Christian Choices and Reproductive Technologies

David De Bruyn

L’chaim, goes the Hebrew blessing: To life! Life is celebrated at its beginning and mourned at its close. Appropriately, we rejoice in life and living.

Few topics will so ignite debates among Christians as the ethics of controlling human fertility. How could it not? Here our discussion involves the most vulnerable of our society: the smallest of little children. Here we take up the questions of the goodness of procreation, of the divine prerogative in granting conception and life, and of the ethical limits of human ingenuity when it comes to managing human fertility. These questions superficially appear to hinge on whether we celebrate life or not. On closer examination, however, it’s not as simple as that.

The question is clouded by our emotions: we are not detached observers. It is further clouded by the increase of technologies over the past sixty years. Since the introduction of “the pill,” methods for preventing conception have multiplied. Techniques for encouraging or enhancing conception have also become numerous and bewildering. Beyond this, technologies such as CRISPR now exist for manipulating the genes of unborn children.

Keeping track of all this applied science is a feat in itself, to say nothing of examining the ethics of the methods employed. Instead of getting lost in the maze of a thousand technologies, Christians can turn to the timeless principles of Scripture, which promise to equip the believer thoroughly for every good work (2 Tim. 3:17). Broader biblical principles on bioethics and procreation will supply a set of tools for evaluating each contraceptive or fertility technology.