What happened
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., voted Wednesday to approve a resolution opposing the use of in vitro fertilization. Unexpectedly, the delegates at the annual conference also narrowly rejected a proposal to enshrine a ban on Southern Baptist churches that allow women to serve as pastors; the amendment needed 66% but got only 61%.

Who said what
The nonbinding IVF resolution urges Southern Baptists to "reaffirm the unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage," and suggests shunning IVF as not "consistent with that affirmation" because extra embryos are often discarded.

Most white evangelicals, "even those who oppose abortion," support "IVF and how it has allowed countless Americans to start families," The Tennessean said. But the Southern Baptist meetings are "closely watched as a barometer of evangelical sentiment," The New York Times said, and Wednesday's vote suggests IVF "may be the next front for the anti-abortion movement."

What next?
Future resolutions against IVF will use "much stronger language," but "Southern Baptists aren't ready to speak to that yet," SBC resolutions chair Kristen Ferguson said.

What happened
The remains of 64 Mayans believed to have been ritually sacrificed in the ancient city Chichén Itzá between 500 and 1000 A.D. were local boys, mostly age 3 to 6 and many of them closely related, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. There were two sets of twins.

Who said what
The remains were accidentally discovered in a chultún, or cistern, near Chichén Itzá in 1967. DNA analysis began in 2015, and "we kept rerunning the tests because we couldn't believe that all of them were male," said study lead author Rodrigo Barquera at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The findings "obviously flew in the face of the argument that it was mostly young virgin women being thrown into the cenote," an idea first popularized by early archeologists, Northern Arizona University archaeologist Jamie Awe told The New York Times. But while "only male children were selected for sacrifice" here, rituals varied.

What next?
Ancient DNA degrades faster in tropical areas, but "we're getting better and better at retrieving even very small amounts of DNA" and analyzing it to understand "this incredibly rich history" in Mesoamerica, said Harvard's Christina Warinner, a study coauthor.