From the New York Times I'm Sabrina Tavernizi and this is the Daily.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country,

voted at its annual gathering last week to condemn IVF fertility treatments.

Today, my colleague, Ruth Graham, on the story behind the vote.

The Republicans scramble it prompted,

and what it could eventually mean for the rest of the country.

It's Monday, June 17th.

So Ruth, you write about religion for the times and you were covering the big

annual meeting of Southern Baptists last week and they made a pretty big decision.

Tell us about it.

The Southern Baptist Convention, it's the biggest Protestant

denomination in the United States.

They have almost 13 million members, more than 45,000 churches. It's a huge group and Southern

Baptists know their political power and they are basically a barometer of

of evangelical sentiment in the US, you know, what they say kind of indicates what the typical evangelical cares about in any given moment.

And fun for reporters, they all meet once a year in this giant gathering that any church can send delegates to.

The delegates are called messengers.

So this year that meeting was in Indianapolis.

There were almost 11,000 messengers there in the convention center.

And one of the important political topics they took on this year

was something they have never discussed as a full body before,

and that's the ethics of in vitro fertilization.

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