For centuries, people have viewed as an adulteress any woman who became the mother of a child not fathered by her husband, and the offspring has been considered illegitimate. Certain courts have taken a similar position regarding artificial insemination by anonymous donors. But viewpoints vary.

The people of ancient Israel did not have to face the question of human artificial insemination by an anonymous donor because it was not then being done. But the faithful among them would have shunned it completely, for God had decreed: “You must not give your emission as semen to the wife of your associate to become unclean by it.” The penalty for disobedience was death. (Lev. 18:20, 29) Artificial insemination of a married woman by a donor other than her husband makes her guilty of adultery, a sin against God. (Deut. 5:18) Christians know that adulterers will not inherit God’s kingdom and are warned that “God will judge fornicators and adulterers” adversely.​—1 Cor. 6:9, 10; Heb. 13:4.

Inasmuch as artificial insemination by an anonymous donor is not acceptable to God, if a Christian married couple resorted to it, they would be in line for expulsion from the modern-day congregation of Jehovah’s people. (Compare Leviticus 20:10.) After all, the consenting husband in effect gave his wife to another man, and the wife gave herself to that person in order to become the mother of a child by a man with whom she had not been yoked together by God in matrimony. (Matt. 19:4-6) The absence of direct physical contact and the fact that the consenting husband adopts the child cannot set aside the adulterous conduct.​—1 Cor. 5:1-13.