Legal and religious Counseling aspects of gamete donation in Iran: Review study

Abstract

Introduction: Regarding recent advances in infertility treatment and extended use of gamete donation, it is necessary to increase the awareness of health care providers about legal and religious aspects of oocyte and sperm donation in order to have an effective consultation. Therefore, this review article was done with aim to evaluate the studies performed on the legal and religious counseling aspects of gamete donation in Iran. Methods: This review study is the result of reviewing the published evidences regarding different aspects of gamete donation in Iran from 2006 to 2018 in Persian databases of SID, Iran Medex, and English databases of Pub Med, CINAHL, and Google Scholar. For data collection, searching was done on the articles which had the key words of "oocyte donation", "gamete donation", "sperm donation", "counseling", "law ", and "religion" alone or in combination in the title or text as Persian and English. Results:In this review study, 27 studies which were extracted from 304 studies related to legal and religious aspects of gamete donation were reviewed. In Iranian law, various aspects of oocyte and sperm donation are not clear. There is disagreement between Shia scholars regarding gamete donation and is not accepted by the majority Sunni scholars. Due to legal issues such as inheritance and Relative ambiguity, the need for continuous and comprehensive counseling is emphasized Conclusion: The law of Iran has been silent regarding gamete donation, and jurisprudents also disagree on the legitimacy of this issue. Therefore, formulation of a comprehensive and accessible guide consultancy to answer the law and jurisprudence question of couples who need donated gametes is necessary by the legal and treatment system of the country.

Keywords

• counseling
• gamete donation
• law
• oocyte donation
• religion
• sperm donation