Is Artificial Insemination Adulterous?

[TheDag]

TheDag, when asked "what would Jesus do?" you reply confidently doubting the Gospel message, Acts, and Cor 12... And you boast that instead Jesus provides through AI. You doubt and you trust somehow.

I haven't ignored anything. As I said I disagree with your interpretation of various passages and words. That is not ignoring. Saying that God provides through AI is not quite correct. I would say it is ONE OF the ways God provides. What is interesting is your broad ranging definition of some words but you use very narrow definitions for other words and there is no reasoning in your posts for doing so other than to make things fit. When you say the character of the father should be known you will find that many would interpret that as the husband not the donor. What it comes down to is your interpretation is different to mine.

 

[revrobor]

Faulty logic here actually. Go look at thw word gay in a dictionary http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gay Once upon a time you would never have found definition #5 listed under the word gay. The meaning of words change and therefore our understanding of adultery now could be different from what was understood to be adultery in biblical times. That was a point someone made earlier in this thread. I'm not sure I agree with them but it is still true definitions change so simply looking in a dictionary does not help.

The meaning of the word "gay" has changed. The meaning of "adultry" has not.

 

[revrobor]

Hi TC2,
Congrats on you guys seccessfully getting a child. I'm totally with you in what you two did. Praise God. I pray your child grows up to love Jesus as you do.

dayhiker

I agree with dayhiker. Don't let anyone ever tell you it's adultrous. God bless you both.

 

[GoldenKingGaze]

I don't want to judge people...

I pray for you and your young child, to know God's hand guiding you, providing, and your many guardian angels, refreshed in the Holy Spirit, light and love, living water, fire, bringing blessings, and edification, overcoming your enemies in the faith, and holding you guys, ministering God's thoughts to you. Bringing the salt and light of the Gospel your way. In Jesus name, amen.

 

[Katryna]

Hi there,

I'm new to the forum, but I had to jump in on this thread because I dealt with infertility for eight years in order to conceive two babies. The first one came after three years using pills and timing; the second one not so easy --- some pretty severe-but-potent injected medication and in order to make sure the timing was *exactly* right, AI was recommended. We used my husband's sperm (haha, as far as I know!), but having been through the procedure, I feel "qualified" to speak.

People don't chose AI to get their jollies; they choose it because they have an *infertility problem*. When you have been longing for a child, it is because of the maternal (or paternal) instincts GOD gave you --- not GREED, LUST, and/or PRIDE that some here have suggested. Adoption is not always the answer; contrary to what some here seem to believe, there are not throngs of homeless/parentless children waiting to be adopted! You can thank abortion for that! Also the fact that it is not a big societal embarrassment for teenagers to have (AND KEEP) their babies -- because so many are doing so! Any more, it's like they just got a new puppy --- haven't you seen them at the mall?

In our case, my husband happens to be 11 years older than I; by the time I married him at 24, waited a year to begin "trying", gave it a year plus only to discover nothing was happening and that there might be a problem that needed medical intervention, there I was in my late 20's... that put him in his late 30's. So we give the fertility treatments/drugs time to work, and then he turns 40. Adoption agencies don't favor 40-yr olds adopting... at least back in the 80's when we were in this stage. There were other mitigating circumstances... him having children from a previous marriage (they don't adopt to people with children already)... but what good was that to me? They lived with their mother, and didn't call ME "Mom". I didn't give birth to them, nurse them, raise them from infancy, teach them to talk, walk, potty-train them --- or do a million other things you want to do as a mom. Or experience pregnancy. Since when is wanting to do those things a CRIME? Since when is having a motherly instinct a BAD THING?? (Greed, lust, pride??!)

Frankly, I don't remember a whole lot about the AI procedure, other than lying on the table and hoping and praying it would work. Infertility treatment is terribly expensive, and what we were going through, we only had the funds to go through four cycles... and this was #4. It wasn't "romance", "seed", "oneness", or anyone's "loins" I was thinking about as I lay on the doctor's table... it was "BABIES".

Having an infertility problem is not a judgement or a withholding from God... it is a medical problem and a result of living in a fallen world, the same as having diabetes, a thyroid condition, or migraine headaches. If you would take insulin, thyroid replacement medication, or pain relief medication, you have no business making judgement calls on people who seek treatment for their infertility. When you want a baby, you don't care WHERE it comes from or how it gets made; you want your empty arms filled and someone to pour your mother's (or father's) heart into -- the love that GOD put into you. Shame on anyone who condemns that or makes it into something evil! Until you have walked in these mocassins...

By the way, I am a blessed GRANDMA now!!

 

[Katryna]

I was writing not that race makes for adultery, but that it is very popular in AI that the husband chooses a donor so the child is similar to himself in a few ways.

Well, of course they do! Most families want a "family resemblance". They also most likely do not wish to advertise the fact that the children were products of donated sperm, because they wish to be treated like a NORMAL family, and not have anyone with "weird ideas" cast aspersions of sin and shame on the wife and children or infer that the husband has been "wronged" in the formation of this family! Any temperamental traits would also be welcome, as it would aid in a harmonious familial atmosphere.

JWs out there won't do blood transfusions. But union isn't it, union that is soul and body, mixing seed is just part of it, part nevertheless.

For example, my mother told me it was notorious that doctors would rarely but sometimes make a patient pregnant, while she was asleep. Maybe just by a very little lot of cells, but it does matter. True? If it happened to someone close to you?

It would matter because it is the conception of a child, which is a lifetime commitment and relationship, not because of any spiritual union between the mother and the sperm donor. That part of it is merely physical. Anything having to do with spirits and souls is God's department.

If you believe that a man and woman become "one" spiritually when they have intercourse, then what about the times when they have intercourse and a child is NOT conceived? Are they no less "one"? Is the marriage no less consummated, even if a baby is not conceived? So if the consummation and the oneness occurs during intercourse, merely combining a sperm and an egg is not a spiritual event on the owner's parts... it is only physical.

What about invitro fertilization, when the actual conception occurs outside the womb, and the fertilized ovum is placed in the woman AFTER the baby is actually conceived --- do you feel better about that?

More important that an opertion, surgery on a wife... is the need to put the hand into the wife to turn the head downwards in some cases. It is neccesary.

Sometimes brain surgery is necessary...

In the case of the Dr's hand going into her, I think prayer for sanctity.

Well, I guess we could just let mother and baby duke it out for themselves...

I think it better for adoption that the baby be of the same cultural racial backround, or if you are white you will have to perghaps research attitude... for an African baby...

Then there will be a lot of babies of color growing up in orphanages in other countries, where single women giving birth is not winked at like it is here.

 

[-~Truth_N_Trust~-]

I think this topic gets into some dangerous territory...

Basically, children are the result. Do we believe that these children are knit together lovingly by God? Or does their conception somehow make them less loved of God?

As someone who has also undergone some fertility treatment, and struggled with the 'playing God' thoughts, I realised that I can't play God, I can't force God's hand (who can?), but I can give glory to Him should He see fit to bless us with a child - and I will give glory to His Holy Name.

Oh, and I think telling people just to pray for healing more when they are suffering infertility is lacking in understanding and empathy...

 

[GoldenKingGaze]

The idea of questioning God's love in a Christian forum, is not needed, I am sure God's love is vast. No one questioned that.

In a Christian context, encouraging faith in healing with a real testimony is encouragement. If I took a wife and found I was infertile, I would pray for healing. And I found when others suggested that all who see a Dr must consider AI it was cruel, hurtful!

If they were secular couples then as at a funeral of such, and athiests, empathy must be differently thought out.

 

[TheDag]

In a Christian context, encouraging faith in healing with a real testimony is encouragement. If I took a wife and found I was infertile, I would pray for healing. And I found when others suggested that all who see a Dr must consider AI it was cruel, hurtful!

Yet you don't see your implications as hurtful and cruel. Interesting.

 

[synger]

I think Liz's earlier statements are interesting to the discussion... "adultery" may have changed more than we imagine. Now, the focus is very much on the relationship between the husband and wife. Before effective birth control, adultery was more than just an emotional betrayal. It threatened the whole family and community with the possibility of children that were not the husband's. The very word "cuckold" for a man whose wife has sex with someone else, comes from the idea that cuckoo birds lay their eggs in other birds' nests, to be raised by that other bird.

It is an interesting question. When we were considering AI, we planned always to use my husband's sperm. It was my eggs that were the problem. But if God had not blessed us with our Gem (after seven years of going to doctor after doctor), we might have considered it.

Someone else brought up the issue of adoption. If there is knowledge of the child's parentage, I think a couple can prayerfully choose to adopt, or to use AI with donor sperm. At least with the AI, the child is blood-related to the mother, whereas with adoption there is no blood-relation at all.

 

[Crazy Liz]

The meaning of the word "gay" has changed. The meaning of "adultry" has not.

Yes, actually it has.

The ancient world wasn't big on dictionaries, but I have not seen one ancient reference to adultery in which the parties were a married man and an unmarried woman. A married man having sex with an unmarried woman simply was not considered adultery before the Church put gender equality in the definition. I believe that was during the middle ages, but I'd appreciate a correction if my history is inaccurate.

In the ancient world, the sexual obligations of marriage were fidelity on the wife's part, not on the husband's. The husband's obligations to the wife were more economic than sexual, generally. The wife's sexual rights over the husband were even economic in nature. She had a right to have sex with her husband so she could have children to take care of her after her husband's death, since in most ancient cultures she had no inheritance of her own. As long as the husband fulfilled these obligations, he could have sex with as many women as he wished, without being considered an adulterer, so long as these women were not married to other men. Abraham and Jacob in the Bible have never been considered adulterers for having sex with their wives' servants. In fact, in each of these instances, it was not only with the wife's permission, but at the wife's suggestion.

It is culture that defines a particular sexual act as adultery, and cultures vary in their definitions - just like they vary in their definitions of which killings are murder, which takings are theft, which lies are perjury, etc. I find it quite interesting that all the offenses prohibited in the second table of the Decalogue are defined by cultures, not by divine decree. Perhaps this is why Jesus could sum them all up by saying, "Love your neighbor as yourself." How a person wishes to be treated by others will be influenced by culture, and neither the Law nor Jesus speaks against this.

So, I threw out the idea of cultural definitions early in this thread as a discussion starter. And my opinion is that if the OP would feel wronged if his wife had AI, then she should not have AI against his wishes. OTOH, since today's culture has defined adultery in a different way, if a husband and wife agree to use AI with donor sperm, our culture no more views this as adultery than did the ancient world view Abraham's relationship with Hagar or Jacob's with Bilha and Zilpah as adultery.

I don't think there is a "biblical definition" of adultery. However, the exact behavior the biblical authors had in mind when they used the word was not identical with what we, in modern Western cultures, have in mind when we use the same word.

 

[TheDag]

I think Liz's earlier statements are interesting to the discussion... "adultery" may have changed more than we imagine. Now, the focus is very much on the relationship between the husband and wife. Before effective birth control, adultery was more than just an emotional betrayal. It threatened the whole family and community with the possibility of children that were not the husband's. The very word "cuckold" for a man whose wife has sex with someone else, comes from the idea that cuckoo birds lay their eggs in other birds' nests, to be raised by that other bird.

So the interesting thing here is if we compare this to AI the donor does not lay his eggs in another "nest" The choice is with the couple who choose to have AI. (not having a go at you just making a point using what you said)

 

[GoldenKingGaze]

When empathising, it need be understood that there are different kinds of people. Yes, I love honour, and if I loved someone, as in marriage, I would want to father her children, rather than someone else. Or I would stay single, if that were better for her. Other men are quite different, and some are Christian.

Healing in a Christian context is not cruel. Nor spending bigger, a lot more, for his sake.

When I did look ahead, considering what marriage may involve, I considered AI, and it really hurt a lot. I find it better for numerous reasons to stay single.

When as a young twenty one year old, I considered marriage, and missionary work, I admired the devoted Pentecostals, as, they did Bible college, married in faith not lust... and God helped them choose wives..., So if I got married, I would be aiming in part to offer a family to God. For Him. They married for love of God... it seemed. Glory to God. "God which woman should I marry to have children that are Godly and please you?"

AI is for the economy and society contribution.

If a wife loved me, she would want my children. To seek healing or expensive medicine is not cruel.

I love her, she loves me, so we want our seeds fused. Call me old fashioned, but I love honour, her seed and maternal love, it is dear, truly!

 

[GoldenKingGaze]

Proverbs 5

If a couple have AI, the husband raises another man's children, from his wife. Another has the honour of mixing seed, and he adopts that child, pre birth.

 

[SpiritDriven]

Any deed of the Flesh that you may think affects your right standing with God...is actualy adulterating your relationship with God.

Having started out in the Spirit....are you now going to be perfected by the Flesh.

the OP has adulterated their relationship with God by even suggesting such a thing in post form....anywhere, not just on a Christian Forum.

ahem....cough... alledged Christian forum

 

[TheDag]

Proverbs 5

If a couple have AI, the husband raises another man's children, from his wife. Another has the honour of mixing seed, and he adopts that child, pre birth.

I have three words to say in response to this they are
CONTEXT CONTEXT and CONTEXT.

Read all of proverbs 5. It is clearly talking about physical adultery. It is clearly talking about the man going to the woman and being physically intimate with her. Proverbs 5 has absolutely no relevance at all to AI because that physical intimacy between the donor and the couple is not there.

AI is for the economy and society contribution.

How much more judgemental and uncompassionate do you want to get? To even make this suggestion that you have is calling people who have posted in this thread liars for a start. Can you back up your claim that they are liars or is it just a totally unfounded claim? You may not have read every post in this thread but I have and I have read how people who really wanted kids have struggled and gone through enormous pain. It wouldn't be that bad if it was purely a financial decision for the economy like you say it is. I won't even go into your comment about pentecostals marrying for love not lust which has a implication that non-pentecostals marry for lust. I would suggest you really need to think about what your saying and start providing proof if you are going to call people liars.

 

[GoldenKingGaze]

AI is eugenics, with regards to the origination of the program. The donors selected, are outstanding athletes or academics, of course in good health, and not criminals...

Eugenics is a science and is secular, it cannot be about God, it is about a science minded good work, which is academic, or athletic, or both and about people being lawful, not harmful but helpful to society.

The Bible says we either serve God or mammon. Matthew 6:24. So I am talking about deep motives and the cause, the eugenics program and it's root in Germany. In England I respect the greatly different motivation and reasoning and good will with their cause compared to Germany's of 1933-44.

It feels threatening for you the Dag to suggest everyone who see the Dr must consider it. Although consider is a soft word, I mean actually I did think about it before when considering marriage for myself. It was saddening. There is a need as a Christian to empathise with people, coming from different emotions, cultures, attitudes and lifestyles.

So I am not calling posters here liars. Sorry if you misunderstood. Secular science programs are economic minded largely.

I read two years ago in Sydney's Baby magazine of the seeming slight difficulty a man went through in accepting AI with his wife. I hope people will empathise with men as well as women, and old fashioned men.

I regret saying Pentecostals marry for love and not lust. Because you say it means to you that all non Pentecostals, are being accused of being lustful.

This church I was in then was very devout and conservative, and my eye was on the marriage of the Pastor and his wife and how their family behaved.

Non Christians do not see a need to avoid lust, they look and date... many Christians are nominal, they marry for love, and love of pleasure and good looks, and for prosperity. Without obeying the Gospel heartily, there is love mixed with impurity. And uncleanness is common on television and at the cinemas and even more in contemporary songs.

It comes into the eyes and ears and then is in the soul and heart. So there is need of the Gospel and repentance, Jesus blood. Not just good works and penance.

Please recall I wrote I don't want to judge anyone. Merely issues, concepts.

I am only slowly and simply compassionate. Even emotionally detached. I failed studies in counseling at the start. I withdrew.

So if the purpose is as now to empathise, what are the people groups like, culturally...? I slowly can relate to men who suffer at the thought. I find it hard and would not try to go beyond empathy to sympathy with people who don't mind AI and find healing and the Spirit uncomfortable.

It is a big world full of diverse people who are free. I respect that. I love my freedom. Paul mentioned this great diversity of people.

Tell me, what suffering do people go through, have you a link?

I know Solomon is writing about romance. And honour.
"Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets?
Let them be only thine and not thy strangers' with thee."

This covers the honour of the seed and maternal love and paternal love. These are matters of "honour", the "waters" of the wife. It should be the husband's only.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/ideas_belief/bioethics/Bioethics_Fertility_TO/Bioethics_AI.htm

This link shows the Jewish cultured, conservative ones only use the husband's sex cells in AI.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-7961(196101)24%3A1%3C158%3AROTDCO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

This link above is from 1949 and shows the Scottish acceptance and fairness about AI.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A04E1DF153BF937A25755C0A965948260

This article above is about a newer AI, where the egg comes from a donor, and is helpful if the wife's ovaries do not function, or if she knows a genetic disease like Hemophylia or Cystic Fibrosis is inherent in her family.

http://catholicforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=166062

Post 5 shows how some Catholic and Anglicans want the natural ways as part of faith, what they believe in.

Another Catholic site shows Catholic culture is not for this. cornel Society.

After searches on happiness the above links were all I could find and this below:
http://tipetigi.turkiyeklinikleri.com/ucretli_makale.php

Is there a thread here about this, I mean the joys?

 

[synger]

When empathising, it need be understood that there are different kinds of people. Yes, I love honour, and if I loved someone, as in marriage, I would want to father her children, rather than someone else. Or I would stay single, if that were better for her. Other men are quite different, and some are Christian.

Healing in a Christian context is not cruel. Nor spending bigger, a lot more, for his sake.

When I did look ahead, considering what marriage may involve, I considered AI, and it really hurt a lot. I find it better for numerous reasons to stay single.

When as a young twenty one year old, I considered marriage, and missionary work, I admired the devoted Pentecostals, as, they did Bible college, married in faith not lust... and God helped them choose wives..., So if I got married, I would be aiming in part to offer a family to God. For Him. They married for love of God... it seemed. Glory to God. "God which woman should I marry to have children that are Godly and please you?"

AI is for the economy and society contribution.

If a wife loved me, she would want my children. To seek healing or expensive medicine is not cruel.

I love her, she loves me, so we want our seeds fused. Call me old fashioned, but I love honour, her seed and maternal love, it is dear, truly!

I completely agree. A married couple who wants children should seek to "fuse their seed" as you put it. They usually do.

But I also know the agony and the pain of desperately wanting children and trying month after month. I remember bursting into tears when my menses began, knowing that I'd failed one more time to provide a child for my husband. I ache when I read about Sara's desperate attempt to provide the "child of promise" for Abraham by giving him her handmaiden. I am in tears as I type, even though God has heard our prayers and blessed us with a child. I still remember, and always will remember, that tearing pain, that feeling of inadequacy, that ache of "what is wrong with me that I cannot give my beloved the children he so dearly wants?" I remember being unable to fully rejoice in the children of a friend, because of my own jealousy that she could bear and I could not.

We talked about a surrogate. We talked about adoption (and still are, for a second child). We talked about becoming foster parents. We talked about remaining childless, as it seemed to be God's will for us.

The pain is real, and invades your whole life. It is a not only a failure, it can be seen as a disgrace.

I don't think anyone's saying that it should be the first thing a couple does. In fact, infertility consultations (let alone treatments!) aren't usually even considered until a couple has spent a year trying (meaning coitus at least three times a week, temperature taking to track ovulation, etc.).

But until a couple has faced the looming, overshadowing fear of infertility, they cannot know to what lengths they will go to have a child together, or whether they will even go so far as to raise a child that is blood-related to only one of them (donor AI), or to neither of them (adoption).

It is something that each couple has to face, with prayer and patience, to determine God's will for them as a family.

 

[dayknee]

One point behind my view is that the Bible is a complete book, and the answer to modern questions is there.

I read men who go through this are squeemish and embarrased at first and get used to it later.

If a woman is an unbeliever and leaves her husband, Paul in Corinthians writes he maye let her go, no obligations.

But if she is a believer it is different.

I am sure from the principles of God's word that not a finger and not seed from another man should go into a man's wife's loins except her husband's.

Seed has long term consequences!!

That honour of mixing seed is given to her husband, by her and her father.

It should not be given to another.

A man should love his wife's body as his own, as Christ loved the church. And God is Jealous. Paul and the OT.

I think it surely pollutes the history of her body if she allows such contact of seed, anywhere especially in her loins.

For the history of the body to be justified the blood of Jesus should be applied.

It should not be neccessary.

Healing should be sought if a husband is with some illness.

To earnestly want a child is fair.

To earnestly want romance is fair, but in both cases want can be lust if out of order.

Sickeness is sad and tragic.

A husband loving his wife wants her to have his child, but another's? Or if he lost his legs in the war, should he love and arrange for her to spend time with another man? I have something against wife swapping in any way. I want no steps towards it, a pit of snakes as a matter of honour and sanctity, love and friendship, trust and fair play, ego and esteem, and causes.

AI has ethics in it, so the child is as similar as possible, when proceedings are legal to the husband. Race, eye colour, height, faith...

Empathy and then sympathy means I feel the jealousy and loss for honour loving men.

And God wants Godly children, that the thing born to her should be holy.

Jesus blood makes her holy. Hebrews.

When, in this life or in heaven, and how will he, the husband have true peace, be restored in all things and have pre-eminence...? It is what Jesus wants. Acts 3. The restoration of everything.

Firstly, we are all about what Jesus and the Father and the Spirit want!!!

this is just ...ridiculous

 

[NDNgirl4ever]

this is just ...ridiculous

I agree completely. Artifical Insemination is NOT the same as adultery. There is nothing sexual about AI at all. I think that AI is wonderful technology, and I would definately consider it if I have trouble concieving.