LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 382

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382 THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS-—-COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

set limits on some uses of some biotechnologies, in order to protect
common values.” In her personal statement, Counci] member Re-
becca Dresser notes that Council members continue to “disagree on
the moral and social value of technologies that enable more people
to have biologically related children, expand opportunities to test
embryos and fetuses for genetic traits, and offer researchers new av-
enues for studying preimplantation embryos.”!°

Kass and Dresser are stressing two points about the Council’s
work: 1) that disagreement is extensive on the central questions con-
cerning stem cell research and the related science and technologies,
and 2) that people whose opinions range widely can nonetheless
hope to make progress as they reason together. As Lutherans who
share a common faith and life in The Lutheran Church—Missouri
Synod (LCMS), we have even more reason than members of that
diverse Council to hope that we can make progress toward consen-
sus on the questions before us.

Because the Commission on Theology and Church Relations is
committed to making progress toward consensus across the broad
range of opinions found in our society and in the LCMS, this report
does not assume that biblically disciplined reasoning concerning
stem cells and pre-implantation human life will produce moral im-
peratives that are “obvious” to everyone. Instead, the Commission
has labored to listen long and hard to the ways in which thoughtful
people make a variety of cases in addressing these topics. The Com-
mission's hope is twofold: 1) that by careful articulation of com-
peting viewpoints we can help people make progress toward
consensus on the questions before us, and 2) that by patiently work-
ing toward consensus, we in the LCMS may also find ways of ar-
ticulating our pro-life position that can command attention from
persons who may have thought that they could easily dismiss our
pro-life reasoning. In this way we hope to contribute to strategies
for making progress in the context of the political realities of our
pluralized society.

In 1984, when IVF science and technology were relatively new,
Christian ethicist Oliver O’ Donovan put his finger on the challenge
that now fully confronts us. IVF science, said O’ Donovan, has pro-
vided us with detailed knowledge of human beginnings and has puz-
zled us by “presenting to us members of our own species who are
doubtfully proper objects of compassion and love.”'' In those early
days of the technology O° Donovan acknowledged that science may
contribute to deeper moral knowledge, but he proposed that the wis-
est course in the face of the ambiguities of human beginnings would
be to abandon IVF so we are no longer presented with the pro-
foundly troubling ambiguity.

During the ensuing 20 years the practice of IVF has not been
abandoned, and science is contributing ever more complex insight.
Ethicist Ronald Green comments on how increasingly complex sci-
entific insight complicates moral reflection:

The invention of the microscope and the ability to isolate sperm and egg

for research purposes allowed us to witness fertilization. What better can-

didate for the beginning of a human Life, when elements from the two par-
ents seem to unite in a single new entity? The later understanding that this
union signaled the beginning of major genetic transformations, as chro-
mosomally haptoid sex cells became an actively dividing embryo with
diploid cells, reinforced the conclusion that this was the decisive “moment”
when the human individual began. Older religious ideas of ensoulment con-
tributed to this conclusion. God's intervention to create the spirit was now
mapped onto the newly discovered biological information. But this way of
understanding events was bound to be transitory. Newer scientific infor-
mation has thrown doubt on these certainties. Fertilization, which looked
like a “moment,” can now be seen as an extended biological process. What

seemed like a one-time event—individuation—is now perceived as a

process that can continue for up to two weeks.!

Today we know that IVF is a widely used technology and that
we cannot escape pondering the significance of human life pre-
sented to us in Petri dishes in an IVF clinic. Access to human life
in these earliest stages in a laboratory setting requires us carefully

2007 Convention Workbook

to examine the sources of some people’s uneasy sense that life in
this form is “doubtfully” an object of compassion and love.

The Structure of This Report

In part one of this report we provide a basic and strictly objec-
tive account of contemporary scientific and technological practice
in IVF clinics, in embryonic stem cell research, and in cloning tech-
niques. The goal is to be well informed and to achieve clarity con-
cerning actual practice in contemporary science and technology.

In part two we provide a survey of contrasting lines of reason-
ing concerning the moral implications of the scientific and techno-
logical practices described in the first part. The goal is to understand
the various strategies of reasoning and to examine in detail why and
how people are puzzled concerning the status of human life in its
earliest stages.

In part three we develop lines of reasoning rooted in biblical faith
that can help us make progress in discerning and loving human lives
in the midst of contemporary scientific and technological practices.
We find that we are able to offer some biblically disciplined moral
guidance on questions concerning pre-implantation human life in
IVF clinics, on questions concerning the derivation of stem cells
from pre-implantation human life, and on questions concerning
cloning for biomedical research.

This report rigorously examines the arguments of thoughtful
Christians and others who do not defend the principle that pre-im-
plantation embryos should be accorded protection in the same way
as live-born humans. Upon examination, the Commission on The-
ology and Church Relations has remained convinced that both bib-
lical and philosophical perspectives support the wisdom of
protecting pre-implantation embryos from the time of conception.
This has been the point of view summed up in the pro-life claim that
“life begins at conception.”

Thus, we apply the principle “Always to care, never to kill” also
to pre-implantation life. We readily acknowledge the puzzling and
complex features of the issues we are addressing, and we offer this
moral guidance in a spirit of humility. We trust that our fairness in
weighing the competing arguments will be evident, and will elicit
equally fair responses from those whose weighing of the arguments
leads them to different conclusions.

Part One: Science and Human Beginnings

Physically, the development and growth of the human body is
directed by our genes,'? some 20,000 to 25,000 sets of physical in-
structions encoded in the DNA in our cells.'* Except for cells that
are involved in our reproductive systems, every other cell in our
body contains the entire set of genes, a complete set of instructions
for our physical being. But cells in our bodies differ from each other
because only certain of the genes in a cell are actively directing the
production, for example, of new skin cells or new muscle cells.

Our cells’ genetic instructions come in a double set of paired genes.
In the usual case mothers contribute one complete set of genes and fa-
thers the other. Thus, we are physically similar to our parents and yet
different because each parent has contributed only half of her or his
own total set of instructions to the new set that is our own. This is be-
cause sperm and eggs include only one half of the double set of genes
found in the other cells of our bodies. Each sperm and egg draws upon
the father’s or mother’s double set of genes in ways that make each
sperm and egg genetically different from the others despite their com-
ing from the same parent. When sperm and egg fuse in conception, a
new and unique double set of genes is formed from the single contri-
bution of each. As the Psalmist says, we are “fearfully and wonder-
fully made” (Ps. 139:14).

We turn now to a survey of more recent technologies involved
in the conception of new human persons.

Artificial insemination is a relatively simple technique that in-
troduces sperm into the woman’s body by some means other than