Thursday, August 7, 2025

Part I

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The Birth of the ‘World’s Oldest Baby’: A Baby is Born After Being Frozen as an Embryo for 3 Decades

Well, here’s a headline. “A record-breaking baby has been born from an embryo that’s over 30 years old.” Another headline simply said, “World’s oldest baby born.” Now, when you see a headline like this you have to look further beneath the surface. What’s going on here? Well, Technology Review, very establishment, has actually been pretty restrained when the headline is “a record-breaking baby that has been born from an embryo that’s over 30 years old.” I’ll give them credit for candor in that headline. So, we’re talking about an embryo that’s more than 30 years old, an embryo that is now a baby, and a baby boy who was born just in the last couple of weeks and now holds the record for the “oldest baby.” That’s the lead.

“Thaddeus Daniel Pierce, who arrived on July 26th, was developed from an embryo that had been in storage for 30 and a half years.” Lindsay Pierce is a very happy mother, said, “ We had a rough birth, but we are both doing well now. He is so chill, we are in awe that we have this precious baby.'” Well, first of all, congratulations to this mother and father for receiving this new life. They did so through what is sometimes called a snowflake adoption, that is the adoption, which by the way, generally these days is undertaken by a Christian couple, a Christian couple adopting an embryo that had been created through IVF technology by another couple. And that couple did not transfer the embryo or all of the embryos into the mother’s womb. And thus, this is a so-called “excess embryo.” And that’s just the crude language, very morally revealing language that is sometimes used here.

And so, I have argued that it is morally licit, it is morally permissible by a Christian biblical worldview for a Christian couple to adopt one of these embryos. I do not believe it’s ethical to create the embryo in terms of the laboratory context and the commercial enterprise of IVF in the first place, that’s a very different thing. I think this shows a Christian basic worldview principle that you don’t alienate goods. So in other words, marriage, the union between the husband and the wife, the gift of life and pregnancy, the creation of the embryos, that is something that by God’s design was a composite whole. When you separate that and you alienate the goods, that’s the technical term, when you alienate the goods one from the other, you create an awful lot of moral risk. And the moral risk is demonstrated in the fact that there are well over a million so-called excess embryos created through the IVF process.

And if anything, that number’s really small. Those are the acknowledged numbers. No one has an official count. But just looking at what we are told by the IVF business itself, there are over a million of these and most of them are going to atrophy, they’re going to decay over time even as they are frozen. I mean, you understand even in the unique laboratory conditions of deep, deep freezing that has preserved these IVF-produced embryos, the fact is that’s not indefinite and no morally serious person can really claim that’s indefinite. And even in the indefinite situation you have, according to the biblical worldview, you have human beings in a frozen state. And so again, I want to say to this young couple who welcomed this baby, congratulations, and I think they’ve done a morally good thing. They did not create the embryo, they had no part in that, but it was an embryo that did exist.

Here’s what technology review tells us. “In May 1994, they managed to create four embryos. One of them was transferred to Linda’s uterus, it resulted in a healthy baby girl. The happy mom said, ‘I was so blessed to have a baby.’ The remaining three embryos were cryopreserved and kept in a storage tank.” Technology Review then tells us straightforwardly that was 31 years ago. The healthy baby girl is now a 30-year-old woman who has her own 10-year-old daughter, but the other three embryos remained frozen in time. Okay, to cut to the quick, the original couple, the mother and the father, they later divorced. So, one of the embryos was transferred into the mother’s uterus, the other three, as the article tells us, are cryopreserved in a storage tank. Now, after the divorce the decision was made to allow for the adoption of these embryos. Remember, we’re talking three decades ago. We’re talking about 30 and a half years ago.

We’re talking about the original IVF process and procedure leading to four embryos, one being transferred, and that led to the baby that the mom celebrated here, who is now herself a mom with a 10-year-old daughter, and now a sibling who is a newborn. So, this is a 30-year-old woman who has a sibling who is a newborn. Now, the sibling is not legally related to her, but is absolutely biologically related to her. The point is that as you’re thinking about this, the Christian understanding of moral risk should just jump out at us here. And so, I’ve written a lot, talked a lot about IVF, and we’re going to have to return to it from time to time simply because it is a pressing issue and the numbers are mounting, and the complexities are mounting. And this just demonstrates one of the complexities.

Now you have siblings born 30 years, actually a little bit more than 30 years apart. It’s an astounding thing. It could only happen in the modern age, it could only happen with the development of this kind of reproductive technology. Could only happen with the embryo research that has taken place, it could only happen with the business, frankly, the big business of advanced reproduction leading to IVF clinics and all the rest, it can only happen with cryopreservation and the, at least for now, preservation of so many of these embryos. But it comes with a creation of what is now hundreds of thousands of embryos who are never going to be transferred to a uterus. So, we should be thankful for this baby. Here’s another issue to the Christian biblical worldview. The birth of a baby is an unalloyed good. The circumstances of conception may not be good.

The circumstances of technology might not be good in and of themselves, different levels of moral risk, but the baby herself or himself is always to be welcomed. And that goes back even long before the technological age with the children sometimes referred to as an “illegitimate child,” though the child’s not illegitimate, the circumstances whereby the pregnancy occurred, that may be morally illegitimate. The child made in the image of God is not illegitimate and never can be. 

All right. Now, when we’re doing worldview analysis let’s think of a couple of levels. Number one, the first level is that this happened. And the fact that it happened is just really important. It’s a flashing light on our dashboard. It tells us that the further complexities, the greater moral risk involved at IVF, lots of Christians want to ignore that. Lots of Christians want to dismiss that. And again, we sympathize with any couple seeking a baby and facing the heartbreak of infertility, and not receiving the baby they so desperately want.

And this is where we just have to take that category of moral risk into account and understand that different technologies, different techniques, different procedures, different avenues will lead to different levels of moral risk. But that flashing light on our dashboard tells us this is a massive moral risk. The existence of all of these embryos, massive moral risk. We’re turning human beings as babies into commodities, and in this case into frozen commodities. And as you know, it also comes with further moral alienation, the alienation from marriage, because the biggest part of the market right now, we are told when it comes to IVF and surrogacy, is not actually married heterosexual couples. It is increasingly single people, and even more that same sex couples who of course cannot reproduce by any normal means. And so the alienation, the moral alienation, is only going to grow as a deeper and deeper issue.

The Southern Baptist Convention, I’m glad to say, addressed this issue back a year ago in 2024 in a resolution. And immediately I started hearing from people who said, “Do you really have to speak to that?” And I wanted to say, “Look, there’s this flashing light on the dashboard. You can ignore it, but you can’t make it go away and it cannot be ignored for long.” And so, this is just another reminder that this issue is out there. I said the first is the fact of the moral issue itself. 

The second is the fact that Technology Review has reported this. So, as is so often the case with a big issue of deep worldview significance, there are at least two dimensions when it comes to number one, the thing in itself, and secondly, how the world is talking about this thing, or the fact that it actually is talking about this thing.

So in this case, Technology Review, which isn’t given to sensationalist headlines, it is interested in this precisely because it is shocking that there could be two siblings separated by more than 30 years conceived at exactly at the same time, born more than 30 years apart. This could not have happened in previous generations, it is now something that has happened. It could well become routine. And by the way, in this case, as I say, I am thankful for the Christian couple who adopted this embryo through the snowflake adoption. They had nothing to do with the creation of the embryo, they took a positive moral act in adopting this embryo. I don’t think Christians should be complicit in the industry, but this is a very different thing. 

But at the same time, you can understand how this could be used in absolutely horrifying ways. What about people who intentionally decide to do something like this? And we’re going to be looking at this issue, especially big headlines coming out of California in a related story. We’re still gathering information on that, but a lot of this is not just science fiction out there potentially sometime in the future. This is right now, this is a headline in Technology Review, not in a science fiction novel.

Part II

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Euthanasia is Not a Fundamental Right: Watch the Framing of the National Conversation Over Assisted Suicide

But next, as we’re thinking about these big issues of moral significance, once again, we need to pay attention to both of those levels, the thing in itself, and how it’s being presented to us. Once again, it turns out that both of those issues are very important. And in this case, I’m talking about an article that appeared in the print edition of the New York Times on Monday of this week. Headline, “She took her country along for her last journey, overcoming Columbia’s barriers to assisted death.” So above the fold, the biggest headline in the New York Times Monday about a woman who committed what you would call “assisted death,” ended her life by a physician assisted suicide, or at least assisted suicide, and she did so after a diagnosis of terminal cancer.

And you’ll notice, however, the way this is presented to us, here’s that second level. The subhead here is, “Overcoming Columbia’s barriers to assisted death.” Now, we put barriers in, that insinuates the barriers are the problem. Assisted death is supposedly the answer. Okay, let’s take this apart. We’re talking about a woman who’s rather well known in Columbia, Tatiana Andia, and, “She was a hero to many in the room, the woman who negotiated cheaper drug prices for Columbia. But that day at a conference for policymakers and academics on the right to health in Latin America, there was an intimate topic she wanted to discuss. ‘A year ago I was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, one that’s incurable, catastrophic, all the terrible adjectives.'” She knows the whole thing sounded preposterous.

“The air in the packed conference room went still. Ms. Andia, age 44, a professor and a former official in Columbia’s health ministry, said she was going to speak out not as an expert, but from a different perspective. One newly acquired, that of a patient. A particular health issue preoccupied her these days. She said the right to death, ‘No one,’ she went on, ‘wants to talk to me about dying.'” She went on to ask the question, “How come we can’t talk about having a dignified death when we talk about the right to health?” Well, here’s the setup. This is a woman with a horrifying diagnosis, of a truly horrifying disease, lung cancer, terminal, incurable. And as a matter of fact, because she had been long involved in health policy there in Columbia, she understood what the disease meant. But you’ll notice that what she has demanded and actually went through with was assisted suicide, and it’s the concept of a good death. One of the conclusion of what in secular terms will be called a virtuous life, in Christian terms, a godly life. We should pray for that kind of death.

But we’re not always given a calm, peaceful death. And sometimes it does come in ways that show the ugliness of death, by the way. This is another biblical concept. Death is ugly, it is the enemy and it will appear as such. But you’ll note that the modern mind increasingly demands control, personal autonomy over everything, and that includes even the circumstances of death. In this case, there’s a really interesting twist, and that has to do with Columbia, because in Columbia assisted suicide or euthanasia, as it is legally called there, that goes back to the Greek concept of a good death, euthanasia is legal, but guess what? Doctors don’t want to do it, and it is because they are healers, not killers. And that comes right on in this article. The medical profession is steadfastly against assisted suicide. And for that reason, an awful lot of the assisted suicide is not physician assisted.

I’m reading from the article here, front page article by Stephanie Nolan in the New York Times, “Doctors uncomfortable with ending lives and reluctant to give patients so much control, hadn’t encouraged it. And by 2023, only one in three hospitals had established the required review committees, and health insurance companies, which nominally have the job of organizing assisted deaths, are so bureaucratic that people die of their illness or give up before they gain access.” Now, here’s the next paragraph. “As a result, assisted deaths remain rare. Between 2015 and 2023, the last year for which data has been released, there were a total of 692 medically assisted deaths in the country of 53 million people.” Now, just notice the framing here, journalistic framing, the way this is presented, it’s as if that number’s just, well, just too low. And if the situation were made right that number would be far larger, that that’s all built into the framework for this article, which is thus an argument.

The woman in this case, Tatiana Andia, she wanted to “demystify the procedure,” and so she made this as public as possible. And by the way, it’s hard to be more public than front page above the fold in the New York Times daily edition, and yet it also tells us something else and that is that this isn’t being published in Columbia, no doubt there was news coverage there, this is the front page of the New York Times and this is something that took place in Columbia. 

Okay, another second dimension issue here. It’s right here in the article, as it’s in the print edition, it says, “The final choice, a national conversation.” This is a series of articles by the New York Times on assisted death, as they call it. So, this is part of a package, and the journalistic package is going to evidently report on different places and different contexts. But the point is, this is the direction of the future. The only question is how fast are you going to do the right thing and move along with assisted death? That’s the implication here. That’s the point this woman was trying to make. 

She acknowledged, by the way, by the time her end came, by her own choosing in terms of the time, she admitted that the situation was more complicated, she said, “I myself oversimplified euthanasia, but it’s not so easy.” She said, “It’s not just a formality.” She said, “Like many other fundamental rights, it is good and reassuring that it exists on paper, but exercising it in practice is another story.” Okay, huge, huge, massive moral leap there. A fundamental right? Fundamental right means one that’s pre-political, it’s not something that’s established by legislation. It’s something that is natural, grounded in what in older discourse would’ve been called natural rights.

A fundamental right is something that, as I say, is pre-political. Oh, that’s nonsense. That’s absolute nonsense. But you’ll notice this is a commonality in the way this kind of argument is made in a revolution in morality. People say this is a fundamental right. Abortion? A fundamental right, a woman’s fundamental right to choose. The pro-abortion argument is government should recognize that right. Of course, it’s a horrifying claim, but it has gained so much traction that that’s the way it’s often just framed in national discourse. And you’ll see the same thing is now being attempted on euthanasia, the same thing. It’s being framed as a fundamental right, an exercise of personal autonomy, and the idea of a good death is being held out here as a noble model for others to follow. And this article is not the first in this series, nor will it be the last, other models for moral emulation.

Now, the New York Times doesn’t pretty this up, I’ll give them credit for that, just as this woman said that she had oversimplified euthanasia. It’s not so easy. The Times does make that clear. However, it’s in a moral context in which they are clearly implying, and I mean clearly, that this ought to be easier and it ought to be made easier. Now, what’s not said here, I just want to put on the table, is that number one, this is horrifying in itself, the idea that we would just exercise autonomy to end our own lives. That’s profoundly unbiblical, profoundly unbiblical. “Thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not murder,” that extends to ourselves. 

But you’ll notice that the logic in society so quickly, just the math, the numbers, the finances are going to tell the story, a right to die is quickly going to become a duty to die. And you say, “Well, you’re exaggerating how fast that comes.” You want to bet? Just look at the 20th century. Just look at the first half of the 20th century. Just look at the Weimar Republic in Germany in the early part of the 20th century, that which came before the Third Reich, and understand, no, this can happen very, very quickly. In this case, in a very sad way, the statement you do the math is absolutely chilling. I promise you, people will do the math.

Part III

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Thou Shalt Not? Liberal Parents in Arkansas are Having a Fit Over Posting of Ten Commandments in Schools

All right, so I mentioned the Ten Commandments, for the final issue today I’m going to look at a story about the Ten Commandments. How’s this for a headline? “Judge Blocks Districts from Enforcing Arkansas Law Requiring Ten Commandments Display in Classroom.” We’ve seen this state by state, Louisiana in one case, Arkansas now. The Associated Press reports, “A new Arkansas law requiring public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments cannot be enforced in a handful of the state’s largest school districts where parents brought challenges on the grounds that it violates the separation of church and state.”

Then according to U.S. district judge, Timothy L. Brooks, an appointee of former President Obama, it applies only to four of the state’s 237 districts, but that does apply to those four. And let’s just get to the bottom line here. As a Christian I want to say that, before we say anything else, when we say the Ten Commandments we’re talking about the law of God. We’re talking about the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the lawgiver, and he gave the law not just as an imposition on human autonomy, He gave the law as a gift. The law itself includes grace in the sense that it is for our good. It also kills us as it indicts us of sin, but it is for our good. A society without law would be, well, a lawless society, a society of anarchy and disorder and mayhem.

And then we talk about Western civilization, Western civilization is the inheritance of a society, and a societal tradition, and a tradition of history based upon biblical revelation, an understanding of biblical law. You don’t have the Ten Commandments, you don’t have Western civilization. Now, of course, the Left over the course of, well, you can almost say to the radical enlightenment, has been trying to create as much distance as possible between that Christian heritage and the contemporary reality, but it also reflects a certain allergic response, an allergic reaction. Just notice the allergy here, the secular allergy where these parents are saying, “I don’t think I can stand the thought of the Ten Commandments being posted in a classroom where my child is going to sit. How in the world can decent learning take place where the Ten Commandments is on the wall?” Now, as a Christian, I don’t want to overestimate what the Ten Commandments on the wall might mean, but at the very least I will say I’m all for an acknowledgement of the very basis of law and reality, so I’m all for that acknowledgement.

But the idea that there’s such an allergic response to this, and parents are suing in federal court, that just shows you the secular instinct. And if the secular instinct is going to zero in on something, guess what? Not by coincidence, it turns out they zero in on the very thing that Christians in Arkansas wanted to put on the walls. In other words, here’s where there’s an odd agreement, the centrality of the Ten Commandments. It turns out both sides actually really do admit and affirm the Ten Commandments are just really, really important. For those who wanted to put the Ten Commandments in the classroom, the Ten Commandments are so important they wanted to have them posted where children are learning, as a context are learning, and historical reference like the American flag, and other things that used to be just non-controversial in American classrooms. But on the other hand, the importance of the Ten Commandments is also accidentally verified by some of the parents who have broken out in an absolute legal seizure over the issue that the Ten Commandments will be on the wall where their innocent children sit.

Here you just see the cultural divide in the United States laid bare over whether or not the Ten Commandments framed on the wall constitute a threat to democracy itself or constitute the basis of democracy itself. I think you know exactly what I would argue, but I just find this kind of thing, of course, frustrating, yes, and the press loves this kind of story. The legal profession, it’s ready to take this up. The whole secularist movement is glad to put legal heft behind this, and money and publicity. But I guess there’s another odd thing for us to recognize as Christians. Isn’t it interesting that in the United States of America in the year 2025, or in the old language, the year of our Lord 2025, the Ten Commandments are controversial? How about that? Or let me put it another way, the Ten Commandments are controversial because it’s impossible to look to the Ten Commandments and be neutral.

You either look to the Ten Commandments and see the law of God and you’re thankful for it, or you see something horrifying and you hate it. 

Once again, a very important Christian principle comes to mind, and this Ten Commandments controversy just makes it clear. Guess what? In this world, there is no neutrality, not even on a classroom wall.