Dr. John Gordon spent 30 years helping people become parents, but by 2018 the reproductive endocrinologist had grown deeply disturbed by the moral consequences of his work. The fate of surplus embryos — millions of them frozen in storage or discarded — and the expanding use of genetic testing to screen for traits as diverse as sex and hearing loss troubled him. “It’s too morally problematic,” Gordon recalled. “I don’t know where you draw the line.” Then his wife, Allison, confronted him with a stark judgment: their comfortable life now seemed bought by “ill-gotten gains.” That year Gordon bought a fertility practice in Knoxville, Tennessee, and restructured it around his Christian conviction that embryos are sacred and not to be thrown away. He named it Rejoice Fertility.
The clinic’s policies are designed to prevent the creation of embryos that might later be destroyed. Rejoice does not discard viable embryos, does not donate them to science, and does not conduct genetic testing for non-lethal conditions or sex selection. Gordon tailors treatments around each patient’s ideal family size, often prescribing lower doses of fertility medication to produce fewer eggs, and counsels patients to fertilize only a small number. A cycle at Rejoice typically costs between $8,000 and $10,000. “I need to practice in a way that I can live with the decisions I’m making,” Gordon said.
For many patients, those terms resonate. Maggie and Cade Lichfield, Latter-day Saints who had three failed embryo transfers before coming to Rejoice, appreciated the restrictions. “You’re still letting God be God,” Maggie Lichfield said. “He is in control.” Domenic and Olivia D’Agostino had nearly abandoned hope of IVF on religious grounds until they discovered a clinic that refused to discard embryos. “In my eyes there’s not much difference between discarding an embryo and abortion,” Domenic D’Agostino said. The couple also valued Gordon’s practice of praying with them before each transfer. “He focused in on the sovereignty of God in it and submitting to God’s will in this process,” Domenic D’Agostino said.
Gordon’s own faith journey was circuitous. Raised Jewish in a family of doctors, he attended Princeton, Duke medical school, and a Stanford residency. He married Allison, a Christian, in an interfaith ceremony, and for years they maintained a dual-religion household. A turning point came when their oldest son, in third grade, was hospitalized with a life-threatening illness. “I got down on my knees, and I said, ‘OK, you’ve got my attention, Lord,’” Gordon recalled. After their son recovered, the couple joined a Presbyterian church, and Gordon was baptized in 2000. Today they belong to the conservative evangelical Presbyterian Church in America, and the elders of their congregation support Rejoice’s mission.
The clinic has built an embryo adoption program called Rejoice Embryo Rescue, which Gordon describes as an “orphanage.” It accepts donated embryos in almost any condition and works with mostly Christian agencies to match them with families. Sarah Coe Atkinson, Rejoice’s senior embryologist, said, “I don’t necessarily believe in everything he believes in, but I believe in what we’re doing in terms of helping these embryos become lives.” The lab’s most dramatic success came in 2025, when a child was born from an embryo that had been frozen for nearly 31 years, believed to be a world record. Atkinson likes to say, “Sometimes the ugliest embryos make the prettiest babies.”
The broader national debate has moved in sharply divergent directions. Medical experts estimate about 1.5 million frozen embryos are stored in the United States. The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant body, voted in 2024 to call for IVF restrictions when it destroys “embryonic human life.” President Donald Trump has taken steps to expand access to the procedure, while the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling equating embryos to children has injected legal uncertainty. Matthew Lee Anderson, a Christian ethicist at Baylor who opposes IVF, said Gordon “is moving in the right trajectory. It’s impressive that he’s taken the steps that he has to change how he is doing business, and I hope for more.”
Not everyone is satisfied. Some anti-abortion Christians contend that any form of IVF is unethical, and Gordon’s approach still involves creating embryos outside the body. Emily Martin, a Knoxville woman who stored several embryos at another clinic before finding Rejoice, said, “I would wake up in the middle of the night just like, ‘Oh, what have we done?’ And just this heaviness. That portion is something that’s not being talked about enough.” Gordon himself has endured legal disputes with the physician from whom he bought the clinic, but he does not regret the upheaval. He plans to bring on additional doctors.
As the morning sun slanted through the clinic windows one Sunday, Atkinson prepared a frozen embryo for transfer. The cells plumped with rehydration in a culture dish. There, in the lab, was a chance at life — and at Rejoice — a prayer. Four weeks later, the patient was pregnant.