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| Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler spoke in a YouTube video on May 23. |
The Southern Baptist Convention voted Wednesday to oppose the use of in vitro fertilization, in which many human embryos are created outside the body but only a few are implanted in the uterus.
The resolution, adtoped at the denomination's annual meeting in Indianapolis, was offered by R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Andrew T. Walker, an associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology at the Louisville school.
They "acknowledged that the issue is divisive even among strongly anti-abortion Christians, and that Republicans have leaped to preserve access to fertility treatments," reportsreports Ruth Graham of The New York Times, quoting from a Tuesday interview in which Mohler said: “I want to do more than nudge Republicans who are against us on this. I want to call them out for their error and inconsistency.” He said IVF as commonly practiced is “as immoral as anything we can imagine if we state the proposition clearly, but a lot of evangelicals don’t want to state the proposition clearly.”
The Southern Baptist Convention has more members than any other denomination in Kentucky.
The resolution is not binding on any church or member. It asks Southern Baptists “to reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage, and to only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation, especially in the number of embryos generated in the IVF process.” It also urges them to “advocate for the government to restrain” actions inconsistent with the dignity of “every human being, which necessarily includes frozen embryonic human beings.”
The resolution is not binding on any church or member. It asks Southern Baptists “to reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage, and to only utilize reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation, especially in the number of embryos generated in the IVF process.” It also urges them to “advocate for the government to restrain” actions inconsistent with the dignity of “every human being, which necessarily includes frozen embryonic human beings.”
About 2 percent of U.S. births are the result of IVF. Graham reports, "Although the process . . . often results in the destruction of unused embryos, many Southern Baptists see that as fundamentally different from abortion because the goal of fertility treatments is to create new life. Before the vote, messengers [the convention's term for delegtes] heard several emotional testimonies, some from Baptists who hoped to soften the language of the resolution."
At a Monday luncheon "hosted by a new conservative Christian advocacy group with Southern Baptist ties, "Mohler compared the nascent evangelical conversation around in vitro fertilization to the years after the Roe v. Wade decision, when Catholics led the anti-abortion movement and evangelicals were less attuned to the issue," Graham reports, quoting him: “We had to learn after 1973 as evangelicals. We had to learn how to get this issue right.”
The Southern Baptist Convention did not declare its opposition to abortion until several years after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned itself in 2022 in a case styled Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
from KENTUCKY HEALTH NEWS https://ift.tt/B34wnOM Southern Baptist Convention adopts resolution, offered by president of Louisville seminary, opposing in vitro fertilizationHealthy Care
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