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Exploring Religious Aspects of Infertility Treatments

ART can be provoking, insightful, challenging, sometimes scary, often exciting and always powerful.  Many religions have specific views on IVF, surrogacy, and egg or sperm donations creating a multitude of decisions and obstacles for individuals looking to create a family.

In the Catholic religion children must be a product of a physical union between the husband and wife and must be conceived through an act of love and sexual intercourse.   Thus, a child should not be created with the help of a physician.  Gamete intra-fallopian, (GIFT) transfer is allowed since both the egg and sperm are placed in the women’s fallopian tubes meaning conception technically still takes place within the woman’s body.  While GIFT is an option that is acceptable within the laws of the Catholic religion many infertility clinics are ruling out its use due to its success rate of 20% compared to other treatment options yielding success rates near 60%.  Since life begins at conception and it is the sole union of two married heterosexual people, Catholicism has no tolerance for egg donors, surrogacy or donor sperm.

The Jewish law, on the other hand, seems to be very supportive of ART based on the biblical statement “be fruitful and multiply”.  While Judaism is tolerant of basically any type of treatment that helps build a family the belief that children are an extension of parents’ being can cause some religious complications within the three Jewish sects. In Reform Judaism the offspring’s Jewishness is determined more by upbringing and commitment then by birth.  However, the more extreme Judaic sect, Orthodox Jews believe that the birth mother is the sole determinant of the child’s religious status.  Therefore, if an individual is Jewish and in need of a surrogate, this candidate must be Jewish in order for the child to recognized as Jewish without the need for a conversion. The Conservative sect seems to be split on the issue with many saying it is solely a genetic gift and others believing it is the combination of a genetic gift and the nurturing from the mother during fetal development.  In practice, Rabbi’s agree that when in doubt perform a conversion so the child is deemed Jewish.

Christianity’s assertion that life begins at conception raises many questions about in vitro fertilization procedures.  Advancements in ART have enabled embryologists to harvest as many as 20-30 eggs in order to maximize a couples chance for success.  This combined with advancements in embryo and egg freezing techniques have allowed infertile patients the opportunity to freeze extra embryos indefinitely.   The moral issue arises when the patient has successfully reached their family goal but they still have frozen embryos that are no longer needed.  Since Christians believe that life begins at conception and God is the one who makes life possible they struggle with the notion of discarding the extra embryos.  There are several moral implications with the IVF and surrogacy process leaving Christians trying to balance their faith with hope and caution.