The year is 1978 and 73,885,218 people are born.1 Is one more special than the others? If you were to ask the parents of each newborn, they would say that theirs is the most special. However, there really is one that stands out above the rest and the world knew her name: Louise Joy Brown.
Louise was born at Oldham General Hospital, Lancashire, England. Her doctor, John Webster, delivered the healthy, 5 pound, 12 ounce little girl and handed her over to her parents, Lesley and John Brown. What makes Louise so special?
She is the world’s first test tube baby, otherwise known as in vitro fertilization.
Dad and mom had tried to conceive naturally for nine years. Lesley’s blocked fallopian tubes made this impossible. “In November 1977, she underwent the then-experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was removed from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with her husband’s sperm to form an embryo. The embryo then was implanted into her uterus”2 two days later. Lesley carried the baby to term, and Louise was born by a planned Caesarean.
A team of geneticists, embryologists, and physiologists had been working on IVF for quite a while, experimenting with the possibilities. It wasn’t until the Browns sought help for their seeming infertility that the team of specialists introduced them to this method. The doctors, though, didn’t tell the Browns that this had never been accomplished, raising ethical questions concerning informed consent and experimentation. The moment the birth was successful, the Browns became an instant media sensation. The doctors, of course, took their bows and a treatment for infertility became viable for others.
Two major thoughts jumped at me as I read the article. First, why are these doctors taking credit for
this? God is the one who created the biology and God is the one who made that little life. The Browns could have experienced defeat just like every other test subject the doctors used. Only God creates life and Lesley got to carry that life within her for nine months.
That brings about the second thought. The year 1978 is five years after the infamous Roe v. Wade decision. Pro-abortion advocates argue that what was created in the petri dish (not a test tube) and implanted in Lesley’s womb isn’t life – and still want to foolishly argue this today. The British doctors knew otherwise. If this wasn’t a life, if the sperm had not fertilized the egg, it wouldn’t have been implanted in Lesley. There would have been no expectation of development. But, because fertilization had taken place, this is considered a LIFE and was implanted in Lesley’s womb.
Isn’t it fun to watch the wisdom of the world crumble before your eyes?!?
Before I close out with the Scripture for today, in 2004, Louise married and in 2006 she gave birth to her first child, a son, in December 2006. Now, let your heart and mind soak in the truths of these familiar verses.
“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. (14) I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (15) My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. (16) Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. (17) How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! (18) If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.” (Psalms 139:13-18)
1https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
2https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/worlds-first-test-tube-baby-born
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