Monday, February 18, 2013
Case 22 Group 2
Today we discussed case 22, in which a woman became pregnant from sperm harvested from her deceased husband. The couple was known to have been trying to conceive, but some people believe that this may be a case of rape. Personally I think rape is not an appropriate term. I can see how this could be abused, but I think there is a simple solution. With new technologies rising, new legislation is going to have to be put in place. When a couple seeks a doctor to help with fertilization I think that this topic should be broached. If the father approves then this is an option, otherwise It is not. (A will for postmortem conception).
Reading this article made me wonder if the other side of this process is possible. If a man's spouse dies, can he extract an egg from her corpse and use a surrogate mother to produce offspring. I am curious to know if there would be more opposition to this process.
Some opinions from our group from the male students were that they would not care what happened to their sperm postmortem. I personally think that your genetics is one of the few things that trancends your death, so I would like to have a say it what happens to them. Cas doesn't see the problem in stealing dead guy's sperm because "They're dead!"
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Very interesting topic indeed. The case also mentions that the the mother did actually have a child from her deceased husband. I'm not sure what legal actions can be brought up from this. Especially now that a child is already born.
ReplyDeleteLike most of the guys in our group, I also agreed that it wouldn't matter to me what happened since I would be already dead. especially if I were in a similar situation where I was trying to have children with my wife.
My only concerns would be that of the child. And how something like this would affect him/her. Being raised with only one parent is hard enough, knowing you were conceived after your father passed away is something else.
I would agree with Patrick to say that including information like this in a will would be helpful if any future legal issues. None the less, I wish Brandalyn (child in the case) and Gaby (mother) a happy future.
ok ok. what a weird subject... and even though I dont think the deceased person would not care.... I do think there should be some kind of laws about the subject. :)
ReplyDeleteI think that the question here is the impact of this on the children produced from these sperm. I know that it is very possible for these children to be perfectly fine however I have to believe that it would have some negative psychological effects. I believe that never knowing the man that helped to create me would be very difficult for me. I also don't really see the need for such activities when there are already many children who need to be adopted.
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