Between court cases declaring frozen embryos children and President Donald Trump’s executive order to explore ways to bring down costs, in vitro fertilization officially has entered today’s political fray, splitting even conservative Christians.
For advocates, the medical procedure is an individual right and inherently pro-family. Critics, on the other hand, deride it as an unnatural extension of human will into a process best left up to God, as well as short on protections for embryos.
Official and unofficial teachings in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, namely a belief in a premortal life, where spirit children eagerly await their turn on Earth, add a whole other layer of theological complexity on a process that allows parents unprecedented (although still limited) control over whom their children will be.
Church policy remains largely agnostic on the questions of, for example, the ethics of sex selection and what to do with remaining viable embryos that patients do not wish to implant. Insofar as it does weigh in, it is to encourage the use of IVF by married couples only, and to discourage — but not prohibit — surrogacy and the use of donated eggs and sperm (such things, the faith’s official handbook states, are “ultimately left to the judgment and prayerful consideration” of those involved).
[Read more about where the church stands on IVF, surrogacy and sperm/egg donation.]
IVF 101: How it works
• A patient’s ovaries are stimulated using injected hormones to produce as many mature eggs as possible.
• Those eggs are removed then sorted based on viability. Those deemed nonviable are discarded.
• The remaining eggs are manually inseminated by sperm provided by one’s partner or donor.
• The fertilized eggs are set aside and given time to develop. Those that progress into healthy-looking embryos are given a grade based on their appearance and can be either implanted or frozen. Those fertilized eggs that did not develop into embryos are discarded.
• In the case of multiple viable embryos, the patient chooses which and how many to implant. Some may opt for genetic testing to help guide their choice. Others may select based on the sex of the embryo. Any remaining embryos can be frozen, discarded or put up for adoption.
• After implantation, the patient waits two weeks before performing lab work to determine whether the procedure was a success.
The whole process, according to a 2024 Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet, must be completed an average of 2.5 times to yield one pregnancy, with costs for one cycle starting around $15,000.
Conversations with church members who have undergone the process reveal couples and individuals who frame the experience as a joint effort between them and the heavens as they seek to actualize God’s plan for them.
“We completely felt God’s support in us doing IVF to get our girls here,” Mike and Amy Davis, Latter-day Saints living in Provo and parents to a 2-year-old and 1-year-old daughter, wrote in an email. “We are both firm believers in science and believe IVF is one way God allows people who physically can’t have kids or who struggle with infertility the ability to have children.”
(Davis family) Amy and Mike Davis had both their children using IVF. The couple say they felt God's support throughout the process.
The Davises are hardly alone. Here are stories of other Latter-day Saints who reached similar conclusions during their own IVF journeys:
A mother’s premonition
Call it foresight. Call it pessimism. Either way, Courtney Cunningham always sensed that, for her, starting a family wasn’t going to be a straightforward matter.
It took the Ventura County, California, resident, who married at age 31, four years to conceive, naturally, and give birth to a healthy son in 2013.
After that, the setbacks stacked up for her and her husband, Cameron, who longed for more children. There was a miscarriage along with three failed rounds of intrauterine insemination.
Although less costly and involved than IVF, the procedure, which requires a constant stream of injections and doctor visits, took its toll on Cunningham’s body and the couple’s bank account. As that burden grew, so did a question she couldn’t shake: Were their earthly efforts at odds with heavenly purposes?
“There’s a tension between [the belief that you should] do everything you can to get married and have a family. That’s what I was taught growing up, that having a family is the most important thing you can do,” she said. “But at the same time, you’re taught that you’re supposed to accept God’s will and be satisfied with his plan for you.”
What if, she asked herself, “I’m trying my hardest in money and blood to have another child when really I should just be grateful for the one that we have?”
Adding to her confusion was a second premonition regarding motherhood that Cunningham had long carried, an image of three children, all hers. She even sensed their birth order: boy, girl, boy. The picture had first come to her when she was 20 years old and while she hadn’t given it much thought through the years, neither had she fully discarded it.
So Cunningham devised a plan: Stop the fertility treatments and leave it to God to show her a sign if she was meant to keep going. At which point, she would go all-in and do IVF.
God’s green light came in the form of a notification that her husband’s insurance had started offering IVF benefits, plus a separate and distinct spiritual confirmation that it wasn’t time to give up quite yet. True to her word, Cunningham was soon back at the nightly injections, anxiety-riddled doctor visits and endless labs.
The first round of IVF produced a single, male embryo. The couple were thrilled at the news, but Cunningham couldn’t quite shake a sense of foreboding, even after labs showed the transfer had been successful. Then, six weeks later, she learned there was no heartbeat.
(Cunningham family) Courtney Cunningham on the day she discovered she had conceived naturally years after giving birth using IVF.
Devastated, she got in the car to drive home to her toddler when she was suddenly overcome with the sense that she was not alone.
“I felt the presence of angels with me,” she said, “most significantly my grandmother — my mom’s mom, who also struggled to have children.”
Was Cunningham mad that God had sent her down this difficult path only for her to experience failure?
“I wasn’t,” she explained, describing that drive home “as one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me.”
Strengthened by the love she felt that day, she braced herself for yet another round of IVF.
This time, the one surviving embryo was female. A “joyous” pregnancy followed, along with a daughter in 2018.
Being a parent, Cunningham said, “has opened me up to all these sort of like folksy Mormon things about the preexistence that I never want to say out loud because I’m not sure of them, but I’m just like my daughter and I were best friends in heaven. And my love for her isn’t any different than my love for my son.”
It wasn’t the picture she’d had in her mind, but her family felt full. They were done.
Or so they thought.
Last year, at 46, Cunningham was shocked to learn she had conceived naturally. Despite her age and medical history, the pregnancy went off without a hitch. Four months ago, she gave birth to her third child: a son.
(Cunningham family) Cunningham and her husband, Cameron, appear with their three children, including their daughter, right, born through IVF.
‘The ward’s baby’ — when IVF becomes a group project
When she was 16 years old, Deanna McNay was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, a leading cause of infertility. The news left her feeling “defective” and doubtful anyone would ever want to marry her.
She tried to reconcile herself to the idea that “my role in the [Latter-day Saint] plan of salvation was to be a cool aunt” or pursue a meaningful career that could bless others, a la Sheri Dew, the single, childless head of church-owned Deseret Book.
To her surprise, McNay, who lives in Pittsburgh, met and fell in love with someone who wasn’t put off by her medical diagnosis. She was 28 years old when they married.
The next eight years were spent trying to conceive — to no avail.
Growing up in the ‘90s and early 2000s, McNay had heard negative things about IVF from fellow church members who denounced the process as “playing God.” That changed, she said, as she got older and more and more members opted for the procedure.
The challenge was convincing her husband that it was the right decision. “He kind of had the view, ‘Well, if it’s meant to be, we’re going to have some sort of bodily miracle.‘”
But what if, she countered, the availability of the technology was the miracle?
The two went back and forth until a couple in their ward, or congregation, had a set of twins using IVF. Seeing the new parents sidle into the pews each week with their babies was, in the end, all the argument he needed.
Today, the couple have three surviving children (a fourth who died shortly after birth). The process of conceiving and having each one, McNay said, felt like a group project the entire ward showed up for, with some going so far as to help administer her injections when her husband was out of town.
Jane, her first child, especially felt like “the ward’s baby” — with everyone playing a part to help her be born.
Like Cunningham, McNay used all the fertilized embryos she and her husband were able to produce and so never had to wrestle with what to do with any remainder. But that hasn’t stopped them from wondering about the moment of ensoulment, or when the soul enters the body.
“My husband’s pretty firm that it occurs when they take their first breath of air,” she said. “But I feel like I could feel their different personalities even in utero.”
The church, for its part, has taken no official position on that question.
Either way, the experience has given McNay an affinity for the most revered Christian mother of all: Mary.
“My own heretical view,” she said, “is that Jesus came about through something like IVF.”
Going it alone
(Troy Smith) After years of striking out in love, Troy Smith decided to pursue parenthood on his own. He hired a surrogate and, through IVF, became the father of two boys.
Growing up as a Latter-day Saint, Troy Smith always assumed his life’s trek would resemble those he saw in all the adults he knew — school, marriage, family.
He went to school and earned a doctorate in economics. But as the years added up, he began to come to terms with the fact that he might never find a marriage partner. He weighed his options. Being a single parent wasn’t his ideal, but, he decided, it beat out never having his own kids.
So he hired a surrogate and, at 43, welcomed his first son, followed by a second in 2024 — both conceived using IVF.
The fact that the church discourages surrogacy didn’t bother Smith, who moved from Los Angeles to Lehi to be close to family. If his leaders revoked his membership, so be it. It was just one more of the many sacrifices he was making to get his future children here.
In the end, no pushback came. But there were no ward-sponsored baby showers or meal trains either. After his first son’s birth, Smith said the president of the women’s Relief Society brought a present, the only formal recognition by his faith community of his becoming a parent.
Asked if he thought the experience would have been harder or easier if he were a woman, Smith said he was unsure.
“I can see it going both ways,” he mused. On the one hand, he acknowledged, a woman would have had to experience the suspicion of a swelling belly and no ring on her finger. “But there’s also a kind of shared sisterhood among mothers.”
Smith said the men at church don’t seem to grasp the weight of what he has taken on. In one case, a fellow churchgoer responded to the news that Smith had a nanny by suggesting that the father was somehow a part-time parent. Others have been slow to realize that, for Smith to attend any meeting outside of regular worship hours, he must first find child care.
“The expectation in the church is that there’s two parents,” he said. “So one parent’s going to watch the kids while the other one goes and does their calling, attends meetings and all of that.”
More recently, Smith’s oldest son has begun to notice a disconnect between his family and the one presented to him in his nursery lessons at church.
The father of two tries to overcome the sense that something is lacking by stressing all the loved ones his sons do have — including an army of supportive and doting extended family members.
He also is comforted by the fact that, no matter what, his boys will never doubt that they were deeply wanted.
" I love being a parent,” he beamed. “Even with all the annoyances and the issues that come up, having them was absolutely the right choice.”
‘They won’t be my children’
The fertility doctors didn’t beat around the bush. The 48-year-old newlywed’s eggs were “really no good.” But the news wasn’t all bad. The East Coast woman, who asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the subject, was likely capable of carrying a pregnancy.
As a single Latter-day Saint during her 30s and much of her 40s, she had contemplated adoption but never IVF. Doing so felt taboo in a faith that generally looked down on pregnancy out of wedlock. Now that everything else had fallen into place — marriage, a ready womb — all she was missing were viable eggs.
Then, more good news: Her niece, who was in her early 30s, wanted to donate some of hers. The result was several viable embryos fertilized with her husband’s sperm.
The couple ended up needing only one after the first implantation turned into a full-term pregnancy and, finally, a healthy baby boy born in 2022.
“To be honest,” she said, “in terms of the doctrinal stuff, I never really thought about, like, is this OK with God?”
The way she sees it, IVF technology is a gift from a loving God eager to see his spirit children gain a body.
“However we get their bodies put together, whether through the natural way or scientific technology,” she reasoned, “the end result is the same.”
Weightier was the “imposter syndrome” that welled in her when she thought about the fact that, while genetically related to her, the child she was growing inside her wasn’t her direct genetic offspring.
In those moments when thoughts like these threatened to rob her joy, she found comfort in the belief that her son’s spirit was forged by something older than his physical DNA.
" I think of him as sort of a spirit in the premortal world, waiting to come down to a family,” she said. “And regardless of whomever the genetic mother and father are, who he is as a spirit is who he was and always meant to be.”
And that spirit had been sent to her.
She and her husband decided to dispose of the remaining embryos. After her son’s birth, she became keenly aware of her age and the reality that, despite her overall good health, the older she got, the more likely it was that illness would deprive her son of his mother early in his life. Besides, her husband was less enthusiastic than she was about having more kids.
Still, she can’t help but wonder: Who would those other embryos have become?
“That is what makes me sad,” she said, her voice welling with emotion. “Not that I feel guilty, because I know that they’ll come to Earth in another way. But I won’t get to know them. They won’t be my children.”
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