It's no more morbid to take his sperm than it is to take anything else from his body.
-=- WHY???
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
It's no more morbid to take his sperm than it is to take anything else from his body.
Pointing out in this context that it's morbid is a strong indication of feelings of right & wrong & the urge to express such.
Pointing out in this context that it's morbid is a strong indication of feelings of right & wrong & the urge to express such.
Anything we say of her motives is all guesses, at best & says nothing about whether it's any more morbid or any more right or wrong than taking anything else from his body or utilizing sperm someone chose to & did give before they were ill.
1st trimester is much too early for that in our current state of knowledge & ability. If it were only a week or 2 left, it would be quite different.
[...]
So just to make sure I understand it—
• Harvesting a cornea so a living person can see, or a kidney so a living person can continue to live
• Harvesting sperm cells in hope of maybe finding a surrogate to help create the offspring of a dead man in order to assuage his mother's grief
—you see no difference in terms of morbidity?
...Or maybe it's just wishful thinking and hensitting her dead son's semen will sustain her misery suitably for her needs.
To be honest, it just makes me feel sad that someone can attempt to get over the grief of losing a child by having a doctor stick needles into his testicles to remove his sperm, so she can be a grandmother to the children he would not otherwise have had because, you know, he's dead. Is it wrong? It is not my decision to make. It is her son and she was granted the rights to his sperm. I am giving my own personal opinion of the whole scenario.So if it makes you feel bad, it's wrong?
Well someone has to. I don't think this woman is. She is only thinking of herself (she wants to be a grandmother to all of her children's children) and about her son apparently saying he wanted to have 3 boys long ago.Nice "think of the children!" Bells. Real nice.
"I want him to live on. I want to keep a piece of him," Marissa Evans told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper.
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/04/08/texas-sperm-mom008.html
....Evans, who has one other son, age 22, told the Austin American-Statesman newspaper that Nikolas wanted to have three sons someday and had even picked out their names: Hunter, Tod and Van....
I think she's lying through her teeth.
I know women do that, but what guy does that? If 22 yr old guys do that, I've never met them
and that's why I find it so disgusting. She's doing it for herself, not her son. He's gone and with him his future children.
People's parents bug them for "grandchildren" all the time. I am not sure if you are married, but imagine you were. Suppose your mother said, "So, when are you going to get started on giving us grandchildren?" Would your reaction be that you find her disgusting since her desire is all about herself and not directed towards your wishes?
In fact, why is the selfish desire for grandchildren "disgusting"? If it is not in and of itself disgusting, then how does the death of the son make that same feeling/impulse disgusting? If I have hopes of becoming a grandpa, am I expected to hit a switch and "turn off" that emotion if my child dies?
My child is dead? While my grief is overwhelming, at least now I no longer want any grandchildren, so that's a minor relief.
But she has another son, she could still be a grandmother. I think she wants to hold on to her son, no matter how unrealistic.
But she has another son, she could still be a grandmother. I think she wants to hold on to her son, no matter how unrealistic.
It's no more morbid to take his sperm than it is to take anything else from his body.
People's parents bug them for "grandchildren" all the time. I am not sure if you are married, but imagine you were. Suppose your mother said, "So, when are you going to get started on giving us grandchildren?" Would your reaction be that you find her disgusting since her desire is all about herself and not directed towards your wishes?
In fact, why is the selfish desire for grandchildren "disgusting"? If it is not in and of itself disgusting, then how does the death of the son make that same feeling/impulse disgusting? If I have hopes of becoming a grandpa, am I expected to hit a switch and "turn off" that emotion if my child dies?
My child is dead? While my grief is overwhelming, at least now I no longer want any grandchildren, so that's a minor relief.
It has happened and in one case in the UK I believe, the man's family has taken the wife to court to prevent her from harvesting his sperm, or he may have had sperm frozen for later use due to illness, the specifics of the case escapes me at the moment. The husband and the wife had been planning on having children but he died before that desire could be realised. And that is something completely different to this case. In this instance, the boy had stated once that he wanted to have 3 sons and had said what he would name them. Is that basis enough to harvest his sperm without his consent and to have an unknown party carry said sperm to bring life to children so that his mother can be a grandmother and have something to hold on to?Suppose a young wife loses her husband in an accident, and suppose she wants his sperm so she can have his children. Why is that okay? There are other fish in the sea, and she can have a child with any living male out there (just as the mother here can have grandchildren from the other son). Should we deny the widow her request if we feel she is asking because she wants to hold on to a part of her deceased husband? If she is not asking for that reason, again, there are sperm banks all over the place that can help her using living donors, so why is her desire more noble and less disgusting?
My concern and "issue" stems from the fact that her reasoning may not be so sound. Grief can make people do stupid things and to me, what she is doing is macrabe. Roman made a remark earlier on about 'think of the children'. But someone has to think of the children that could result from this.My suspicion is that the only issue here is is the connection between the words "mother" and "wants her son's sperm." If that is the issue, then it's one of those cases where we need to get over our own prudishness.
What is morbid about this is that she is doing this without his consent.
Would you imagine that if you died tomorrow that your parents or relatives would harvest your sperm and make you a parent after your death?
What of the children that could result of said harvest?
How would they feel?
How does it make you feel that your family can harvest your sperm after your death because they want grandchildren? I don't know about you, but it would make me very uncomfortable.
This isn't about her son or his wishes. It is about her and her wishes. Yes, no parent expects that they will outlive their children. As a parent, I cannot even begin to understand the grief this woman is suffering at the moment. But if I am ever so unfortunate to outlive my son's, I would never remove their sperm to allow them to 'live on' or to allow myself the ability to hold on to them after their death in such a fashion.
It has happened and in one case in the UK I believe, the man's family has taken the wife to court to prevent her from harvesting his sperm, or he may have had sperm frozen for later use due to illness, the specifics of the case escapes me at the moment. The husband and the wife had been planning on having children but he died before that desire could be realised. And that is something completely different to this case. In this instance, the boy had stated once that he wanted to have 3 sons and had said what he would name them. Is that basis enough to harvest his sperm without his consent and to have an unknown party carry said sperm to bring life to children so that his mother can be a grandmother and have something to hold on to?
What if the husband had expressly stated that he never wants children and he dies and his wife (or parents if the case may be) harvests his sperm?
My concern and "issue" stems from the fact that her reasoning may not be so sound. Grief can make people do stupid things and to me, what she is doing is macrabe.
Roman made a remark earlier on about 'think of the children'. But someone has to think of the children that could result from this.
Has she?
Her desire is ultimately selfish.
She wants grandchildren without her son's consent and she has removed his sperm without his consent to have them implanted in a stranger to carry said sperm and give her the grandchildren that she desires, because she feels that she is entitled to become a grandmother.
This isn't about her son. It is about her. And that could result in severely affecting the children that could be born of this whole scenario.
She is planning on making him a father after his death to help her recover from her loss and her grief. And that, ultimately is wrong because her actions will affect the lives of others, they being the children that could be born from the sperm.
"Parried"? "Her"?If her were in a vegetative state and on life support they could terminate his life "without his consent" as his legal guardian (and since he's not parried that role likely would fall to the parents). Is that creepy too? Suppose they decided to keep him alive in that state for decades? He still gets no say.
This is another medical decision that can be made without consent, I see nothing more or less creepy about it.
blah blah.. rest of personal and ad hominem rant.. blah blah..
Though there is no clear indication that the dead young man wanted to sire children posthumously – who ever thinks of such things? – there is no legal barrier to his mother's bizarre action. University of Texas law professor John Robertson, who specializes in bioethics issues, says the law grants next of kin rights to dispose of the body. Marissa Evans, 42, harvested her son's organs and donated them legally, the law professor said.
As far as the law is concerned, semen is merely another kind of tissue.
As a legal opinion, that makes sense. But ethically, neither semen nor human eggs are just tissue. Both contain the potential to generate life. Imagine a close relative strip-mining your body for the material to create children you never consented to have. Privacy rights end when you die, of course, but to have one's next of kin making such a profound, and profoundly intimate, choice for one after death will strike many people as a gross violation of personal sovereignty.
The law struggles to keep up with advances in biotechnology and revolutions in cultural mores. It wouldn't have occurred to most people to collect their dead child's sperm for the therapeutic creation of human life.
Increasingly, the only solid rule of bioethics is: If it can be done, it will be done.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...s/DN-dead_0411edi.State.Edition1.17b5414.html