever reason,
God calls certain people to something else, so pursing IVF would be wrong for
them. It took me a while to wrap my head around this concept but the more I
thought about it, the more sense it made to me. I can think of examples of
other things in life that would be a sin for me but wouldn't be a sin for other
people, or vice versa. Like some people can have a couple drinks and it's just
fine, but other people have been called to complete sobriety so even one drink
is a sin for them. Maybe IVF is the same way.
As far as books and other resources on this
topic, I haven't come across much. I think that the ethical/spiritual part of
IVF is something that people stray away from for fear of offending people
and/or being judged. I really wish that there were more resources out there. I
did read one book about the ethics of reproductive technology. It was very
black-and-white about the issue and discouraged readers from doing anything in
that gray area. Is that probably the "safest" way to go? Some would
say yes. They would ask why you'd even want to walk that line of "is it
sin or is it not?" To us, the science and academics behind all of this
stuff just wasn't cutting it. We needed to feel and experience God's answer in
our hearts/souls/bodies rather than keeping it all in our head. So we went a
different direction than the book recommended...and I'm fine with that. To me,
that felt safer than just having a blanket, black-and-white answer...but many
would disagree with that. Again, I wish that there were more resources out
there for people who are wrestling with these questions. If you know of any,
let me know!
To those of you who are in the midst of this
decision, my heart is with you. It’s a tough thing to feel that the thing your heart
longs for the most might be in conflict with the One who holds your heart in
His hands. I wish I had concrete answers to the many questions that arise
around IVF and spirituality, but I don’t. All I have is my own story. Hope it
was helpful.