LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 381

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 381

Christian Faith and
Human Beginnings

Christian Care and
Pre-implantation Human Life

Introduction

Pastor Solomon was having an interesting week. His calendar
showed that Rachel and James were due to meet with him next Mon-
day. Their physician was recommending that they try in vitro fer-
tilization (IVF), since other treatments for their infertility had failed.
They wanted Pastor Solomon to help them think about the moral
and spiritual implications of this recommendation. A local pro-life
group had also called with questions about stem cell research and
had pointed him to some arguments that claimed that IVF clinics
were failing to respect human life in ways very similar to abortion
clinics. The main argument was that “‘life begins at conception.”
IVF clinical practice fertilizes human eggs in a laboratory setting
and often includes decisions not to transfer every one of the fertil-
ized eggs into the woman’s body. Some are frozen for possible fu-
ture transfer and others are discarded. And some that are frozen are
now being destroyed as they become sources for stem cells to be
used in medical and biological research.'

Pastor Solomon had recently been examining end-of-life issues
with the adult Bible class. He had drawn upon the Bible Study in
Christian Care at Life’s End, which made frequent use of the prin-
ciple “Always to care, never to kill.”? He and the class thought that
this principle shed useful light on care for humans at the end of life.
Pastor Solomon found himself wondering whether this line of
thought could help him with the beginning-of-life issues that he was
now encountering.

Pastor Solomon first tried using this principle to examine care
for human life in the womb. In the womb we find fragile and vul-
nerable human lives on their way to birth into human families and
community. Pastor Solomon was encouraged that “Always to care,
never to kill” seemed to sum up familiar Christian teaching con-
cerning protection and care for lives in the womb.

His current questions, however, were not about life in the womb
but about fertilized eggs in IVF clinics, and particularly about those
that were not being transferred into a woman’s womb. “Always to
care, never to kill” certainly sums up a Christian’s attitude to the
human lives that are given to us. And fertilized eggs are human.
Pastor Solomon recognized that most thoughtful participants in
these debates about the beginnings of life outside the womb in lab-
oratories readily admitted that the coming together of sperm and
egg was a crucial step in the beginning of a human life. The debates
were not about whether conception began a human life but about
whether human life that is never implanted in the womb comes un-
der the principle “Always to care, never to kill” in the same way
that life developing in the womb and beyond does.

Pastor Solomon had often studied and used the various Scrip-
ture passages that speak of God’s regard for His people’s lives not
only before we were in the womb (for example, Jer. 1:5) but even
from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). Those passages
certainly settle the question of whether baptized children of God
should thankfully confess God’s knowledge and love of them from
long before the coming together of sperm and egg that began their
physical development. But he had also discovered that Christian
theologians are not of one mind concerning whether these same pas-
sages also speak about every fertilized egg, including the many that
in the natural course of procreation or in the clinic are never suc-
cessfully implanted in a mother’s womb.

Pastor Solomon was confident that human life, implanted in a
mother’s womb, was to be nurtured and loved, and he knew how to
counsel and teach about this topic with his people. But now Rachel

and James and a local pro-life group were asking him for advice
about human life in a laboratory Petri dish prior to implantation in
the womb. And so for the last few days he had applied himself again
to Scripture, and he had also begun to become better informed about
IVF clinical practice and about stem cell research and cloning. He
began to review the broad range of arguments currently employed
in the debates that both Christians and non-Christians are having
about the moral and spiritual significance of pre-implantation fer-
tilized eggs. His goal was to understand when and how a newly be-
gun human life comes to be regarded by God (and therefore also by
us) as a life to be nurtured and loved unconditionally.

Our fictional Pastor Solomon’s situation is the one that the Com-
mission on Theology and Church Relations found itself in as it ap-
plied itself to the assignment to provide guidance on questions about
embryonic stem cell research and cloning for biomedical research.
In this report we seek to help Christians become better informed
about the science and clinical practice of IVF, genetic research, and
cloning. We also survey the wide range of ethical arguments that
are being brought to bear on these issues. In the final part of this re-
port we return to Pastor Solomon and consider how the principle
“Always to care, never to kill” is applicable to questions about hu-
man beginnings.

Overview: The Riddle of Human Beginnings

In vitro fertilization (IVF), embryonic stem cell research, and
cloning technology require that Christians, along with other con-
cerned and thoughtful individuals, return to fundamental questions
concerning what it is (o be a human whom God loves and whom
God would have us love and nurture. The development of genetic
science and technology is having the beneficial effect of challeng-
ing Christians to redouble their efforts to mine God’s Word and to
seek to discern God’s will in the face of the new questions and pos-
sibilities that are being raised each day. There is disagreement not
only within contemporary culture but also among Christians on
questions about whether and how pre-implantation embryonic cells
in laboratories should be accorded protection rather than being dis-
carded in clinics or destroyed or compromised by research.*

Consider an example of challenging disagreement among
thoughtful Christians and others. In July 2002 the United States
President’s Council on Bioethics issued a report on Human Cloning
and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry.’ Robert George, a Prince-
ton ethicist, is a member of the Council and a staunch advocate of
the position that embryos outside the womb in clinics and labora-
tories—whether the result of combining sperm and egg or the re-
sult of cloning technology—are to be accorded protection on the
same basis as live-born humans. He reports that while the 17 mem-
bers of the Council unanimously voted to oppose reproductive
cloning,® they divided 10 to 7 on a proposal for a four-year mora-
torium on cloning to produce human embryos for biomedical re-
search. Of the 10 in favor of a moratorium, 7 argued for an
immediate and permanent legal prohibition of cloning embryos for
biomedical research. The other 3 in favor of the moratorium argued
that while such cloning might be permissible, more time was needed
for reflection and debate. Among the 7 who argued for an immedi-
ate and permanent prohibition, some (like Robert George) argued
that embryos in clinics and laboratories are to be accorded protec-
tion on the same basis as live-born humans. Others among the 7,
however, were not convinced that the argument for prohibition
could or should be based on a claim that embryos should be ac-
corded protection on the same basis as live-born humans.’

In March 2004 this same Council issued a report called Repro-
duction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnolo-
gies.® Leon Kass, chair of the Council, writes in his personal
statement that “the report’s major contribution is to show how a het-
erogeneous group of individuals, whose opinions range almost as
widely as those of the American people, has agreed on the need to

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