Southern Baptist Convention votes to oppose IVF

Thousands of Southern Baptists voted to oppose the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) during a national convention on Wednesday.

Attendees at the Southern Baptist Convention voted to approve a resolution “On the Ethical Realities of Reproductive Technologies and the Dignity of the Human Embryo” Wednesday afternoon after hearing from many people about their own experiences with IVF. The vote signals opposition to the procedure among many Southern Baptists but is not an enforceable statement.

The resolution called on 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.”