The Jurisprudential-Legal Challenges of Infertility and Its Effect on Couples' Relationships

The current research was conducted with the aim of identifying jurisprudential-legal challenges of infertility and its effect on couples' relationships by thematic analysis. The data were collected using the semi-structured interviews; thus, 19 experts majored in Fiqh, law, and family were selected by the judgmental sampling, and they were interviewed until the saturation stage. The obtained data were encoded through the three phases by MAXQDA and 37 categories were extracted. These categories included jurisprudential challenges (10 categories), legal challenges (9 categories), the most important jurisprudential-legal challenges (8 categories), negative effects of infertility on couples' relationships (4 categories), and the effect of jurisprudential-legal challenges on couples' relationships (6 categories). The results showed that the most important jurisprudential-legal challenges which infertile families face are as follows: couples' non-adherence to marital commitments, the lack of sufficient legal support in cases of misbehavior between spouses and those around them, jurists' disagreements regarding the permissibility or sanctity of artificial insemination, the legislator's silence and the lack of law regarding new methods of fertility, and some people's inattention to jurisprudential issues. These challenges throw couples into confusion and affect their relationships.