Thursday, October 23, 2025

Part I

Trump Wants to Make America Fertile Again: Having Babies is a Biblical Good, But There is Massive Moral Risk in Assisted Reproductive Technologies

In his second term in office, President Donald J. Trump has emphasized what could be called making fertility great again. He has been wanting to reverse the nation’s declining birth rates, and he has also become a champion of IVF, or assisted reproductive technologies. He wants to make it more accessible, he wants more insurance companies to cover it, he wants it to become more widespread. He wants the cost to go down, he wants the birth rate to go up. Okay, all of that is pretty easy to understand. Let me state at the onset, I’m in total agreement with the concern about falling birth rates. I think it is one of the most tragic, and frankly one of the most threatening signs in terms of America’s future.

But when we talk about babies, and the biblical worldview reminds us that babies are one of God’s greatest gifts, the reality is that that doesn’t mean that every form of assisted reproductive technology is allowable or acceptable or should be funded by the United States government or forced to be covered in insurance programs. So, when we’re talking about IVF, let’s just step back for a moment. In vitro fertilization, as I said, the term is a bit outmoded, but nonetheless, these assisted reproductive technologies that are summarized as IVF, they are an industry in creating human embryos outside the human body, and then transferring those into a woman’s body. And this is a very expensive process. By some estimations, the individual treatments can range from 10 to 20 to $50,000 and above. But in the campaign leading up to the 2024 election, President Trump was responding to something concrete, and that was a decision by the Supreme Court of the state of Alabama against the use of IVF.

And thus, you had that become a major campaign issue. It became highly politicized, primarily because of the political context. And that context, most importantly, was framed by Democrats and pro-abortionists pointing to lamenting and making much of the Dobbs decision handed down in 2022 by the US Supreme Court reversing Roe V. Wade. And so, the Democrats and the pro-abortion side have been trying to capitalize on every single issue they see as to their political advantage. No doubt, President Trump wanted to blunt their threat. He wanted to basically reduce the threat. And so, he took out of the Republican platform in 2024 a statement explicitly against all abortion, and he also came out very much in favor of IVF. Now specifically, what the president had called for in the campaign was lowering the cost of IVF, meaning that it would be accessible to more couples. And he also stated that he wanted to try to use the pressure of the government to lead insurance companies to cover fertility treatments and advanced reproductive technologies in their usual coverage.

Now, the President has been frustrated by the fact that that really hasn’t happened. And so, the President in rolling out announcements over the last couple of weeks has indicated particularly a pair of initiatives by the administration. And so, first of all, the President said that his administration would continue to encourage employers to offer fertility benefits for their covered employees. Now, the important thing to note here is that fertility benefits is not the same thing as an explicit demand for the coverage of IVF treatments. And there was also a release from the White House indicating that the maker of Gonal-f, that is a major fertility drug, was cooperating with the administration in what were described as massive discounts on fertility treatments and medications through a government website known, not accidentally, as TrumpRx.gov, that would begin next year. President Trump said in the statement from the White House last week, “With the actions I will outline, we’ll dramatically slash the cost of IVF and many of the most common fertility drugs for countless millions of Americans. He said prices are going way down, way, way down.” And he also referred to the announcements as, “A historic victory for American women, mothers, and families.” 

Okay, I need to stop for just a moment. We need to look at this statement. Now, I think in this case, President Trump is no doubt sincere. He is sincere in wanting to reverse the decrease in America’s birth rate. Worldwide, that is a huge problem as we often discuss. It’s a problem in the United States where even though the birth rate in the country right now is not far from the replacement rate, the reality is that the trend has been downward. Not as catastrophically as you see in other nations, but still, that is a very troubling phenomenon. So, the President is pressing back against a very legitimate issue. But in his emphasis on in vitro fertilization, I believe he simply doesn’t understand or doesn’t appreciate the ethical complications, the grave complications involved in assisted reproductive technologies.

He sees the bottom line, a higher birth rate, and he wants to go for it. He wants to encourage Americans to have more babies. And on that encouragement, I’m in enthusiastic agreement as those who agree with the biblical worldview should be. But, and this is where Christians have to think very carefully, this doesn’t mean that everything that might produce babies is good. Now, let’s just remind ourselves of the basic biblical moral principle that the context of fertilization is really, really important, the context into which a baby would be born. Now throughout most of human history, that’s been a context of sexual activity, otherwise you didn’t get babies. And the rise of these new assisted reproductive technologies has really complicated that picture. Now, I want to go back to the statement the President made, and it’s not so much about the prices. He said prices are going down way, way down.

And then, he called the announcement, “A historic victory for American women, mothers, and families.” Okay. Now, those are not synonyms, those are not all saying the same thing. Number one, he said American women, then he said mothers, and he said families. Now, that’s an achievement over many on the left who simply want to say individuals. But when you are talking about women, mothers and families, you’re not talking about the same thing. Those aren’t synonyms. When he says American women, is he saying that all American women, regardless of marital status, should have access to in vitro fertilization or other assisted reproductive technologies? And if that’s the case, how does he say no to those who, for example, want to hire a surrogate mother? And then, he does use the word mothers. Well, that’s as American as apple pie. And then he says families, again, a very good word.

The odd word there is American women, because when the president talks about this, he talks about it in the context of marriage. And yet, we need to note, we are a society that in legal terms, has been trying to destabilize marriage for a long time, has been trying to separate sex from marriage, and lately has been trying to separate reproduction from marriage. So, just talking about, say, in vitro fertilization or assisted reproductive technologies, trying to get them covered by insurance, trying to drive the prices down, that doesn’t say anything about the moral context, and that’s not going to last for long. The question is for whom would these policies apply? And the bottom line is that it’s going to be very difficult for the administration to head off what are certain to be court challenges for those who say you can’t limit this to married people, as in a man or a woman, because right now, remember that the federal government recognizes a man and a man or a woman and a woman as potentially a legal marriage.

So, if you’re going to say couples, well, guess what? You’re not very morally precise at all. You could drive a truck right through it, and I guarantee you they will. Now, for Christians, let’s just step back for a moment and let’s remember the issues with these assisted reproductive technologies, ARTs, in particular IVF. For one thing, you have the alienation of reproduction from the conjugal relationship with the husband and the wife. And you say, “No, wait just a minute. We can take both cells from the married couple. We can take the sperm from the man married to the woman, we can take her egg, we can combine them together in a laboratory context. An embryo will be the result and we’ll insert that, transfer that into the woman, and thus it will be their baby.”

Now, that’s relatively uncomplicated, but it still is an alienation of the sperm and the egg and of the entire process of reproduction from the natural context of conjugal marriage. So, there is moral risk here. The moment you alienate something from its proper context, you bring on moral risk, and the moral risk just mushrooms from there, because if you’re talking abstracting this from the marital relationship, you can abstract it from a married couple at all, and thus you have a lot of people right now who are demanding IVF, and they’re single women or they are gay male couples seeking through surrogacy to be able to “have a baby”. Well, is the President’s policy intended for them? Now, you’ll note that in his announcements, there is nothing to indicate the President means for that to apply across the board, just about anyone who might buy into the process or demand the process of IVF.

But we need to understand in our current legal context, and frankly in the current context of secular medical ethics, that’s going to be a line that is virtually impossible to draw. Now, to this, we need to add a lot of complexity. We don’t have time to deal with all of this today, but for one thing, you don’t usually create, in fact, under no normal circumstances, one embryo created. Instead, you have the creation of multiple embryos, and whether it’s emitted or not, they are sorted in some way. Some are transferred into the woman, but in very few situations now are all transferred. And of course you open up all the possibilities for the kind of genetic testing, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis that are used basically to sort embryos by quality. And there are some couples, of course, who are now, why did I say couples? There are some people who are now contracting with other reproductive technological firms even to go at genetic diagnosis of individual embryos so that they can choose the embryo or embryos they most desire.

The rest of them are just put into cold storage. They are frozen and they will not remain frozen forever. That’s an artificial circumstance. They will eventually be destroyed, or they’ll just be allowed to decay. In any event, that is a grave assault upon human dignity. And the Christian principle is this, once you alienate having children from the relationship of the husband and the wife and the conjugal union, you bring in risk. Now, the lowest risk would be a Christian couple, a man and a wife, and they come to the agreement that they’re going to use this technology, they’re going to use only their own gametes and they’re going to transfer all of the embryos. But let’s be honest, that’s a very rare situation these days. 

Okay. So, the bottom line is that the President, in announcing his new policy, it is not a worst-case scenario. He did not demand full coverage for IVF. He did not demand that there be a rapid increase in the use of these assisted reproductive technologies, but he does want to push things in that direction. There’s no indication that the President has any awareness of the moral complexities at stake here. It’s probably not on his screen at all. However, we as Christians cannot not have these issues on our screen. They have to be acknowledged, and frankly, given the importance and the foundational reality of human dignity, we can’t be silent about these. So, the big question, by the way, to the President, had there been a public event, would’ve been for whom are these benefits or for whom are these new policies designed? And the reality is, I think he probably thinks in terms of married couples. But there is no indication in our political context that it could possibly stay that way.

By the way, at the same time the President made this announcement last week, it was revealed that about 2% of all live births every year in the United States are coming by IVF or another form of assisted reproductive technology. That’s 2%. That leaves 98% that come otherwise. So, if you really want to reverse the decline in the birth rate, you’re going to have to aim at the larger number of births, the greater percentage by far of births. But if you increase the 2%, well, that would be a gain of sorts, but not if it’s offset by a falling birth rate among other Americans. The bottom line is that this is not a fundamental way to reverse the following birth rate in the United States. This isn’t going to be a break in the pattern. It is going to be something that comes with major moral consequences. So, Christians need to think beyond the headlines and understand at least in part what’s going on here.

Part II

The Scandal of Surrogacy: This Problem is Not Just Financial and The Moral Risk Keeps Increasing

But there was another big development on this score just in recent days, and this came in a very interesting article that appeared at the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was “Surrogacy is a Multi-Billion Dollar Business. Sometimes the money goes missing.” It’s by Ben Foldy, and it’s the kind of reporting the Wall Street Journal, and frankly few other media outlets can do. And so, this is really an investigative report about one dimension of what’s going on in the assisted reproductive field, and this is particularly looking at missing money when it comes to the industry of surrogacy. This is surrogate motherhood. And you’ll notice by the way, in this gender-confused age, you see mainstream media trying to avoid gender-specific reference even to, say, having a baby. But let’s be clear, as Christians, this means a woman, it means a mother. So, the Wall Street Journal is talking about the fact that there are couples who are desperate to have babies, and of course our concern is with them. Married couples wanting to have babies, we want them to have babies too.

And one of the things that has come to light in recent decades is an industry, an entire booming business enterprise of women who are hired out as surrogate mothers. So, that means an embryo is created by IVF. It’s not transferred into the mother in this married couple, the wife in this married couple, hypothetically, it is transferred to someone hired to carry the baby on behalf of the couple. Now, the Wall Street Journal isn’t taking on the bigger issue of surrogate motherhood and the ethics of that practice. It’s taking on a big financial scandal, and that is the fact that if you intend to hire a surrogate mother, then you’re going to have to have some kind of financial intermediary. And that has become a funding process that is often an escrow fund. So, in other words, if it’s going to cost you $100,000, you put $100,000 in this escrow company and it takes care of paying the surrogate mother and paying her medical expenses and other things, that’s a very, very expensive process.

So, if you’re talking about 2% coming by assisted reproductive technologies, even fewer come by surrogate motherhood. But of course that is something that’s growing fast, and again, it goes back to the fact it’s not just heterosexual couples who are hiring surrogate parents, it’s non-married heterosexual couples, and even more so it is single people and it is gay male couples, who by definition, let’s just do the biology simply here. Two men can’t have a baby. Period. All right. 

So, the Wall Street Journal’s investigative report, and it’s again undertaken by Ben Foldy, it really has to do with missing money. There are couples who are putting up millions of dollars cumulatively in these escrow firms and people are running off with the money. And so, we’re told that, “Parents face the prospect now of messy litigation from unpaid surrogates. One couple whose surrogacy funds disappeared due to fraud before they were able to successfully transfer an embryo said they gave up hope for a pregnancy.”

Andrew Bluebond, identified as an attorney in Texas who has helped in this process said, “Holding other people’s money is usually such a highly regulated industry. And yet, some of these escrow firms are betraying their clients and stealing their money.” But the Wall Street Journal says this, “Surrogacy has exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry.” Okay, let’s hold on a minute. The reporter didn’t say a multi-million dollar industry, he said a multi-billion dollar industry. He went on to say that it’s, “Driven by increasing rates of infertility, expanded insurance coverage, the growing prevalence of LGBTQ families, and an influx of couples from countries where the practice is illegal, including China.” Okay. This is pretty astounding. We need to take this apart. People are now coming from communist China to the United States because the United States is part of the wild, wild west of this assisted reproductive technology. There are very few rules against, say, the hiring of a surrogacy.

The state of Louisiana, we are told, outlaws the practice, but that leaves a lot of states that certainly do not. All right. It is also interesting in that statement that the Wall Street Journal acknowledges that much of this is driven by, “The growing prevalence of LGBTQ families.” So, that’s what we’re looking at here. The Wall Street Journal goes on to say that this scandal has now reached a national proportion, and there are a lot of investigations likely now to start, but you’ll notice the big issue here is financial, as raised in this article. And so, presumably, there can be a financial fix. There can be some kind of legislative mechanism, some kind of legislative oversight. And so, these escrow accounts turn out to be the major concern of those in the financial world. But for Christians operating out of a biblical worldview, we can’t stop with the money issue. That’s not even the most fundamental issue. 

The Journal’s report indicates there really is a big scandal behind all of this, and I’m not going to go into the scandal. It’s mostly about money. That doesn’t interest me nearly as much as the morality at stake here when it comes to human reproduction. But I just wanted to bring all this to your attention. Big things are changing, and when they’re changing in the field of human reproduction, we need to pay close attention as Christians because, once again, in creation order, we’re back to Genesis 1. That tells us just how fundamental these issues are. And that means in terms of moral urgency, the scale has to go up fast. 

Part III

Words Have Consequences: Celebration of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination and its Consequences

But all right, with the time remaining, I need to switch subjects, and this may step on some conservative Christian toes. I think we need to give this some pretty high priority attention.

Let’s go first to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, headline “Emory Professor Lives with Firing for Kirk Post.” Okay, in this case, we’re talking about a professor at Emory University, former professor now, Anna Kenney, who has been a medical researcher for years and has been involved with medical research at Emory University. But she got fired after she posted, in terms of social media, a statement in which she basically celebrated the death of Charlie Kirk, after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. When she heard about the assassination, she posted on Facebook, “Should I feel bad that I don’t feel bad about Charlie Kirk?” And she went on and said some other things as well. She also used the expression, “Good riddance.” Now, honestly, that’s language that in this context is completely shocking, and it’s also shocking to know that this professor says that she awoke the next day to find out that she had become instantly famous, or infamous, and there were calls for her firing.

Now, recall that in the days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, many stupid things were said, and we’re going to talk about another of those stupid things in just a moment. But in this case, we are reminded that words come with consequences, and Emory University fired this professor. Now, the professor doesn’t really blame Emory University. Now, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be legal situations after this and challenges, but at least at this point, she acknowledges that she did author the posts and that she had put her employer, Emory University, in a very difficult position. At least in the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s article, she said, “It’s sad, but I mean, I can’t blame Emory for what happened.” So, here you have a medical researcher, a professor at Emory University who loses her job because of this social media posting. But let’s just remind ourselves, it’s not because she posted on social media, it’s because of what she posted.

And that raises the whole question as to whether or not, in an academic or professional setting, there’s anything you might say that would cost you your job. And the obvious answer is yes, there is. The question is, at any given time, what is the range of those possible statements that would cost you your job? So, that’s one story and that’s a professor at Emory University. An even more interesting scandal has emerged in the United Kingdom, and this is the ouster of the President-elect of the Oxford Union. That’s a speaking and debating society that is long, I mean very long a part of the history at Oxford University. The Oxford Union is a student-led organization, and it’s supposed to be one of the most rarified debating societies on planet earth. Lately, however, it’s become something of a farce. It seems like they have a lot of celebrities speaking and a lot of political correctness, DEI stuff.

The president-elect, until just days ago, George Abaraonye, he went on to say, in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, well, let’s just say he posted things that I can’t say on The Briefing. He said that Charlie Kirk got shot. And then he said, well, more or less he was celebrating it. I’ll just leave it, I’ll leave it at that. He also, on his Instagram account said, “Charlie Kirk got shot LOOL.” Well, that raised a lot of controversy, even at Oxford University, even in the United Kingdom. And of course, it spread on both sides of The Atlantic. This man, young man became very much a symbol of DEI and a symbol of the kind of liberal arrogance that is downright dangerous. And let’s just say, there are categories that could be, say, referenced here as rudeness, but this isn’t rude. This is so far beyond the moral pale that it should be unacceptable in any civilized society.

And for that reason, he’s no longer the president-elect of the Oxford Society. Now, it’s not because someone else called for the election in terms of a vote of confidence. He called for it himself, evidently thinking he would win it. But by the necessary two-thirds-plus majority, he has lost his job. Now he says that he’s going to contest this. It’s just another sign of the breakdown of morality in our society, and for that matter, common sense and common decency.

Part IV

Unacceptable Social Media Posts are Not Just a Problem on the Left: Those on the Right Are Showing the Problem as Well

But it also points to something else, and that is that words have consequences. And so, it’s very, very important to look in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and see that it was a diagnostic test of sorts, and there have been so many people on the left who have failed that diagnostic test. And another thing just to keep in mind here, is that these two instances I cited here, the former president-elect of the Oxford Union and a former medical researcher and professor at Emory University, it turns out that they both lost their positions because of social media posts. All right, so just hold that thought for a moment.

They were absolutely horrible, unacceptable posts on social media. They reflected their moral character, and in a way that was revealing to the point that both of them have been ousted from their positions. But this is where I want to turn the table and say there are some on the right who are misbehaving just as much when it comes to social media. They may not be saying things as morally abhorrent as celebrating a man’s assassination, but they are doing things that morally are beyond the pale, and some of them are also losing their positions for it. One state group of young Republicans is being basically taken apart because of some of the statements that were made. Vice President JD Vance said basically that young boys will say stupid things, but in some of these cases you’re talking about people who aren’t boys anymore. And among both men and women, they’re in their twenties or even older, they’re in professional positions, they should know better and their words are coming back to haunt them.

And the words are horrifying, let’s be honest. And it’s not just that. Even the President of the United States, in some of his social media posting, he is basically leaning into things that can only be described as crude. But you know what? Donald J. Trump, President of the United States can get away with it. I’m not saying it’s morally right, it’s not morally right, but he can get away with it. He is not subject to the kind of public judgment that will fall on others. Others follow in his example, and that includes many young people on the Conservative end. They are saying things that one day will cost them their jobs. They are saying things that one day will haunt them. And if nothing else, this should be a wake-up call that we have to be responsible for all of our speech. That is a deeply biblical principle. And you know what?

If you are so unwise as to, let’s just say make some of that speech on a social media platform that is going to remember what you said forever, well, let’s just say you better be very, very careful what you’re going to say because someone is going to drag it up when you might least expect it, and it might cost you dearly. Words will do that. And among conservatives and in particular conservative Christians, remember, we’re the people who are supposed to believe in an objective morality. We’re the people who are supposed to believe not just in the etiquette of moral decency, but the morality of right and wrong. If we lose that, well, we lose everything.