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Because reproductive ethics is a little known quantity for the average person the following is offered as a simple guide for discussion and consideration in personal decision making. Topics include assisting procreation, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and surrogate motherhood.
She was overwhelmed with grief and sorrow. Her husband loved her, but still she felt cursed by God. Indeed, she felt that ancient curse spoken over the first woman: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Gen. 3:16). Who is this woman? These words describe Hannah, but many other Hannahs sit in the pews of our churches — empty, sad, and bearing with bitterness the curse in their bodies.
God wants a large family because His love is so enormous. We embrace God’s gift of life and of children, and we praise God that He creates and loves so many, including us.
While all creatures are driven by the creative impulse to “be fruitful and multiply,” man uniquely does this within a narrow context of intimacy, commitment, covenant, and community.
There I sat in Sunday School, paging through my Bible like the saintly child I was, when I tripped on this: “Yet [women] will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control” (1 Tim. 2:15).
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Sanctity of Human Life Committee offers this document in response to Resolution 6-10 placed before the Synod’s 2004 convention.
We need to distinguish the critique of reproductive technologies from a criticism of people we may know who have made use of them. This information is offered to Christian couples to help them think about the possible use of reproductive technologies.
To our brothers and sisters who long to be parents: You are not alone. Not only are others like you — wanting children to serve and love, to cry and laugh with — but also Mary’s Son. Jesus bears this burden with you.
He is a child. One sperm fertilizes one egg in a petri dish, and a human life begins. He has 23 pairs of chromosomes. He has his own genetic traits and family history. He is a human being for whom Jesus Christ died, just like you and me. He is a gift to his parents from the Lord. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Ps. 127:3).
This state of barrenness is our reality, and it is painful. Yet, ceaselessly, God gives gifts. He reminds of His sufficient grace.
Commended by the 2019 LCMS convention, this paper examines the many subtle ways that American culture rejects life as a fundamental gift of God and instead sees “having a baby” as a human accomplishment.
If we can’t agree that human beings have more value than animals, why should we agree that our society would protect our most vulnerable persons – the elderly and the unborn – from abuse and destruction? As Lutherans, we believe the image of God in man is what makes human beings uniquely precious at all stages of their lives.