The communities relevant to this discussion are religious, Jewish, Muslim and Christian. It is in the light of these beliefs that clinical procedures, diagnostic and therapeutic, are judged. When some principles are given absolute value in an authoritarian community, prohibitions follow. These limits must be acceptable to the secular community if they are to secure authorisation within its laws. Acceptance may take time to win.
Christian ethics is essentially a social as well as a personal pursuit.
The Christian moral tradition I outline to you, therefore, a tradition of moral reasoning. I shall indicate where the main variants branch from the central stem. Its origin is in Jewish Biblical theology. Basic to infertility treatment is this presumption in favour of life. The answer lies in another inheritance.