This article examines the Iranian approach to the regulation of reproductive technologies, through which medical, Islamic juridical and civil legal authorities come together in forming bioethical legislation and regulations in the national context. It focuses in particular on the legislation and regulations for embryo donation and surrogacy arrangements, both morally permissible according to the majority of Shiʿi religious authorities. It traces the development of these legislations and which institutions and actors were involved, and examines in particular the dynamics of religion, law, and medicine in the formation of these bioethical regulations. I argue that the Iranian approach towards bioethical issues involves all stakeholders – religious and secular, state and private – and reflects a combination of elements from both secular and religious principles. This approach (bottom-up rather than top-down), I conclude, reflects the efforts and ability of Iranian scholars to examine the impact and challenges of global modern biomedicine and thereby give internal answers within their own religious and cultural values and tradition.


Technological advances in the field of medicine and health sciences not only manipulate the normal human body and sex but also provide for surgical and hormonal management of hermaphroditism (intersexuality). Consequently, sex assignment surgery has not only become a standard care for babies born with genital abnormalities in the West but even in some Muslim states. On the positive side, it goes a long way in saving children born with abnormal genitalia from numerous legal interdictions of the pre-sex corrective surgery. Nevertheless, the larger ethical and legal questions that medical management of genital abnormality raises to some extent have not been adequately appreciated by contemporary Muslim responses. This article, therefore, in principle argues against surgical management of intersexuality during early infancy from the Islamic legal perspective.