Mom harvests son's sperm

It's no more morbid to take his sperm than it is to take anything else from his body.

 

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It's morbid because he's dead. Morbidity doesn't make it right or wrong, it just is what it is.

I think she is either desperate to become a grandmother, but more likely she still is grieving over the sudden loss of her son and thinks she can somehow bring part of him back to life by making his child. I can't remember what show it was whether it was House or Grey's Anatomy, but a pregnant woman was brain dead, but her parents wanted to keep her alive on life support until the baby was born. Even though she was still in her first trimester and chances of the baby living that long were slim to none and if it did live it would most likely be severely mentally disabled. I didn't really understand why they would want to do that, but my mother said she would probably do the same if it were me :shrug:

 

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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.

 

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On morbid perspectives

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?

The applicable definition of morbid is "abnormally susceptible to or characterized by gloomy or unwholesome feelings". And, yes, in human psychology this kind of fascination with death—

A Texas mother who tragically lost her 21-year-old son hopes that she will be able to raise her grandchildren after a judge granted her request to posthumously harvest sperm from his body.

“It would help to heal my heart somewhat,” Marissa Evans told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday from Bedford, Texas, during an exclusive interview ....

.... “It really wasn’t difficult,” Evans said of her decision. “It was something that he’d talked about since he was a little boy. I always dreamed about watching my children have children of their own … What was difficult was actually losing my son and not being able to see him graduate from college and get married and have children the way other people have children. The whole process has been horrific; this had actually given me a bit of a bright light at the end of this devastating experience.”

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.

(Celizic)​

—is characterized by gloomy and, from a psychological outlook, unwholesome feelings.
____________________

Notes:

"morbid." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster Online. Accessed May 3, 2009. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morbid

Celizic, Mike. "Mother defends harvesting dead son’s sperm". Today. April 9, 2009. Today.MSNBC.com. Accessed May 3, 2009. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30133582/

 

It is morbid, I don't think what she did is wrong. He's dead, it's not like he cares. Harvesting stuff from dead people is also morbid, no matter what you use it for. It was just a tv show, but I was pointing out that the grandparents rather have a severely mentally and physically disabled grandchild than have nothing left of their daughter at all.

 

this is where the ethical part of it comes in. is it ethical to artificially inseminate single women...married women...women in femal\female rlationships...or simply where there is the chnace of delivering multipe offspring which would not normally occur in nature?

pick a few, pick one, pick none. see what i am getting at here?

 

So if it makes you feel bad, it's wrong?

Nice "think of the children!" Bells. Real nice.

 

What is the "valid" reason people normally have kids? Is there one? What noble purpose does that serve? Having a child to assuage grief is no more or less moral than having a child out of a strong desire to procreate, and more moral than having one because you forgot to use protection.

 

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.

 

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

 

He might of said it when he was 4 years old, my brother named all of his future children when he was little, they all rhymed.

 

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.

 

maybe she feels her son had some special quality no one else has, and wants it to still be part of the world via his kids. maybe she just wanted to bone him and this is second place.

the worst part of this for me is imagining them using a needle to harvest from the balls, i keep closing my legs as a defensive reflex.

 

Ah, so if I have two children, then my desire for grandchildren from any one of them in particular is "disgusting", but a generalized desire for grandchildren is not? I am really not seeing teh roots of why the impulse would "disgust" anyone.

Of course she wants to hold on to her child. Who doesn't? Suppose that you are given a choice between being born to this family from a dead man's sperm, but are otherwise sitting behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance. Would you choose oblivion and non-existence over birth and life under these circumstances? Should we condemn an entire line of humanity to oblivion because we don't like the reasons for conception in the case of the first generation?

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 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. If a woman goes into labor and the only person around is her father, no one gives him a hard time if the father delivers the child. Sure, if you ponder it, it means that the father will necessarily have to do and see and touch things that we would find inappropriately incestuous under other circumstances, but circumstances matter.

 

I am not saying there is anything morbid in it, although I disprove of taking anything from the body of the dead. But sperm are way more important that the body, sperm are possibility of the rise of new life.

 

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.

Besides which, if it were his wife, he *still* would have no say, and it's far more commeon in that area. Still crrepy?

I wouldn't expect it, but I am quite certain I would not be offended either.

Would you rather feel weird for a while, or not exist? Answer me honestly. If given a choice by God to erase your existence from all of time and move you into the oblivion of nothingness, or to find out that your real father dies before you were conceived, which would you choose? I'd choose the one where I get to live.

*But*, why would the kids feel worse that the grandmother made the post-mortem call rather than the guys wife? How does the identity of the decision maker logically change the situation these children face. Some kids learn that they *were not even wanted* and yet they grow up reasonably well adjusted. These kids are wanted, so at least they have that going for them, which is good.

Why? How do you feel knowing that your spouse can? Still uncomfortable? What is your Plan B? To let your sperm decay inside your rotting testicles to be fed upon by bacteria and fungi and insects and worms until every cell in your putrid corpse finally completely disintegrates? You are more comfortable with that than with there being a living breathing child who was given life by that same sperm? It being "worm food" is preferable to it being the source of a new life?

After death, your sperm is no longer yours to control, one way or another.

In fact, why do you have a preference at all? You'll be dead. You will never know the child, you will never know your parents decision, you will never know anything ever again.

I am sure she is aware that any resulting child will not be a clone. You are projecting severe mental illness onto this woman that does not seem to be warranted. She likely will love any resulting child to the same extent no matter the source of the genetic material, and there is *no* reason to believe that her reasons for wanting to get her son's sperm will in any way negatively impact her or the child's psyche any more than any other child who grows up orphaned by his or her biological parents but otherwise in a loving home with relatives who care about him or her.

Her desire does not make her a menace to herself or that kids in any way that you have demonstrated. When parents decided to have a child because they needed a new farm hand (a common reason to have kids in the pre-industrial world), no one ever condemned them for it. Bad parents who don't give a shit about their children exist all over the world, and we do not stop them from breeding, because we don't even inquire about their motives. In this case, a court was consulted and that is more process than most parents go through. In this case, the kid(s) have the advantage of being wanted and being born into a family that apparently is very close.

These kids will be fine.

The only relevant question is who is his legal guardian. Of course the dead cannot consent, but that is why we have guardians and courts. Once they say yes, everything is cool. Besides, who we to tell this woman thay she should *not* have something to hold on to? I have no degree in psychology or medicine. Where is your degree from that you can tell us, without knowing her or interviewing her, that this would be bad for her? I think I have established that this is far better for the child than your plan (the "better that you not live at all, because you make me feel weird!" line of argument you seem to have adopted—which, by the way is the reason people opposed test tube babies decades ago, though I should not presume...perhaps you still dislike them too).

That is a completely counterfactual argument, so far as we know. What if the man were an astronaut and his decaying testicles were on mars? Then I'd agree with you, as it would be too expensive to mount a mission to Mars to honor the mother's wishes. In this actual case though, here on Earth, I still don't see your point

But let us entertain your counterfactual position...In that case we defer to the person's wishes, though I would say that we do so only because the legal system has some infantile elements. In effect the legal system presumes in many cases that when a person dies that person is "looking down" on the Earth and still concerned. In reality I see no reason to presume that. We should all just be aware that once dead we lose possession of our bodies, and be satisfied with that.

Of course, that is academic because, while there is no conclusive evidence of his wishes here, what there is points in the direction of his wanting children.

That is a sound position, but it is one that demands a court hearing and evaluation to see if THIS WOMAN is of sound judgment. It does not require a blanket ban on the practice. In this case, she went to court, and they agreed with her, strongly suggesting that they found her reasonable enough.

If your concern is that she may regret it later, I have that concern with *all* parents, many of whom have sex without protection because horniness can make you do stupid things. I do not recommend banning all pregnancies unless conceived outside the throes of passion, just because passion clouds the mind.

Have you? You are condemning them to pre-abortion as the "better" alternative?

Many parents have children for selfish reasons too, should we require that the prove a good motive, maybe get a state license, before we allow conception? At least this woman actually did have to go to court and convince a third-party. Many people have children to fill a perceived emotional hole in their lives, and to date no one has suggested that the state intervene to limit their rights. Most of the time, they have these children without the court hearing too.

Look, OF COURSE he did not overtly consent, because he's dead. You are not actually scoring any points with that, as it is not really relevant. The relevant question is whether he would have consented in this particular case. Neither you nor I can know for sure, but a court agreed with the mother that he would have.

Yes, would that would could make that surrogate miscarry, that would be ideal. You should wait until these kids are 14 or so and send the kids a letter expressing your fervent belief that they would have been better off if they had never been born, because that makes just so much sense. Imagine all the sadness they could avoid never having lived! Imagine all the happiness they could avoid!

I infer from your position that you must have a pretty unhappy life. (I mean, if you think of non-existence as more rewarding than life, that has to mean something.) You are concerned about her state of mind, but I find I am more concerned about yours. I hope that, on balance, you find your life happy, but if you do not, then I hope you will seek our friends and family to help you through the darker times that make living feel so oppressive to you.

Again, alternatives? The children that could have been born from the sperm will never be born under your plan. The semen will dry up and sperm will be devoured as part of the process of the normal decay of her son's corpse. Your decision seems to be affecting those cells every bit as much as the mother's is, save that she is giving a limited number of them a chance at life, and you are condemning them all to the void forever. How is your way an improvement for anyone?

She will be less happy because you denied her a connection to her son. The children will never exits and so will never know happiness or unhappiness. Since the average person is reasonably happy overall, your plan seems to be lose-lose (except for you, because you avoid feeling "weird.") Your reasons seem selfish. (Oddly, you suggest that her selfishness is a reason to reject her position. While you have dressed your position in the borrowed robes of concern for others, I don't see that they fit at all. If I take your argument seriously, I think I should dismiss your position on grounds of it being fundamentally selfish once properly analyzed.)