Post-coital sperm retrieval could lead to the wider approval of assisted conception by some religions.

In the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos in Greece, the girdle (belt) of the Virgin bestows blessings on white ribbons for the wrists of infertile husbands and their wives, and this liturgy has resulted in natural conceptions for centuries. The procedure is economic and non-invasive, and therefore ideal for patients, but is unorthodox to contemporary medicine. In 1766 John Hunter advised a linen-draper with hypospadias to use a warm syringe to introduce his semen into his wife, but this first recorded and successful case of homologous artificial insemination (AIH) was not reported by Hunter due to the social and religious attitudes of his era. In 1897 the notoriety and public attention attracted by physicians practising 'assisted insemination' prompted the Roman Catholic Church to formally condemn AIH (Poynter, 1968). The views of religious authorities have been considered by clinicians and governments (Department of Health and Social Security, 1984; United States Congress, 1988; American Fertility Society, 1990) at every stage in the evolution of assisted reproduction technology (ART). Physicians must follow their Hippocratic obligations to relieve the suffering of childless couples, and it would be ideal if reproductive medicine could satisfy all religions, patients and society by offering only treatments or procedures which result in natural conceptions. This is the ultimate objective of infertility research, underlying the practice of gynaecologist and andrologist treating the wife and husband individually, to which most religions have no fundamental objections. In different faiths, the official attitude to assisted conception depends on a balance between the importance of procreation and the acceptability of the techniques proposed, but is modified by the relative dominance of centralized religious authorities and the diversity of observance within their communities (United States Congress, 1988; Schenker, 1992). In the Islamic, Jewish and Hindu religions, where the duty of married couples to reproduce is paramount, most ART procedures are acceptable if all other treatment has failed. Buddhism does not impose such a finite duty or rigid laws, so there is relative freedom in the choice of ART. In Christianity, where barren marriages are as valid as those with children, there are often fundamental objections to clinical procedures which could undermine the dignity of marriage and the intimacy of coitus.