Religion and Medical Issues: Explain Christian attitudes and the attitudes of Islam, to these treatments to help infertile couple have children. The responses to these treatments such as IVF, AID, AIH, Surrogacy, Fertility drugs and a few more have a varied response between different types of Christians and different types of Muslims. Some are for it, others against it, and others are only for certain types of infertility treatments.
There are no specific teachings in the Bible about infertility treatments, however the Bible was written before knowledge of medical science. Back then people believed if they couldn’t bare children that God would have intended it to be that way. People who couldn’t conceive children might have felt cursed by God because they may feel he didn’t want them to have children. “Hannah had no children, because the Lord had kept her from having children”
“Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple are gravely immoral” Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994 However today there are very different Christian teachings about infertility. Only a few Christians will say that infertility is the will of God these being fundamentalist Christians who take the Bible literally. They are two total different viewpoints on this subject.
All Christian churches except Roman Catholic church, accept that infertility is fine as long as its in the form of IVF and AIH which is using the wife’s egg and the husbands sperm. Some Christians believe that this is just helping nature along with its course and that God gave us the knowledge to use science to benefit mankind. Part of the purpose of marriage is procreation and they believe people who desperately want children should be provided with the pleasure and the joy of them. They also say that the embryos that are discarded are not yet human beings or even foetuses so they aren’t destroying anything. God is a God of love so anything to help those should be pursued.
However the Roman Catholic attitude is extremely different, it bans any form of embryo technology and is also strongly against IVF, AID and AIH. The Catholic Church believes that its unnatural and that we are playing God. They say every child has the right to know the identity of their parents and be brought up by them. Any scientific conception-taking place without sexual intercourse is condemned.
They believe any sexual act should be open to the creation of a new life, and that the child may not be the result of a loving relationship by using infertility treatments. There may psychological problems for the child with them wanting to know who was the sperm donor, egg donor or Surrogact mother was perhaps. Also they say designer babies could result from this and do we have any right to choose what our child’s looks, or personality are? Catholics say there are other ways to care for children e.g. Adopt, or go into children homes to look after them. They say this is the way God designed and planned it.
Islam believes that the purpose of marriage is procreation and if this can not happen naturally then there isn’t any problem with being helped along with it by using the forms of IVF or AIH. However Muslims see little difference between AID and committing adultery which is strictly forbidden in the Qur’an. Surrogacy is also forbidden because the Qu’ran also teaches that nobody can be a mother to a child except the women who carried it. Muslim men are also allowed to have up to four wives, (however this is not allowed in this country) which makes surrogacy unnecessary because another wife could bare the children for him.