The President enthusiastically promoted in vitro fertilization during his campaign and early in his second term. However, the administration’s policy, unveiled in late October, was rightly described by Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, as “perhaps the least bad that we could have hoped for.” He then added, “[B]ut least bad is still bad.”
In a follow-up to an earlier executive order, the President announced a plan to dramatically reduce the cost of IVF, provide insurance coverage for fertility treatments, including IVF, and increase access to IVF. According to the President, “You can’t get more pro-life than this.”
But IVF is not pro-life. In fact, it is not even pro-fertility. While born children do result from IVF, the way it is most often practiced results in far more lives being lost than those that survive. As Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins posted on X in response to the announcement: “The IVF Industry kills more preborn babies than the abortion industry, doesn’t cure infertility, and practices eugenics.”
Also in October, in the wee hours of Halloween morning, the Illinois State Senate passed a bill to legalize assisted suicide, adding the lethal practice to an unrelated measure on food sanitation. It was signed into law by Illinois Governor Pritzker earlier this month. The decision makes the land of Lincoln the twelfth state to legalize euthanasia. The law will allow patients with six months or less to live to be granted access to life-ending medicine, if determined by a physician and a mental health professional to be “of sound mind” after a series of oral and written requests with witnesses attesting.
Doctors would also be required to explain other end-of-life care options such as hospice. If prescribed a life-ending drug, patients would administer it themselves. Health care providers would not be required to participate.
Assisted suicide is the best example of a cultural slippery slope there is. Any “safeguards” inevitably fail, and patients are always left susceptible to cultural and financial pressures. For example, in 2016, Colorado voters approved the End-of-life Options Act. Last year, the governor signed legislation to also allow some registered nurses to prescribe the lethal drugs and to reduce the waiting period from 15 to seven days. A pending lawsuit would eliminate other restrictions, such as preventing out-of-state residents from receiving drugs for assisted suicide. If this lawsuit is successful, Colorado would become a “suicide tourism” destination, allowing individuals anywhere in the United States to “shop for death.” Colorado doctors already prescribe lethal doses to patients with severe eating disorders.
The major bright spot on the life front in 2025 came from the Supreme Court, which ruled that states can defund Planned Parenthood. As a result, more than 20 states now exclude abortion groups from Medicaid dollars.
Three cases with implications for life are currently on the High Court docket, including allowing states to require their doctors to tell women that chemical abortion can be reversed. They will also consider the forced coverage of elective abortions in insurance plans. Perhaps the most significant case is First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin, which will address whether crisis pregnancy centers can fight state harassment, specifically in how they advertise their services.
Even as the Court has taken steps to defend its most vulnerable citizens, the wider American culture continues to embrace and advance a dangerous view about human dignity and value. This view, centered around false notions of autonomy and sexual freedom, has left the most vulnerable among us even more so.
Thus, even as we applaud any laws that protect vulnerable lives, we must also pray for God to intervene on their behalf. But we also must act. As theologian Stanley Hauerwas has said, “In a hundred years, if Christians are people identified as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we will have been doing something right.”
In short, Christians must love and serve those who are the most vulnerable among us. We must seek to persuade as many as we can that every person is made in the image and likeness of God. We must live differently from the world around us.
Originally published at BreakPoint.
John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center, equipping Christians to live with clarity, confidence, and courage in today’s cultural moment. A sought-after speaker and author on faith, culture, theology, worldview, education, and apologetics, he has co-authored five books, including A Practical Guide to Culture, A Student’s Guide to Culture, and Restoring All Things. John hosts Breakpoint, the nationally syndicated commentary founded by Chuck Colson, and The Point, a daily one-minute feature on worldview and cultural issues. Previously, he held leadership roles at Summit Ministries and taught biblical studies at Bryan College (TN). He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, Sarah, and their four children.
