Father of a child born via IVF warns AGAINST it: Technology put ‘in EVIL people’s hands’
Granger Smith’s life was forever changed when one tragic day, his son River was lost in a drowning accident.
Devastated, the country music singer stepped out of the spotlight after 25 years and took on a new pursuit: getting closer to Jesus and joining the ministry. While strengthening his relationship with God was healing, Smith and his wife, Amber, were now lacking their son's bright light in their lives — and wanted another child.
However, Amber had her tubes tied after giving birth to River.
“I look back on that now as if we just had an idea of when our family would start or finish,” Smith tells Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable.” “I am against surgical contraception in that way because it put us in a really tough spot.”
That’s when he began to discuss IVF with his wife.
“She really struggled. She said, ‘But how could we reconcile playing God and planting a baby in my belly?’” Smith explains. However, a conversation with his son Lincoln gave him what he believed to be the answer.
“He was just staring out of the window and he just said something out of the blue. He said, ‘Daddy, does God make some of the trees and man makes some of the trees?' And I answered quickly without thinking about it, and I said, ‘No, buddy, God makes all the trees but sometimes man needs to plant the seed.’”
“I remember feeling overwhelmed with that thought, God makes all the babies, sometimes man plants the seed. And I felt a peace in that,” he tells Stuckey.
Smith and his wife began the IVF process — and despite running into ethical problems over what to do with the embryos — Amber became pregnant with their now 3-year-old son, Maverick.
While they love and cherish their son, Smith was horrified at what he saw coming out of the clinic they used after Maverick’s birth, calling it “rotten fruit” — and he tells Stuckey that he wouldn’t do it over because of this.
“What they’re promoting through IVF was so that anybody could have a baby. Not a man and a woman, not a married man and woman. And that wasn’t just that clinic,” Smith says. “There is so much evil surrounding it, evil coming out of it. The ability to put this kind of technology in evil people’s hands is too much to bear.”
Stuckey is in agreement.
“There’s so many Christian parents, who would and do make excellent parents, who do not realize before they go into IVF the ethical quandary that they will be placed in,” she says, adding, “It’s not coming from a place of hatred or condemnation for me. It’s just a place of realization that these are babies made in the image of God.”