#STRask - What Should I Say to My Single, Christian Friend Who Is Planning to Use IVF to Have a Baby?

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Questions about giving a biblical perspective to a single friend who is a relatively new Christian and is planning to use IVF to have a baby, and whether or not it’s wrong to pray for a baby for a single Christian who wants to adopt.   A Christian friend who is relatively new to the faith confided that she isn’t sure marriage is for her and is planning to use IVF to have a baby. How can I talk to her about this from a biblical perspective? Is it wrong to pray for a baby for my single, Christian friend who wants to adopt?

This is the hashtag STR-Ask podcast from Stan to Reason with Greg Kokel and Amy Hall. Hi, Amy. Hi, Greg. You're ready to get going? Ready to get going. I don't know why I ask you that. Of course you are. You're sitting here.

You're ready. Rock and roll. This first question comes from Kate. A Christian friend, relatively new to the faith, has confided that she plans to start IVF-slash artificial insemination to have a baby. She is 28 and single. I want to quit myself to talk to her about this from a biblical perspective. She says she isn't sure marriage is for her, but she wants children. Well, this is a difficult issue to deal with, not in terms of moral rectitude here, what is right.

But in terms of dealing with someone who deeply wants something important for themselves, okay? And that's what we have here, all right? We have a woman who's not married but wants kids. Okay. Well, that's a problem because God designed humans to reproduce in a binary way. Not just so there's a husband and wife, but so there's a mother and a father for the child, all right? So that's like the created order. It's pretty straightforward.

I'm laying a little foundation here. I'll talk at a moment about how to maybe approach this. It's going to be a little harder, though, to keep in mind. First, because they're a relatively young Christian, and secondly, women want kids. It's a deep thing. I'm going to say it. Every woman does. But when a woman wants a child, that is very deep. And that's hard to say no to. And if she's, and I don't even understand why she's not right for marriage. I don't, that's another thing. That's not a biblical perspective like, yeah, I don't know if I'm the marrying kind, but I can be the mother kind. Well, that's kind of the tail wagging the dog, you know, getting or maybe getting the card before the horse. God designed the world in a way that would be most beneficial to human flourishing.

By the way, this is a really good way of characterizing it, I think, human flourishing. Male and female, he created them, be fruitful, multiply, subdue the world. Next chapter, that's chapter one. next chapter for a man shall leave his father and mother. Notice, by the way, binary sexuality and father and mother, and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh, all right? And of course, the one flesh relationship, the physical relationship is what produces children. So if you want to talk from a biblical perspective, this is the foundation. And indeed, it's so foundational that in Matthew 19, when Jesus was asked about divorce and remarriage, he tells the spiritual

leaders, have you not read? And then he goes back to Genesis 1 and to Genesis 2, just the same passages I just cited. So in Jesus' mind, these passages are foundational to the whole project. And that's where we get this idea that we've mentioned before it stand to reason that Jesus' view of marriage is one man with one woman becoming one flesh for one lifetime. Okay. And that's the nature of marriage, in God's view. That's the case before the fall, because that's the circumstance that produces the best human flourishing.

And, of course, the one-flesh union is what allows them to be. fruitful and multiply, okay, but it's a mom and a dad. And so in this case, I'm trying to think of the best way to approach it. And a lot depends on, let's say, Kate, your assessment of your friends' spiritual convictions, the depth of their convictions. And so maybe the question is going to be, this what you're deciding to do is really important. How important is it? to you. Here's the question, Kate, you can ask. How important is it to you that you act in a way that's consistent with God's purposes when you think about having children? Now, if she says it's really important to me, I'm a Christian, I want to do this right, this is where, okay, let's go

back, and maybe starting at Matthew 19 is a good place. You start with Jesus, and when Jesus was asked about marriage and divorce, which isn't the issue here. I'm role playing it a little bit now for you, Kate, which really isn't the issue here, I understand, but I want you to notice how he answers this question. He goes back to Genesis 1 and to Genesis 2. In other words, even before the fall, God set things up a certain way so that human beings could flourish best. Okay? So notice the foundation we're laying here, Kate, for your friend who says, yes, she wants to do a God way, pardon me, God's way, and all right, then what is God's way? One man with one woman becoming one flesh for one lifetime,

and it's the one-flesh relationship that produces children. Now, technologically, you can do that without becoming one flesh now. But that doesn't mean that we can violate the pattern. We can break with the pattern. A husband and wife can get in vitro, but you still have a husband and wife overcoming a physical, obstacle to be able to be a mother and father to children. I have no difficulty with that.

But notice that the basic plan is still in place. The husband and the wife being fruitful and attempting to multiply, but now using technology to help them to accomplish that, and then raising their family as a mom and dad for life. The problem with single people raising children is they are designing a circumstance where the child is bereft of a parent, a mother or a father, in this case a father, and children need dads. They need males, not just females, which is why God set it up this way to begin with. and what it amounts to, and I don't know you have to play this card, but I'm just going to say it here for the sake of everybody, what this amounts to is a worldly perspective that I get to get what I want if I can get, if I can possibly accomplish that. I don't want a husband, but I want a kid, because a kid will bring me satisfaction, and I want to be a mom.

Now, she may want to be a mom for, you know, for all the right emotional reasons, but she is pursuing a path of self-satisfaction in a way that is going to deprive a child of something that that child deserves and needs. So it's at the expense of the child now that the mother is feeling satisfied as a mom, all right? this is not a good situation. Yeah, I think, okay, she's a Christian. One thing you could start off by saying is you're new to Christianity, and sometimes it takes a while to figure out what the Christian worldview is, because you've spent a lot of your life 28 years or however many years being shaped by the culture. Yeah.

So would you be open to hearing my concerns about this? Well, that's good, Amy. Because sometimes Because sometimes It's possible to want something that's good And to get it in the wrong way So being a mother is good But if you go about it in a way

That is contrary to God's design You'll end up causing harm And one of the biggest problems here Is that this And you touched on this, Greg This is treating a child like a commodity That she wants And so she's going to go

out and get one. Rather than as a trust to take care of this child in the way that God created it in the created order, having a mother and having a father. And as you noted, it's depriving the child of a father. Now, there's a woman named Katie Faust who has a ministry and a book called Them Before Us. So the whole organization, I think, is called Them Before Us. But there's also a book.

So maybe she would be willing to read through that. Because the point is we should not be using children to satisfy or desires however we want them satisfied. It's just not treating them as a human being. And we should not be depriving children of a parent. And that's what will happen if you do IVF or artificial insemination. Now, I have a lot of problems with IVF anyway because that whole industry is treating children like commodities and it's training our whole culture to treat them that way. to think of them out way. And I have problems with that. And I've done episode, I did an episode

with Alan of your other podcast years ago, if someone wants to look that up on our website at STR.org. So you can see all my problems there. But I think the biggest thing here is, number one, God made us so that we would have, so that children would have mothers and fathers. We should not be depriving a child of a father. And number two, we, I've lost my train of thought. I'll add number two if you want. Okay, I'll think of it before you're done. Go ahead. Well, there's another. Oh, let me, okay. So number two, we should not be thinking of children as commodities to satisfy our desires and our wants. Merely as commodities. I mean, to be a parent is a desire, obviously many people have, and to fulfill, there's nothing wrong with fulfilling

that desire. But if that desire is kind of sought to be fulfilled in isolation, regardless of harm that might come to others, like a child who doesn't have a parent, now it's taken on the wrong role. But there's another factor here, too, okay? God's purpose is not just for a child to have a father and a mother, it is for the mother to have a husband. And when a mother has a husband, that changes the leadership dynamic. Some women want to have a child, and they want to be in charge of everything.

They don't want any guy telling them what they need to do. They're not going to follow that. They're going to do it themselves and do it their way. That's not a healthy attitude when it comes to a family kind of concern. Some people may not want to get married for that reason. I think that may be a character flaw, actually. I don't want anybody telling me what to do, you know, kind of attitude. But when you take on some of the trappings or privileges of marriage as a single person, for that reason,

And now what you're doing is you're eliminating a factor that God has designed to be an important character developer in your life. Anybody who's had kids and is married and is a Christian and has that understanding knows that it's the kids and the spouse that is the sharpest scalpel God is going to use on them to make them more like Christ. And this is kind of a way, I mean, it may be, of saying, I don't want that trouble. I want to do it all myself. I don't want a husband getting in the way of me raising my kid. So that's another issue. You asked a question earlier, Greg, and I can't remember exactly how you put it, but I think it's so key about asking her if you found this was not the way God wanted you to do it, would you want to know that? I can't remember how you put it.

But I think that's the key question here, because here's the problem. Again, wanting a child is a good thing. A child is a good thing to have. So now you have the problem of, well, I'm not married, and the temptation is to go after that good thing in the wrong way, whereas what we need to do is trust God. So you have to trust that you are not missing out if you continue to follow him in the way he's told you to go. So when we sin, it's usually because we think God's holding out on us that there's something good for us that he hasn't given us, so we're going to take it in our own

way. And that leads to all sorts of problems. The book, The Magician's Nephew, illustrates this so well. So she's open to reading that, CS Lewis. And you can actually read it without having read any of the other chronicles of Narnia, if she hasn't. I prefer the real order where you start with the lion, the witch and the order. But that's the chronicle. That's the chronological order starts with the magician's emphasis at the beginning of Narnia. I'm not saying I'm for that order. So all you book nerds out there, don't worry. Yeah, yeah. I'm a classicist in that regard, too. But maybe she'd be open to it because there's such a great illustration where he wants to have this apple that will cure his mother. And the witch, the boy. Yeah, the boy. The boy. The boy.

The witch tempts him to take it in a way that he was not given it. And he resists. And so he lets go of this dream. And in the end, Aslan does give it to him. And he says, well, what would have happened if I'd taken it? And he said it just would have become, you know, the witch ate it and it became a horror to her. So when you take things in the wrong way and you sin, it is not worth it. It is always better to continue in obedience, even if you feel like you're missing out. The only way to actually miss out is to sin. So whatever a situation God has you in, you do what he has called you to do. And that's how you don't miss out.

Even if you don't get certain good things, we're not supposed to take them in the wrong way. So what you have to work at is to trust in God's goodness, trust that he cares about you and he knows about you. and that way you're free to let those things go. And you may still get them, but to get them in the wrong way will end up making you worse off than if you never had them. Yeah. I want to add a qualifier here that will create a little balance because the problem in this circumstance is that a woman is engineering a circumstance where a child, is created in a substandard family situation. On purpose.

On purpose. Yeah. Right. Okay. Now, I know of people who single women who were not married that adopted a child out of a very, very bad circumstance. I'm thinking of one, I can't remember her name, but just a wonderful individual who adopted a child that was in a very, an orphan from a foreign country that was in very, very, very,

very bad circumstance. And her adoption, obviously, she's not married, she doesn't have a husband, but by adopting this child, it took the child out of a terrible circumstance and put that child in a very good circumstance, even though it wasn't ideal. So it was an improvement. I don't object to that kind of circumstance, all right? So there's an exception here, but it is, I'm not breaking my rule because the rule is we want to give a child a father if we can and we're not going to create the circumstance on our own for our own best interests to that is going to deprive a child of a father in this case. But in this case, I just described, she didn't create that circumstance. The circumstance was already there and it was bad. And so what she did is she created

a circumstance that actually improved the situation for the young boy, who ended up growing up under her Christian influence, became a believer and everything like that. And so I see that in a different category morally and ethically than the circumstance that Kate is facing with her friend. Yeah, I would say even in that circumstance, I would be careful about about adopting as a single person. I also know people who've adopted older children who had no home and nobody was adopting them. So if it's, that is a better situation. But ideally, we would obviously want them to have a mother and a father. So this question is related, Greg. This one comes from Christina. So most of the things we've said already will apply to this. My single Christian friend in her late 30s has been wanting to adopt.

for quite some time. She has never been married. She's asking for support in prayer and otherwise for a baby to come to her. Is it wrong to pray for a baby for her since this child will not have a father figure? Well, this is where, it seems to me, we kind of move into a little bit more of a gray area similar to the circumstance that I just described. Our earlier objection was a person producing a child and engineering the circumstance itself where the child will not have a father and she doesn't want a father for the child.

She wants the child for herself. That's the way I took that question. In this circumstance, it's a little bit different because to me it's similar to the exception that I mentioned where this woman took this orphan boy from another country in a terrible circumstance and provided a home for him. And you even kind of balked a little bit on that, what I understand. This, I think, would be more of a balk because in principle, the child that is being going to be adopted by this single person could go to a family that has a mother and father. And as far as I

understand state laws may be the case that you can't discriminate against a single person adopting a child. So that means if a single person gets in the queue, they get the same preference as a mother and father, a married couple. Well, in that circumstance, now you are depriving a child of a mother and father for your own benefit. And that's why I would be against that. I think the exception is in the very rare circumstances where there's no other option for the child.

They are in a terrible circumstance, and you can rescue them from the terrible circumstance. That is not the case with adoption agencies. There are plenty of couples that are hungering to have a child and adopt a child. The line is long. Both of my daughters are adopted. So we know what the competition can be like. If a single person gets in the queue, they're taking a baby away from another couple. That's the way it seems to me.

And that would not be appropriate. And so I would say, no, you shouldn't be praying for your friend to do something that's not right. That's kind of what it amounts to. And I would communicate the same kind of things we've communicated here to your friend. and say, you know, do you want to do a God's way? You know, you can go through the whole thing that we just described. I have concerns about this, you know. This is, you know, and well, we've already covered that ground.

Yeah, I think all those things would apply here and just at least have her think about it and consider it. And again, I know this, nobody wants to give up the good things that they have, that they can possibly get for themselves. to know every this is a a deep human desire that's a good one that God has given us so this all makes this all very very difficult to make sense of especially for women to try and make sense of the fact that they they shouldn't go in this direction but why and if they haven't had their minds trained to think the way God has called us to think and they haven't they don't know much about the Christian worldview they haven't thought about pro life They've thought about bioethics. They haven't thought about these things. It can be hard. But maybe start with that book. Christina, you can read it for yourself, then before us.

And maybe that will give you some ideas about how to interact with your friend. So maybe here's an overriding question. It just occurred to me that might simplify the whole approach. The question is, what is best for the child in question? what is best given the opportunities for the child in question. In the first case, it's not best to engineer a circumstance where the child doesn't have a dad. In the second case, I talked about this person that I understood, it's better for the child, it's best for the child not to live in poverty as an orphan in some third world country,

but to be adopted by a godly woman, even though she doesn't, that's better. Okay, so I should say that's best given those two circumstances. In the circumstance of the woman who wants to adopt, then the best thing for the child is the child go to a couple, not to a single person. Yeah, that's a great question. What is best for the child, what is best for us or what do we want? Tough, tough questions. These are all tough questions. And this is why we have to learn about these things before we get in those situations, because once you're in the situation, there's so much.

temptation to go for what you want. Exactly. There's so much. By the way, just a qualifier here, the issue here is tough, not because it's hard to figure out what's right. I don't think that's that hard. It's same like abortion. To figure out what's right in abortion is not hard.

What's hard is applying what's right because of the demands or the circumstances or the heartache or the desires or whatever that are at play here. And we have been trained in our culture to follow our desires, to follow our feelings, and to instead deny our feelings and do what's right. That's not on the menu for postmodern folk, you know, for our culture. It reminds me a little bit of the Emily Bronte novel, where the gal loves the guy who's married to the woman who's crazy. Jane Hare? Yeah, Jane Eyre. So where she loves this man, but she finds out he's already married to a woman who's locked up in the Attica.

She's crazy. Spoiler alert. Yeah, sorry about that. It's Charlotte Bronte. Who did I say? Jane? Emily, I think. Oh, okay.

There's a few of them. There's a few of them. Okay, thank you, Charlotte. But what's significant, and sorry about the spoiler alert, because there is a paragraph in that novel where Jane, the character, who desperately wants this relationship, says, I cannot do this because it would offend God. this is not right. And she has to say no to her feeling. Do you remember this paragraph I'm talking about? Have you read it?

I have read it. It's a very good book. Yeah. And so anyway, it's instructive, a period of time when people understood that they needed to say no to their desires to say yes to God. And that is rare today. Well, thank you, Greg. And thank you, Kate and Christina for your question. questions and we hope your conversations with your friends go well. If you have a question, send it

on X with the hashtag STR Ask or go to our website at STR.org. We look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.