Modern reproductive technology has made possible things previous generations could scarcely imagine. IVF can help couples struggling to conceive. Sperm and eggs can be donated. A woman can carry a child for somebody else. Same-sex couples can become legal parents through adoption, donor conception or surrogacy.
These developments raise an important Sikh question: does the fact that something is medically possible mean that it is consistent with Gurmat?
Gurmat (the Divine Wisdom and teachings of the Guru) does not reject medicine or scientific progress. Nor does Sikhi teach that infertility makes somebody incomplete or less worthy. The real question is how technology is being used: is it helping a husband and wife within the family structure established by the Guru, or is it being used to reconstruct that structure by introducing other people into the creation of their child?
Sikhi begins with Vaheguru rather than changing social fashions. Gurbani says:
ਏਤੇ ਅਉਰਤ ਮਰਦਾ ਸਾਜੇ ਏ ਸਭ ਰੂਪ ਤੁਮੑਾਰੇ ॥
“(Creating humanity,) You created many women and many men; all of them being Your forms.”
— Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1349
This short line contains two important truths. Women and men have equal spiritual worth — all are manifestations of the One Creator. At the same time, the biological distinction named by Gurbani is real: Vaheguru created women and men.
Gurbani elsewhere describes the ordinary course of embodied family life:
ਵਡਾ ਹੋਆ ਵੀਆਹਿਆ ਘਰਿ ਲੈ ਆਇਆ ਮਾਸੁ ॥
ਮਾਸਹੁ ਹੀ ਮਾਸੁ ਊਪਜੈ ਮਾਸਹੁ ਸਭੋ ਸਾਕੁ ॥“He grows up and is married, and brings his wife into his home. From flesh, flesh is born; from flesh arise all family relationships.”
— Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1289
The purpose of this Shabad is not to provide a modern ruling on reproductive medicine. Nevertheless, its description of embodied human life is significant: marriage, husband and wife, reproduction and family are treated as connected realities.
This is reflected in Sikh Maryada (established Sikh religious discipline and practice). The Sikh Rehat Maryada defines Anand Kaaraj (the Sikh marriage ceremony) in terms of a Sikh man and woman and repeatedly describes their relationship as husband and wife, lived through the responsibilities of the householder’s life.
The Sikh family ideal is therefore not simply “any adults who love one another”. It is husband and wife living grihast — a Guru-centred householder life — with the possibility and responsibility of raising a family.
This distinction is important because Sikhi does not need to reject IVF itself.
Suppose a husband and wife want children but have difficulty conceiving. Modern medicine may enable the husband’s sperm and the wife’s egg to be brought together through IVF, with the wife carrying their child.
The technology is assisting the husband and wife to do something that their marriage is naturally ordered towards but which a medical difficulty has prevented.
An analogy is useful. Glasses assist eyes that cannot see properly. A pacemaker assists a heart that cannot maintain its rhythm. Neither changes what an eye or heart is. Similarly, IVF can assist the reproductive relationship of husband and wife without redefining who the child’s mother and father are.
This does not mean every procedure surrounding IVF is automatically acceptable. Questions concerning the creation, storage and destruction of embryos require their own careful Sikh ethical consideration. But there is no sound reason to declare IVF contrary to Gurmat merely because medical assistance was necessary.
Accepting Hukam (Divine Order/Will) does not mean refusing medical treatment. Everything exists within Hukam. The question is whether our choices within it accord with Gurmat.
The ethical situation changes with donor sperm and donor eggs.
If a married woman is impregnated using another man’s sperm, the resulting child is biologically the child of that man and the wife. Likewise, if another woman’s egg is fertilised by the husband’s sperm, that woman has supplied the maternal genetic contribution to the child.
There may have been no physical sexual intercourse, but technology has not made the third person’s reproductive involvement disappear.
Traditional Sikh sexual discipline protects the exclusivity of husband and wife. Gurbani repeatedly warns against directing sexual desire towards another’s spouse, and Sikh tradition likewise confines sexual relations to marriage. The Sikh Rehat Maryada treats sexual relations outside marriage as a major breach of discipline.
From this Gurmat principle, deliberately using another man’s sperm or another woman’s egg violates the reproductive exclusivity of husband and wife. Technology changes the method; it does not change whose sperm and egg created the child.
Medical assistance is therefore not the issue. Third-party reproduction is.
Surrogacy introduces a further person into the process.
Even if the embryo was created using the husband’s sperm and wife’s egg, another woman is deliberately asked to carry the pregnancy, give birth and then hand the baby to the intended parents.
A womb is not simply an incubator. Pregnancy is not a manufacturing service. A woman carrying a developing child is a human being undergoing an extraordinary physical relationship with that child.
Surrogacy deliberately separates pregnancy and childbirth from the woman who will subsequently be recognised as the child’s mother. From the traditional Gurmat understanding of husband-wife family life, this is not simply medicine helping the married couple’s reproductive relationship. Another woman’s reproductive body has become part of that relationship.
For this reason, surrogacy should not be confused with IVF between husband and wife.
One assists husband and wife.
The other introduces a third person.
This raises an obvious question. If Sikhi places importance upon motherhood and fatherhood, what about adoption?
There is no contradiction.
Sikhs have historically raised children who were not biologically their own. A childless husband and wife may adopt a child from relatives, or a family may give a home to an orphan or another child who needs parents.
The crucial difference is that adoption does not create the child’s situation.
The child already exists.
Adoption asks: “There is a child who needs parents. How can we give this child a loving family?”
Donor conception and surrogacy ask a different question: “How can we create a child for adults who want one, using reproductive contributions from other people?”
That distinction matters.
Adoption provides a family for an existing child. Third-party reproduction deliberately constructs the circumstances of a new child’s conception.
A Sikh husband and wife may therefore adopt without contradicting the principle that donor sperm, donor eggs and surrogacy fall outside the husband-wife reproductive relationship.
The same principles allow the Sikh position on same-sex parenting to be understood without questioning anybody’s human dignity or capacity for affection.
Two men may sincerely love a child. Two women may provide considerable care and stability. The Sikh objection does not need to be based upon claiming otherwise.
But love alone does not make every relationship interchangeable.
A grandfather may love his granddaughter enormously, but that does not make him her mother. A teacher may make extraordinary sacrifices for a pupil, but that does not make the teacher the child’s father. Love tells us about the quality of a relationship; it does not by itself determine what that relationship is.
Biology also presents an unavoidable reality.
Two men cannot conceive a child together. They require a woman’s egg, and for surrogacy they require a woman to carry and give birth to the child.
Two women cannot conceive a child together. They require sperm from a man.
Technology therefore does not make male and female irrelevant. It simply moves the missing man or woman outside the couple.
Imagine water being transported through increasingly sophisticated pipes. Technology may completely transform how the water reaches your home, but the pipes have not replaced the water.
Likewise, reproductive technology can change where conception occurs, who carries a pregnancy and who legally raises the resulting child. It cannot change the fundamental biological reality that human reproduction requires male and female.
For a husband and wife experiencing infertility, IVF can assist the two reproductive sexes already present within their marriage. A same-sex couple is in a fundamentally different situation: producing a child necessarily requires the reproductive contribution of someone outside their relationship.
The desire to have children is natural, and infertility can bring genuine sadness. But Sikhi does not teach that having children is the ultimate purpose of human life, nor that a marriage without children has somehow failed.
Sikh history includes honoured married Sikhs who remained childless, most prominently Bebe Nanaki Ji, the beloved elder sister and first Sikh of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Childlessness is not a curse, punishment or spiritual deficiency.
According to Gurmat (the Divine Wisdom and teachings of the Guru), the purpose of this precious human birth is far greater than biological reproduction. Gurbani says:
ਭਈ ਪਰਾਪਤਿ ਮਾਨੁਖ ਦੇਹੁਰੀਆ ॥
ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਮਿਲਣ ਕੀ ਇਹ ਤੇਰੀ ਬਰੀਆ ॥“O being! You have been blessed with the human body. This is your opportunity to meet your Divine Maker.”
— Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 12
The ultimate purpose of human existence is therefore spiritual: to realise Vaheguru and fulfil the purpose for which this precious human life has been given. Marriage, children and family responsibilities can form a beautiful part of grihast (the disciplined Sikh householder’s way of life), but they are not the ultimate purpose of our existence. We are not born simply to reproduce.
A childless husband and wife may make reasonable efforts to conceive, including seeking medical assistance such as IVF using the husband’s sperm and wife’s egg. They may also choose to adopt a child in need of parents. Making such efforts is not contrary to Hukam (Divine Order/Will).
There is, however, a difference between making reasonable efforts within Gurmat and believing that the desire for a child must be fulfilled by whatever means technology makes possible. If legitimate means do not succeed, Sikhi teaches us to accept Hukam and Bhaana (lovingly accepting Vaheguru’s Will). A person’s life has not lost its meaning or purpose because they have no children.
This is why there is an important difference between saying every child deserves love and care and saying every adult is entitled to have a child. The first begins with the needs of the child; the second risks beginning with the desires of the adult.
A child is not a commodity, a lifestyle accessory or a treatment for adult sorrow. A child is another human being entrusted to our care. However sincere or painful someone’s longing for parenthood may be, that longing cannot by itself make every possible means of obtaining a child morally acceptable.
Modern technology may make donor sperm, donor eggs and surrogacy possible. But Gurmat does not teach that every biological limitation must be overcome simply because science has developed the power to do so.
Science tells us what can be done. Gurmat asks what should be done.
