The Catholic Church permits the use of a small number of reproductive technologies and pregnancy postponement methods like natural family planning, which involves charting ovulation times.
[2] Pope Benedict XVI publicly reemphasized the Catholic Church's opposition to in vitro fertilization, claiming it separates the unitive procreative actions that characterize the sexual embrace.
And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called.
[5]According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable.
Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord's Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity.
[11]The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints policy states: Hinduism is generally tolerant of assisted reproductive technology with several people in Hindu mythology who have been born without intercourse including Karna and Five Pandavas.
[14] Nonetheless, Hindu women do not commonly use surrogacy as an option to treat infertility, despite often serving as surrogates for Western commissioning couples.
[16] In vitro fertilization and similar technologies are permissible as long as they do not involve any form of third-party donation (of sperm, eggs, embryos, or uteruses).
Non-legal sources such as medrash and aggadah provide stories that have been used to draw conclusions regarding assisted reproductive technology by modern Jewish legal decisors.
For a baby conceived naturally, the father's identity is determined by a legal presumption (chazakah) of legitimacy: rov bi'ot achar ha'baal - a woman's sexual relations are assumed to be with her husband.
Regarding an in vitro fertilization child, this assumption does not exist and as such Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg (among others) requires an outside supervisor to positively identify the father.
[19] Doctors or laboratory workers present at the time of the fertility treatment are not considered supervisors due to a conflict of interest and their pre-occupation with their work.
The official halachic legal authority for American Conservative Judaism is the Rabbinical Assembly's[permanent dead link] Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.
Artificial insemination: AI is not typically allowed because it calls into question a variety of Jewish Laws regarding incest, adultery, and lineage.
[23][24] The Conservative movement's position on "family purity" practices, reducing the amount of time after a woman's period during which she is prohibited to have sex, may also work as a pro-fertility measure.
As part of its treatment of Tohorat HaMishpahah, the Conservative Assembly in 2006 accepted a position of eliminating the requirement for seven white days after the cessation of menses and establishing this as an optional custom.