Sperm Banks and the Iranian Market

In Iran, the sperm trade is both unregulated and controversial. The price tag for sperm or a fertilized female egg starts from $1000. Some say it can go higher than $30,000. On one side of the deal there is a woman or a man who has decided that instead of selling a kidney, he or she can make money by helping other couples to have children. On the other side are couples hoping to start a families.

The Tasnim News Agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, recently put the question of buying and selling sperm, and the insemination of a woman with the sperm of somebody who is not her husband, to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei replied that such insemination by itself is not problematic, but that the resulting child “does not belong to the husband of the woman in question, but to the owners of the sperm and the egg.”

Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a leading Shia cleric in Iraq, says that insemination of a woman with the sperm of any man other than her husband “is definitely not allowed” unless the insemination is done in vitro, or outside the woman’s womb. He also believes that the child belongs to the sperm donor, and not to the woman’s husband.

Divorce, Marry, Divorce, Remarry

The hardline Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi has also addressed the question. He says that insemination by a strange man “is banned by sharia and the resulting child is illegitimate.” But he suggests another way to use fertile sperm. “The only way to use the sperm of a strange man is for the husband to temporarily divorce his wife,” he says. “The woman enters into a temporary marriage with the said man, even if they do not meet in person. Then the sperm from the man is taken and is combined with the woman’s egg.  After the claim to the remaining time in the temporary marriage is relinquished [by the sperm donor] and the permanent wedding with the former husband is renewed, the fertilized egg is planted in her womb.” According to Shirazi, the child from this fertilization can only inherit from the woman and the sperm donor, not the woman’s husband.

Hassan Yousefi Ashkevari, a religious scholar, tells IranWire that Islamic jurists fall into contradictions because they lack specialized knowledge of the subject. He poses a question to such jurists: “When the sperm of the donor is transferred to the womb or the egg of a woman, it is a transaction like the selling of any other property, regardless of whether the seller has received money or has contributed it as a gift. How can the result of a transaction be considered the child of the seller with all the legal and religious consequences of a father-child relationship?”

Ashkevari says that in such matters, the customs or the legal system of a society should decide the moral and legal consequences and that religious jurists by definition cannot resolve them. “It seems logical to say that the child belongs to the woman, meaning the mother and that if she is married and the husband agrees with this action, the child must be considered theirs, exactly like a natural-born child in a marriage,” he says. “The sperm in itself does not bestow any rights on its owners. Rights belong to human beings who are involved in the process of gestation, giving birth, education and the upbringing of the child. The consequences are decided within the framework of the laws and customs of the society. There are no eternal and inviolable rules, and there never will be.”

The Non-Conformist View

Mohsen Kadivar is a non-conformist religious authority. He told IranWire that donating, selling and buying sperm and eggs is not against sharia, and if both husband and wife consent, the resulting child is legitimate. When the husband is infertile and the couple agrees with the artificial insemination by using the sperm of another man, he says, the child “is only genetically the child of the donor but by law and by sharia it should be considered the child of the couple.” Therefore, there is a kinship and an “inheritance relationship” between them. The child would not inherit from the sperm donor, and the sperm donor would not inherit from the child.

“As a result of progress made in medicine,” Kadivar says, “the child resulting from insemination using the sperm of a man who is not the woman’s husband is a brand new issue, different from artificial insemination when the sperm donor is the husband. In the latter case, the rules about birth, genealogy, kinship and inheritance are straightforward. But this is not the case when the genetic parentage is different from birth parentage.”

He explains that when a woman is infertile, two situations can arise. “The first is that the woman’s egg is healthy but the woman’s womb cannot hold the fetus, and the embryo is planted in the rented womb of another woman without intercourse, and that woman carries and gives birth to the child,” he says. “By law and by sharia, the child belongs to the egg’s owner. The child is kin to the other woman, the owner of the womb, although they do not have an inheritance relationship. The second case is when the wife’s egg cannot be fertilized and, with the consent of the couple, another woman’s egg is fertilized by the man’s sperm without intercourse, and the other woman carries the fetus to term and gives birth to the child. In this case, the woman who possesses the egg and the womb is the genetic mother, but according to their official contract, the infertile wife is the mother of the child and an inheritance relationship exists between them. The genetic mother is first-degree kin, but there is no inheritance relationship between them.”

The Modern Moral View

Putting the law, sharia and inheritance aside, how should the question be viewed morally? Arash Naraghi, a professor of moral philosophy, believes that in its essence the issue is rooted in a traditional view of the parent-child relationship that considers the relationship only a biological one. In other words, a blood relationship decides the answer. He believes that in our times another understanding is replacing the traditional one, and this understanding is based on “carrying out parental duties” and “unconditional emotional support of children by parents.”

He argues that if a biological father does not carry out his parental duties and deprives his child of his love, he must lose the title of “father,” even in the legal sense. According to this new understanding, the real father is not the biological one, but the man who carries out his parental duties and gives the child unconditional parental love.

Naraghi believes that the fatwas by these religious authorities regarding the rights of the “real father,” as opposed to the biological father or the sperm donor, are “unquestionably morally wrong and unacceptable.”

It is clear that, as medical advances continue in the field of fertility, and as couples and individuals are increasingly presented with new opportunities for parenthood, societies around the world will have to continue reassess the moral and sociological issues that emerge as a result — and Islamic governments and scholars will be no exception.