Compare Traditions on One Technology
Choose a technology and read the traditions' recorded stances side by side — each with its rationale in its own terms. The comparison is the section's method in one view: the differences are in the reasons.
In vitro fertilization
One procedure, five reasoned answers: refused by Rome on the inseparability of procreation and the conjugal act, permitted within marriage by Al-Azhar and by Jewish responsa, divided inside evangelicalism along the embryo line. The full register entry
Catholic
Condemned
Donum vitae (1987) refuses IVF even between spouses, on two grounds: the embryo is a person to be protected from conception, and procreation is inseparable from the conjugal act — a child is to be begotten, not manufactured. The Church simultaneously funds research into treating infertility by other means and receives IVF children, of course, without distinction.
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum vitae (1987)
Evangelical
Contested within the tradition
No central evangelical authority exists: the Southern Baptist Convention moved from early acceptance to increasing reservation, many evangelical ethicists permit IVF within marriage while opposing the destruction of surplus embryos, and practice in evangelical congregations is widespread. Positions track the embryo’s status more than the technique.
- Southern Baptist Convention resolutions on reproductive technology (1980s–2000s)
Islamic
Regulated
IVF within marriage using the spouses’ own gametes is permitted by the major fatwa councils (Al-Azhar’s line since 1980); third-party gametes are refused by Sunni authorities as a confusion of lineage (nasab), while Shia jurisprudence in Iran permits donation under conditions — a clean Sunni–Shia divergence on one technology.
- Al-Azhar fatwa on artificial insemination (1980)
- Marcia C. Inhorn, The New Arab Man and related ethnographies of Iran’s clinics
Jewish
Regulated
The commandment to be fruitful, the duty to heal, and the tradition’s valuing of children make IVF broadly permitted in mainstream responsa, including many Orthodox rulings (using the couple’s own gametes); donor gametes divide the authorities on questions of lineage and adultery-by-proxy, and the argument continues in print.
- Fred Rosner, Modern Medicine and Jewish Ethics (1986)