Selected Reform Responsa
ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION 1951
ANSWER: The question involves many legal problems. Does the donor fulfill the duty of begetting children(periya ureviya) if a child is born(but the donor has no other children)? Does he commit the sin of wasting seed (zerah levatalah)? 1s the woman henceforth forbidden to live with her husband on the ground that she has been fertilized by a man who is not her husband? Is the child a mamzer, since he is born of a married woman (eshet ish) and a man not her husband? Is there not a danger that the child, when he grows up, may marry his own blood sister or the wife of his own blood- brother(contrary to the Levirate laws)?
1. Even though the technique of artificial insemination is new, nevertheless. most of the questions mentioned above are not new in the Law. since the legal literature has already discussed them with regard to certain special circumstances which are analogous to artificial insemination; namely, if, for example, a woman is impregnated in a bath from seed that had been emitted there(ibera be-ambatei)(B. Hag. 15a, top).
2 Joel Sirkes (1561-1640), in Bach to Tur, Yoreh De-a 195(quoting Semak) says that the child is absolutely kasher(i.e., not a mamzer), since there had been no actual forbidden intercourse(ein kan bi-at isur).
3 On the basis of the fact that there has been no illicit intercourse, Judah Rosanes (died in Constantinople in 1727), in his Mishneh Lamelekh to Maimonides . Yad Hil. Ishut XV 4, declares that the woman is not immoral and is therefore not forbidden to live with her husband.
4. But whose son is it? Samuel b. Uri Phoebus (17th century), in his commentary Beit Shemu-el to Shulhan Arukh, Even Ha-ezer 1, note 10, says that it is the son of the donor; otherwise we would not be concerned lest the child later marry his own blood sister. If he were not, the donor’s daughter would not be his sister.
5. In modem times, since the development of the technique of artificial insemination, the subject has been discussed by Chayim Fischel Epstein in his Teshuva Shelemah(Even Ha-ezer,#4), and by Ben Zion Uziel of