The unintended consequences of fertility treatment breakthroughs
From Matters of Life and Death by Premier Unbelievable?
June 3, 2026 · 60 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of advances in fertility treatments and their impact on society and ethics.
Following on from our recent episode about making IVF more ‘ethical’, we zoom out a bit in this conversation to think about other questions presented by the huge advances made by reproductive science and medicine in the last 50 years. Has the way IVF breaks down procreation to its respective elements created in our culture a “Lego kit” approach to our humanity, believing it is endlessly remixable through dozens of permutations? How has access to this technology also affected our social understanding parenthood and required the law to change? What is lost when we move reproduction away from the intimacy of sex between husband and wife and into the lab? And how on earth are Christian couples struggling to conceive to navigate all this theological and ethical complexity? • You can send in your questions for us to discuss on the podcast, or ideas for future episodes, to molad@premier.org.uk • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • Find some of Tim's journalism and sign up for free to his weekly church news newsletter The Critical…
Topics covered
- fertility treatment
- IVF
- reproductive science
- parenthood
- ethical complexity
- Christian couples
Keywords
- fertility
- IVF
- reproductive technology
- parenthood
- ethical issues
- Christianity
- intimacy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Matters of Life and Death, Premier Unbelievable?
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