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pregnancy in the normal way, which raises the possibility of aborting
the affected fetus. So too, would a couple who have been blessed with
many daughters be allowed to use this technology to ensure that their
next child will be a boy, or vice versa?

Of course, we are referring to artificial insemination using the
husband’s semen, with the utmost care being taken to ensure that the
semen will not be exchanged for that of another man.

Professor Richard Chaim Gerazi,
Chairman of the Fertility Institute at
Maimonides Hospital, New York

ɳ Response

Even if every precaution is taken to avoid the husband’s semen be-
ing switched with a donor’s [for according to a number of poskim, if
switching does take place, the child is a mamzer1] in vitro fertilization
and artificial insemination still involve additional problems, as fol-
lows:

1. The poskim are uncertain whether a child born through artificial
insemination is considered his father’s child. This affects the child’s
lineage – if the father is a kohen, it is not clear what the child’s lin-
eage will be. Similarly, it is unclear whether such a child inherits his
father. It is doubtful whether the father has fulfilled the mitzvah of
procreation with this child, whether if this son does chalitzah to his
brother’s widow he has released her etc. This doubt certainly exists in
regard to in vitro fertilization as well2.

2. This procedure breaches the fence surrounding the holiness and
purity that exists between man and wife, with whom the Shechinah

1. This topic is further discussed earlier, in siman 253.
2. The opinions of the poskim regarding the lineage of a child born through arti-

ficial insemination are explained at length earlier, in siman 250. See also earlier,
our comments at the end of siman 254 [Note 5, #1] about the possibility of
opinion being unanimous that a child resulting from in vitro fertilization is not
considered the father’s child.

Avoidance of Genetic Disease through In Vitro Fertilization 2 83