April 9, 2024 Show with Laura Klassen AND John Speed on “In Vitro Fertilization & the Questions of Biblical Ethics & Morality”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this ninth day of April, 2024.

Introducing the Guests and the Topic of IVF

And I'm thrilled to have two guests on today, one a first-time guest and one a returning guest to discuss a matter over which I have never dedicated a full two hours to discuss in my memory anyway, which doesn't mean much at 62 years of age.

But from what I can remember, I've never dedicated a full two hours to in vitro fertilization and the questions of biblical ethics and morality, and I am glad that I have the opportunity to do so today.

And we have on the program to discuss this very important issue, first-time guest Laura Claussen. She is an anti-abortion activist, an actor, and founder and director of Choice 42. And first of all, let me welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Laura Claussen.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

And by the way, is it Claussen? I should have asked you this before we went on the air.

No, I meant Claussen.

So it is Claussen.

It is.

OK, I pronounced it correctly. And before I introduce my second guest, why don't you tell us about Choice 42, when I understand that there is actually a fuller name to that ministry?

Right.

So it's Choice 42. So it is an anti-abortion Christian organization based in Canada, and we are now operating almost worldwide. And we do two different things. On the one hand, we are creating awareness for different issues relating to pre-born children, and we do that through a lot of videos that we've done.

We've had a lot of videos go viral online and that kind of thing. And the other half of what we do is we connect one on one with women who are considering abortion, women who have abortions booked. And we talk with them and we try to plead for their babies' lives.

And if we're able to help save the child, then we are able to offer the mom financial assistance that she might need. Yeah. And so that's pretty much Choice for Two in a nutshell. It's written Choice 42, but pronounced Choice for Two, meaning the woman is making a choice, but she's making it for two people, herself and her child.

Yes. And that explains why you use the term or the word choice, because that may strike panic in the hearts and minds of many of our listeners who may wrongly quickly jump to the conclusion that you are so-called pro-choice.

That's right. Well, it actually gets us through a lot of doors that would have been closed to us, especially here in Canada, where if we came out and said, if we had a name that was blatantly anti-abortion, then we'd be in trouble.

So this choice has been working nicely for us.

Yeah. If you want to really have a lot of success in Canada, you might want to think about a website, IHateWhitePeople .com or something like that.

It's true.

And since you're a first time guest, in a moment, we're going to have you give your salvation testimony, at least a brief summary of that. But before we do that, let me welcome back to the program, a returning guest, John Speed, who is an elder and pastor of missions and evangelism for By the Word Baptist Church of Azle, Texas, and he's public relations director for Choice42 .com.

It's great to have you back on the show, John.

It's great to be back on the show.

And why don't you tell us about By the Word Baptist Church of Azle, Texas?

Well, we're a church that is a Reformed Baptist church. We were in the Southern Baptist Convention, but we left that a few years ago. And yeah, we're a small country church that, by God's grace, we've been able to do a lot of different things with missions and evangelism.

We do a lot in Mexico and Central America with some pastors, just kind of doing conferences there, weekly Zoom call with, I don't know, 15 or 20 pastors there. And we do a lot of street evangelism locally.

We've done a lot of abortion clinic ministry. They sent me to Syracuse, New York, to plant the church, Christ is King Baptist Church up there, and now I'm doing IVF clinic ministry in Tarrant County in the Fort Worth area.

By the way, I have to be honest with you, and this will probably confirm in your mind, I knew this guy, Chris Arnzen, was a moron, but when you first contacted me and said, hey, do you want to discuss the controversies involving IVF, I thought you were talking about the encroachment of liberalism into inter-varsity fellowship.

I really did, because I know that, for instance, right near where I'm sitting, about a five-minute walk, maybe even less, Dickinson College, which is a huge, prestigious college right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, they have an IVF inter-varsity fellowship campus ministry.

And I just recently, tragically, found out that they support Side B Christianity, which, for those unfamiliar with that term, as I was until I recently organized a debate between Dr. James R. White and Dr. Gregory Coles on the theme, is it biblically appropriate for a Christian to identify as a gay Christian, which the latter, Dr. Gregory Coles, defended that position since he identifies himself as a gay Christian, although a celibate one.

But that is the official position of at least this campus fellowship, and apparently you can't have the view that homosexuality, even in the desire, even if it's not acted upon physically, that you have to repent of that as well, that it is not a natural desire.

Apparently inter-varsity fellowship, at least the local campus ministry here, is opposed to that traditional biblical view and has been taken over by this leftist understanding. Of course, they would deny that because they still say homosexuality, when physically consummated, is a sin, and they would even say lust is a sin, but they make a non-existent differentiation between same-sex attraction and lust.

So anyway, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about today, but I just thought you'd get a kick out of what I thought originally, when you contacted me, we'd be discussing. But providentially, it's not about that because, as I said in the opening, I've never discussed for a full two hours in vitro fertilization and how Bible-believing and biblically obedient Christians should respond to this.

And before we do that, as I said earlier, we're going to have Laura, who is a first-time guest, Laura Clausen. She's going to be providing for us a summary of her salvation testimony, as we always do with first-time guests here, providing an idea of what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you.

So I would love to hear your story.

Oh, sure. Yeah, so I was born into a Christian family, very blessed to have that happen, and I was taught, you know, I was taught the gospel my whole life, and I became a Christian very early, and I was baptized very early as a child, and I have just continued walking with the Lord since then.

So it's not a very exciting story full of strife or anything like that. Definitely, I leaned on my faith throughout the many trials of life, but I was just very fortunate to be born into a Christian home, and I grew up in a Baptist church, and yep, that is pretty much that.

And it was the pastor there who, yeah, he was the pastor through most of my childhood. He is the one that I came to with this crazy idea of Choice for Two. However many years ago, Choice for Two started eight years ago.

So I came with him with the idea, and fortunately, he was just very open and encouraging about it, and really, because of that conversation,.

That is where this whole organization came from. So I'm assuming from your salvation testimony that you are one of these folks, and it's always a reason to rejoice when you hear about this, because it's not, I don't think, the common story.

Well, it might be more common than I think, but that you were raised in the faith, and God had mercy upon you and preserved you to the point where you don't even remember a time when you were in rebellion against Christ.

I'm not saying that you were born sinless. Obviously, that would be a heresy, but you obviously must have been born again by God's mercy at some young stage in your life where you don't recall ever being a rebel and not in love with Jesus Christ.

That's true. That's a really good way of putting it.

Okay, and also, we're not going to get too specific about Laura Clawson's personal life, because she's actually received death threats because of her ministry with choice42 .com. Do you care to mention anything about that further?

Sure. Yeah, it's very hostile, as it is in the United States. Here in Canada, abortion is very celebrated, so if you step out against that, the reaction to it is just vile. I expected it to be a nasty response in general, but I didn't expect that.

Very specific things I've had online in writing even, I know the person that said it, things like, I'm going to come and find you and douse you in gasoline and light the match. Wow. Yeah, I had one guy tell me that he would behead me, which was kind of an interesting one.

This is all because they are so infatuated and also perhaps infanticide. They love infanticide so much, I'm assuming. That's right.

Yeah, so really, and of course, lots of rape threats, you know, let's see what happens if you get pregnant from rape, then you'll be the one needing an abortion, so they say.

You don't think these are coming from, like, just idiot teenagers or anything like that?

No, I mean, some are, but most of those were adult men, and when I took it to the police, they said, nothing can be done until something happens, and if something happens, then you have the evidence, yeah, then you have the evidence to back it up, and I was like, well, if I'm beheaded, I mean, this post on Facebook.

That's insane.

So if I live in Canada and I call up a Black family and say, I'm going to come to your home and burn a cross on your lawn, I doubt that the police would say, oh, there's nothing we can do.

About that. Oh, yeah, you'd be in jail. It's a complete double standard, and I'm aware of it, and so I'm very cautious in details that I give out publicly. You know, I've had a couple people so dedicated to trying and, like, get me or whatever, they've gone after other Laura Claussens in the country and tried to get them fired.

There was one schoolteacher at West, and I feel really bad for her, Laura Claussen, and they came after her, and I mean, we look nothing alike, so yeah,.

They were trying to get her fired. Now, does she have the same worldview as you? I don't know.

Anything about her. I just, I found her and I saw what she looked like, and we look very different, so I mean, her boss didn't go for it that she's me or anything like that. Wow, that's a nightmare.

Yeah, the only death threats I've ever had were from my own elders, but I'm only kidding, but well, we praise God for your testimony, and we praise God for the work you're doing, and instead of interrupting either of you mid-sentence, I'm going to go to our first commercial break right now, and then when we can come back, we're going to have Laura Claussen give us more of a detailed description of what goes on medically with in vitro fertilization, and perhaps if you have questions about that, if you're totally ignorant about that or at least very ignorant about that, feel free to send in a question to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Give us the first name at least, city and state and country of residence, and then after that, we are going to have John Speed give the reasons theologically and biblically why Christians should find this morally repugnant and why we should believe biblical ethics are being violated.

So once again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and we will grant your request to remain anonymous in those cases because we realize a topic like in vitro fertilization would very likely evoke questions from our audience that involve very intensely personal and private matters.

So feel free to do that, but please if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence. We'll be right back. Please do not go away. Armored Republic exists.

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Medical Overview of IVF and the Loss of Embryonic Life

We are now back with my guest today, Laura Clausen and also John Speed with choice42 .com. We are talking about in vitro fertilization and the questions that arise regarding biblical ethics and morality when it comes to Christians seeking to be obedient and all Christians should be, obviously.

If you could, Laura, give us an overview technically of what is actually going on in the procedure of in vitro fertilization. What exactly does that phrase even mean and what is going on technically and.

Medically during such a process? Okay, so in vitro fertilization in vitro really means in glass. So what's basically happening is human beings are being created in glass instead of in a woman's body. So the reason that I even got IVF on my radar was because as I was doing my anti-abortion things online, one of our followers who is pro-choice made this comment a couple years ago.

If you guys, you know, care so much about the babies who are being aborted at these young ages, even like you're against the abortion pill. If you care about these lives, then why aren't you at the IVF clinic also caring about those lives and doing something about the murder happening there?

And she was saying that, you know, sarcastically. And I was thinking, well, because that's not the same thing at all. But then I realized I didn't know actually how IVF worked. All I knew was that the church that I grew up in, a lot of people did IVF and it was just a completely normal thing.

And a lot of my friends are people who were created through IVF. And so I never questioned it. And so after this person made that comment, I went and I looked into it and I realized that she was right.

And if we believe that life begins at fertilization, which is when life begins, then we cannot support IVF because so many, way, way more human beings are being killed through the process than are created.

I believe the stat, correct me if I'm wrong, John, I think it was 7 of embryos that.

Are created are actually born as babies. Wow. You know, what you said reminded me years ago when Chris Matthews was still on either CNN or MSNBC. I can't remember which station he was on. The notorious, infamous leftist Chris Matthews, he was interviewing an anti-abortion activist who was making the point that from the moment of conception, human life exists in the womb of a mother.

And he challenged that pro-lifer, just as that other pro-choicer challenged you, or pro-infanticide individual challenged you, Chris Matthews said, if you believe it's murder, why don't you believe in prosecuting the women who are getting abortions?

He was doing that to shame the guest. And sadly, the pro-life advocate didn't even acknowledge the question.

But it reminded me of that. Right. Okay. So I started looking into it and I realized, I don't know. I, someone who has been spending years of my life fighting for babies, I don't have a clue how IVF actually works.

So I looked into it and this is why we ended up releasing the Build a Baby video that we put out last year, because it's on IVF and it explains it. So basically what happens is the woman and the man, or any combination of people, or a single person, anyone who wants a child, but is struggling for whatever reason to have a child, can go and look into IVF.

And if you are someone who has eggs, they'll test your eggs and see if your eggs are good. If you're someone who has sperm, they'll test your sperm and they'll see if that's good. And if you're missing an ingredient, if you're a single woman and you don't have sperm, then you can go and select sperm from a sperm bank and you choose what features you want this child to have.

But say you're a heterosexual couple going in, and you're experiencing infertility and you want to undergo IVF. What will happen is they'll give the woman lots of medication, lots and lots of hormone shots over a period of weeks, and that's all leading up to egg retrieval day.

On egg retrieval day, after she's taken all these hormones, her body has been manipulated into releasing multiple eggs at one time. Usually, you know, a monthly cycle, you'll release one egg, maybe two.

But so they trick the body into releasing a whole bunch and she goes in for a surgery and the eggs are collected. Then the man has to have his sperm collected. And how is that done? That's done in the sperm collection room, which is a room that is full of porn.

And he goes in and he gives his sample into the cup and he comes out. And then the doctors or scientists or whatever you want to call them, they will, the medical professionals, will inject the sperm into the egg in a dish.

So this is where in vitro comes from. It happens in a dish. And then they will transfer one, maybe two of these embryos back into the woman. Which I should, I mean, on all of these steps, you can go down such rabbit holes.

But if you are a couple and you don't have a woman, you can then rent a womb essentially through surrogacy. So you will be paired with a woman who, you know, your embryos will then be put into. And the remaining embryos will be frozen.

And so hopefully the embryo takes and implants into the woman. And, you know, the end goal being that resulting in a live birth of a child. A lot of the time it doesn't work. And this is why there are so many, you'll hear people say, you know, I had to do five or six cycles of IVF before we got a baby.

And it costs, it's so expensive. It costs between, I think, 15 and $30 ,000 per cycle. So your embryos there, your extras remain frozen. And should you need them for, you know, another cycle and they can be thawed out at any point, but most do not survive the thawing process.

And you pay a fee to keep your frozen embryos frozen for years, because even people who are in, you know, they have the family they wanted. They got the children they wanted. They don't want anymore. They've still got these other human beings frozen in freezers who they're paying monthly for.

So what happens at the end of all of this is they have to decide, okay, are we going to try and transfer these embryos? Or are we going to allow someone else to adopt our embryos, which is the whole embryo adoption thing?

Or are we going to stop paying the fee and our embryos will be thrown into the garbage? Or which people are encouraged to do now is to donate them to science because, you know, then you feel good. Like you're doing something to further the cause of IVF and you're helping and you're giving a gift and you're giving back.

So that is kind of a very basic overview. And like I said, you can just go down rabbit trails at every stage, especially like with the exploitation of surrogates in other countries and just how badly they are treated.

That's a whole situation. And then the eugenics. Ah, that is what I forgot to mention, is that all of the embryos, when they're first created, they're tested and they're graded. And if they don't make the grade, they are discarded immediately.

And the parents probably wouldn't even be told about them. They would just be killed immediately. And so they're screening for any genetic issues, such as Down syndrome, anything like that. And they will just kill those embryos.

They do not want to implant imperfect embryos. And then if you know how, I mean, just within a normal pregnancy, sometimes a woman's egg can split and she'll get twins. That can happen as well. And if more than one embryo implants or if a splitting happens and there are multiples, then they will perform selective reduction, which is where they abort the undesired extra babies that are alive and growing in the woman.

So the whole process just has death from the beginning all the way through until the end. And once I realized all that goes on, it was very clear to me that IVF is immoral and that we can't support it if we believe life begins at conception,.

At fertilization, I should say. And before I move on to John with some theological thoughts, when you said that you were a member of a church where it was very common for couples to get involved with in vitro fertilization because they were having problems conceiving, did the elders know this?

Did the elders recognize that this was really very little different from abortion, that human life is being allowed to die, which is really the same thing as murder? And tell us more about that. Were these people ever educated about the truth later on and so on?

They've been educated now since my video, which has made my relationship very awkward with a lot of people. But I can't say for sure because I haven't talked to all of them about it. And I was a baby when this was happening.

But I think they probably did not understand all that comes from IVF. I think they just thought this is an amazing way to, quote, work with God to create a child. And even a lot of pro-lifers today and Christians today see IVF as a pro-life thing to do because you're creating life.

They don't understand that you're killing far, far, far more human beings than are being created. And so, no, I'm guessing they didn't fully understand it. And I have talked to some people from the church who were involved with counseling people to do IVF at the time.

And they see the inconsistency, I think, in what they're saying, but they will not say that they were wrong to do it. And I think that that is driven—they tell me, like, you didn't see the heartbreak of infertility for these people.

Like, you didn't see that and you haven't experienced it. And that is why all of this is okay, even though I think they truly do understand now and believe that it is wrong. They just haven't gotten to the point of actually admitting it yet.

Theological Reasons Christians Should Reject IVF

Okay. John, tell us about more of the theological implications about biblical ethics and morality surrounding this.

Sure. Well, like you heard in what Laura was talking about, it starts off with the sperm collection. I mean, you're, in a lot of cases, you're looking at porn in order to collect it. And so, even on a very baseline level, you know, obviously you're looking with lust and you're getting the sperm that way.

I've heard people try to justify that in various ways. They say, no, I didn't. I didn't do that. I didn't use porn. I didn't think lustful thoughts or whatever. I guess that's between them and God. But we all know what Jesus taught about looking with lust.

So how about the excuse? Have you ever heard the excuse? I was contemplating my own wife.

Sure. And maybe they were, I guess. But I doubt it. Honestly. I mean, just human flesh being what it is, human nature being what it is. I doubt it. But the biggest issue, as I think about it, is the fact that because of the enormous loss of human life throughout every stage of IVF, you're looking, since it's a scientific fact that human life starts at fertilization, the cells begin dividing at fertilization.

It's human. It's not some other sort of life. It's not a giraffe. And when you have life and it's human, it's human life. The embryology textbooks that these embryologists have to study in order to get their bachelor's degree to become embryologists all say that life starts at fertilization.

And we know it scripturally that that's the way it is. I know Jeremiah 1 .5 is speaking also about the sovereignty of God, but there is a very literal aspect to this. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

Before you're in the womb, you're in the fallopian tube as an embryo traveling down that fallopian tube waiting to attach to the wall of the uterus. And so human life begins at fertilization. And so what you have with IVF is you have couples that are willing to literally sacrifice their own children to get the genetically perfect child or children that they want.

And the numbers are very difficult to nail down specifically. But like Laura was saying, like 93 percent of these embryos will never see the light of day. You also see numbers like maybe 30 embryos to every one live birth.

And so I make the when I preach out in front of an IVF lab, I will say, imagine you've got a bus that pulls up here. You've got 30 children on the bus and you jump on that bus and you take a look at them.

You ask them questions to see how smart they are. Ask them what their parents do for a living, all that kind of stuff. And after you've done that, you pick one out, the one that you think is the smartest, the prettiest, most handsome, whatever.

And then you walk off the bus and you tell the bus driver, OK, you can do whatever you want with the other 29. And then he goes back there and just kills them all. I mean, that's in essence what you have going on with IVF and the amount of human lives that are created to get the one or how many ever you want.

And so it is child sacrifice on a level that actually makes abortion pale in comparison a bit. When someone goes to an abortion clinic, they're there to kill one or maybe several, two or three, babies that are in their womb, but not 30.