Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Surrogacy is considered as one of the selective methods for infertile women especially those who don't have womb. As this method is controversial and the sides should be analyzed both ethically and legally, the purpose of this study is to scrutinize the attitude of infertile women who visit Hazrat Masoumeh Infertility Centre in Qom for surrogacy.
This cross-sectional study  conducted on  300 infertile women. The information were gathered from a two part questionnaire which in one part there was personal information and the other part was for phrases related to attitudes. The earned data were analyzed by descriptive test analysis and P<0.05 was considered significant.
The results showed that 61.3% of infertile women were in favor of surrogacy and 38.7% were against it. The highest priority in terms of attitude was the fear of an emotional relationship between the surrogate mother and the baby, and also the problems of delivering the baby from surrogate mother to the applicant couple. There was a logical statistical relation between the infertile women's attitude  and age, educational level of the woman, educational level, the educational level of infertile women's partners, years of infertility and income of the bread winner( P<0.05).
As the attitude of vast majority of the study samples  was positive and as it is important to know about opinions and preferences of families to make this action lawful, wider investigations in this field in more variable groups is recommended.

For some infertile couples, egg donation is the only option. In egg sharing programs, patients share half of their eggs with another couple in exchange for a discount on assisted reproductive technology. In many countries, using this method is legally discussed. Iran is the only Islamic country in which donation programs are practiced, so, we designed this study to compare egg sharing to ordinary egg donation from ethical, legal, and religious aspects.A complete review of ethical issues and debates about egg donation and sharing was done. For religious issues, we consulted clergies, Islamic texts, and current decrees (fatwas). Social issues and legal problems were examined by consulting expert opinion and jurists. Also a complete review of literature was done. Egg donation and egg sharing are both religiously accepted in Iran by the Shiite clergies as they are considered completely similar. Egg sharing has some religious (seeing and touching the female genitalia) and social (preventing repetitive donation) advantages to egg donation as well as avoiding complications of fertility drugs and procedures, financial and trading issues, advertisement and brokers. However, there are some disadvantages with egg sharing, such as reduced likelihood of conception by donating half of the eggs, challenges related to donor health, and emotional stress of failure for the donor and success for the recipient, which can be prevented by careful case selection, psychology and genetics consultation, and  practicing anonymity. As a result, egg sharing is ethically and religiously more acceptable than commercial egg donation.   

Rapid development in assisted reproductive techniques has brought hope to many childless couples, while it has created new social, ethical and legal dilemmas. Stored frozen gametes and embryos have led to situations where the surviving spouse wants to create offspring after the person's death. Also, the possibility of sperm retrieval even after 36 hours of death, and getting oocytes from aborted fetus or brain dead people has brought a new term: "posthumous assisted reproduction". Posthumous assisted reproduction is the most challenging, difficult, and sensitive issue to be discussed ethically and religiously. In this paper, the acceptability of the posthumous reproduction in Islamic context was evaluated. In Islamic societies where infertility is viewed as a problem of families, posthumous assisted reproduction seems unacceptable. Major concerns such as consent and ownership of the gametes after death, family, marriage and welfare of the child are discussed together with some legal issues. Based on infertility as a disease of family, posthumous assisted reproduction is unacceptable even with previously frozen gametes or embryos. Also, Islamic vision to marriage, consent and welfare of the child confirms the unacceptability. There must be law or guideline to ban this procedure in Islamic contexts.