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Some pregnancy tests (as far as I know most/all) use animal antibodies, called monoclonal antibodies. These antibodies are grown/farmed from animals, often mice or rabbits.

Because these pregnancy tests use animal products, I don't think they count as vegan (though that's somewhat subjective). Are there any clearly vegan tests?

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  • I doubt that most commercial tests use antibodies from animal origin. Sounds too expensive. Cheaper to manufacture synthetic antibodies. Can someone add a reference to my claim? I was searching online and couldn't find what antibodies are used in pregnancy tests: synthetic or originated from animals
    – cloud_traveler
    Jan 28 '18 at 5:19
  • @cloud_traveler just because something can be synthetized, it doesn't mean that's cheaper. There is a reason why many products are still made by growing and harvesting living beings (e.g. carmine food dye, extracted from insects). Going to your claim, all antibodies - monoclonal or polyclonal - need cells extracted from animals to produce them: courses.lumenlearning.com/microbiology/chapter/…
    – Juliana Karasawa Souza
    Jun 15 at 12:34
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Tracking of your basal body temperature as described in detail in the lower half of this article - https://www.verywell.com/body-basal-temperature-chart-to-detect-early-pregnancy-1960284 Is an old-fashioned method of identifying a pregnancy which would avoid the use of animal antibodies.

Further scientific source: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/basal-body-temperature/basics/definition/prc-20019978

For more information regarding the proven correlation between basal body temperature and ovulation/gestation: https://www.webmd.com/baby/tc/basal-body-temperature-bbt-charting-topic-overview

Also see: https://baby-pedia.com/charting-body-temperature-pregnancy-change/

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Late to this but the answer is a solid no if you're looking for commercially available Beta-HCG tests. According to this guidance by the FDA:

Presently, all of the home pregnancy tests available use monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies in an enzyme-linked immunoassay format.

And getting into the merit of production, all antibodies need animal cells to be produced at one point or another - you could argue that monoclonal antibodies are "the lesser of two evils" (so to say) since the production is mostly done via cell culture, but the "blueprint" for the antibody came from an animal that was injected

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