Dem
51
GOP
49
While the abortion wars rage, some influential Christians want to expand the battleground to IVF as well. R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is busy mobilizing evangelicals against IVF.
The argument is that to have much of a chance of success with IVF, multiple eggs have to be fertilized on each cycle. If the pregnancy takes, the unused ones are no longer needed. The choice is then to keep them around forever, which is very expensive, or destroy them. Mohler doesn't quite get the difference between a fertilized egg and a person, so he sees destroying a fertilized egg as murder. Maybe someone should show him photos of both, to scale. He probably also sees burning unneeded blueprints for a building as arson.
Politically, the anti-IVF folks couldn't have picked a worse time to do it. That is because Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) and his wife had their two children by IVF. In effect, Mohler is saying that the existence of the Walz children is immoral and a crime against nature. We don't think that will go over well with Walz or the general public, especially if Walz shows up on stage with the kids once in a while. Also, polls show that an overwhelming percentage of Americans approve of IVF and see it as pro-family. For example, a recent Pew poll puts the approval of IVF at 70% and the disapproval at 8%, with 22% having no opinion or not knowing what it is. Supporting the 8% group is not going to be a political winner. (V)