The main Protestant Church in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, voted on Wednesday to condemn in vitro fertilization (IVF), according to American media, a sensitive and very political subject in the run-up to the presidential election in November.
At their annual convention, thousands of delegates approved a resolution stating that IVF “most often contributes to the destruction of embryonic human life and increasingly uses dehumanizing methods to determine fitness for life.” “.
The text argues that this method “systematically generates more embryos than can be safely implanted”, which ultimately results in the “destruction” of human embryos.
It therefore calls on members of the Church to “reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including at an embryonic stage, and to use only reproductive techniques consistent with this affirmation, including regarding the number of embryos generated in IVF.
He thus urges to encourage adoption, including of embryos — namely to use already existing frozen embryos instead of creating new ones.
With a network of tens of thousands of churches, the Southern Baptist Convention has approximately 13 million members, mostly in the South. According to the Pew Research Center, there were approximately 141 million Protestants in the United States in 2019.
Since the Supreme Court of the United States ended the constitutional guarantee of the right to abortion in 2022, defenders of the right to abortion have worried that medically assisted procreation (MAP) and in particular IVF will be affected.
In February, the Supreme Court of the very conservative state of Alabama said it considered frozen embryos as “children”, a decision described as “scandalous” by Democratic President Joe Biden.
In the process, several clinics specializing in PMA in Alabama announced that they were suspending their activities, for fear of violating the court decision.
Faced with national outcry, Alabama elected officials ended up adopting a law aimed at protecting IVF.
The affair, directly linked to the debate on abortion, quickly rose to the top of the electoral campaign. It illustrates a certain unease within the conservative camp which calls itself resolutely “pro-life”. However, suspending IVF is, for some, in contradiction with the defense of the family and traditional values.
