EGYPTS leading Muslim clerics have banned women from acting as surrogate mothers or being impregnated by the sperm of deceased husbands, Egypt’s state-run MENA news agency reported on Sunday. Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest authority, and other clerics on Saturday issued a fatwa (decree) against such practices, saying they violate the bonds of matrimony, MENA said. The fatwa forbids “using a woman’s uterus to place sperm from a man other than her husband’s, or to implant a fertilized egg or foetus from another woman. “The practice is illegal, whether it involves placing a spermatozoid, a fertilized egg or a foetus in the uterus,” the decree said. The fatwa also bans “insemination of a woman after the death of her husband, since she is no longer the wife of the deceased. – AFP