I remember a long-ago and very moving episode of a popular hospital
TV show (ER? Chicago Hope? St. Elsewhere even?) where the
husband was dying and on life-support, and the caring and thoughtful
hospital staff looked the other way while the grieving but very much
childless widow-to-be, uh, inseminated herself via her husband before
they pulled the plug on his respirator. I know, I know, it sounds
like a smarmy Jay Leno joke, but it was actually very touching,
thinking that this was the only way that the wife could have a living
piece of her beloved husband, a part of him that would live on in his
stead. C'mon, don't you want to tear up here, just a
little? This is, like, life!
Which is why I am
completely in favor of a precedent-setting recent ruling
in an Israeli
court that allows the family of a dead unmarried soldier to use his
sperm (extracted only hours after his death) to inseminate a woman of
their choosing in order to continue the family's bloodline, granting
the soldier a child he'll never know. Okay, maybe it's just a little
creepy. But still! Think of the possibilities! (and who
pays
child support?) By the way? A CNN poll says a big fat NO to
potential grandparents using their child's sperm to create a grandchild.
What
do you think? Does this cross a line? Or is it a moving and
beautiful new expression of the incredible urge we have a humans to
continue as a species?
