Marcia Inhorn, in the Department of Health Behavior and Education, School of Public Health at the University of Michigan,
is a medical anthropologist specializing in Middle Eastern gender and health issues. She researches the social impact of infertility and
in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Egypt, Lebanon, and Arab America in the last twenty years.
Inhorn states that "for infertile couples around the world, reproductive health means achieving a much-desired pregnancy,
thereby overcoming the stigmatization and heartbreak of childlessness. In the twenty-first century, achieving pregnancy through new
reproductive technologies has become a global reality." IVF is allowed and practiced throughout the Muslim world, but the dominant Sunni
branch of Islam prohibits third-party donation of gametes (eggs, sperm, embryos, and surrogacy). Inhorn demonstrates how Islam has
affected the use of IVF in the Muslim world, and how ideological rifts between dominant Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims are shaping local
acceptance of issues surrounding IVF donors.
Fatwas have affected the practice of IVF by placing restrictions and permissions, but "the question is, to what degree
are these Fatwa declarations . . . and particularly the explicit prohibition on third party donation of reproductive materials, actually
followed by physicians in the Muslim world?" Fatwa decisions of otherwise conservative Shi’ite male clerics have permitted gamete
donation, thereby leading to a potential transformation in gender relations, a rethinking of what is "natural," and new notions of
biological kinship and parenthood. Inhorn says that the permissive practices of Shi'ites have altered the general understanding of the
ways in which "families can be made and marriages can be saved through the use of new reproductive technologies."
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