KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Dr. John Gordon was co-director of a large fertility clinic when he began to question the moral assumptions of his profession, he said. Troubled by the creation of surplus embryos that often languish in storage or are discarded, and by the expansion of genetic testing to screen for non-lethal traits like hearing loss, Gordon relocated from suburban Washington, D.C., to Knoxville in 2019. There he founded Rejoice Fertility, a clinic that operates according to his evolving faith-based convictions.
“What are children?” Gordon asked. “I mean, are they a gift from the Lord or are they just a product where you’re trying to manufacture the best product you can?”
“I need to practice in a way that I can live with the decisions I’m making,” he said.
The clinic refuses to discard viable embryos, perform genetic testing, or donate embryos to science. Instead, Gordon asks patients their ideal family size and tailors treatment around that goal, often using minimal stimulation IVF — which uses less medication and yields fewer eggs — or natural cycle IVF, in which doctors retrieve a single egg produced during a woman’s regular monthly cycle. Although other clinics offer these methods, Rejoice is unusual in prioritizing them, and its patients largely want to create fewer embryos because of their beliefs, Gordon said.
If patients do not use all their embryos, Rejoice asks them to place the embryos for adoption. The clinic recently launched Rejoice Embryo Rescue, which Gordon calls an “orphanage” that stores donated embryos and works with agencies, most of them Christian, to coordinate embryo adoptions.
IVF treatments at Rejoice typically cost between $8,000 and $10,000 per cycle, a significant expense if patients exhaust their limited embryos and require another round.
Gordon belongs to the Presbyterian Church in America, an evangelical Reformed denomination, and his local church has supported Rejoice’s mission. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, called for restrictions on IVF in 2024 when it “destroys embryonic human life,” and the Catholic Church has long opposed the practice. At the same time, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine reported that more than 100,000 U.S. babies were born through IVF in 2024, the most recorded in a single year, and medical experts estimate about 1.5 million frozen embryos are stored nationwide. President Donald Trump has taken steps to expand IVF access, further sharpening the divide over the technology.