The Church Is Not Against Science

Use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Russia has increased in the country’s public and private healthcare sectors since the fall of the Soviet Union and is now funded by the Russian state in an effort to boost population growth. At the same time, clerics in the Russian Orthodox Church have raised questions about the utilization of IVF via pronouncements in both Church-affiliated and mainstream news sources online. This article examines the framing of IVF by Russian Orthodox clerics in Orthodox news portals and Russian newspaper websites. In doing so, this study shows that frames highlighting problems such as medical and economic issues surrounding IVF outpaced arguments based in religion or calls for state action, and that the technological complexity of IVF has led to more nuanced discussions of the extent to which the procedure is permissible by the Church than in debates of other morality policy issues such as abortion