The Israeli IVF Imbroglio

Readers may have been following the complicated and disturbing story out of Israel’s Assuta Medical Center, in which a fertilized embryo was mistakenly implanted in the wrong woman. The child, a baby girl, was carried to term and delivered last week. This episode touches on medical, legal, and halakhic issues of Solomonic complexity in myriad ways. Over the years TRADITION has published numerous articles which address and anticipated aspects of the case.

• Immanuel Jakobovits,  “Survey of Recent Halakhic Literature: Artificial Insemination” (Summer 1966)
• J. David Bleich, “Survey of Recent Halakhic Literature: Test-Tube Babies” (Summer 1978)
• Fred Rosner, “Test Tube Babies, Host Mothers and Genetic Engineering in Judaism” (Summer 1981)
• Ezra Bick, “Ovum Donations: A Rabbinic Conceptual Model of Maternity” (Fall 1993)
• Yitzchok A. Breitowitz, “Halakhic Approaches to the Resolution of Disputes Concerning the Disposition of Preembryos” (Fall 1996)
• J. David Bleich, “Survey of Recent Halakhic Literature: Surrogate Motherhood” (Winter 1998)
• Edward Reichman, “The Halakhic Chapter of Ovarian Transplantation” (Fall 1998)
• Yehuda Warburg, “Solomonic Decisions in Frozen Preembryo Disposition: Unscrambling the Halakhic Conundrum” (Summer 2002)
• John D. Loike & Moshe D. Tendler, “Ma Adam Va-Teda-Ehu: Halakhic Criteria for Defining Human Beings” (Summer 2003)
• Edward Reichman, “Uterine Transplantation and the Case of the Mistaken Question (Summer 2003)
• J. David Bleich, “Survey of Recent Halakhic Periodical Literature: Disposition of Fertilized Ova” (Fall 2016)