OPINION:
First, her son was taken hostage to the Gaza Strip during the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Then, after managing to escape his captors, he was tragically killed by Israeli troops who mistook him for an armed militant.
Now, Iris Haim wants to use the sperm harvested from her son’s dead body to conceive a grandchild through surrogacy. She says her son, Yotam, who was 28 when he was killed, wanted children, and bringing his child into the world is also a way to show resilience in the face of tragedy. “Every mother whose child was killed wants to have something from that child, not just photos,” she has said.
Iris Haim is not alone. Requests are now coming through the court system in Israel to use reproductive material from posthumous sperm retrieval from men killed on Oct. 7 and in the war’s aftermath to make babies, sometimes with women the deceased never knew. In addition to legal challenges, the issue encompasses complex ethical, emotional and psychological issues, which I have seen firsthand as a rabbi in Israel advising couples and families on the issue.
A high value placed on family motivates Israel’s other reproductive-related policy, including government-subsidized in vitro fertilization and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for couples experiencing infertility, as well as for single women who want to build families on their own. The Jewish state is among the world’s most liberal countries when it comes to posthumous sperm retrieval, and is an outlier in facing this issue head-on.
Most countries, including the United States, do not see the volume of requests relative to their population sizes that Israel now does. Many countries, including France, Germany and Canada, do not allow the postmortem retrieval of sperm at all for reproduction.
However, science is rapidly advancing, the makeup of families is changing and more places in the world are facing deadly military conflicts. This includes Ukraine, where the government pays for soldiers to freeze their sperm before they head to battle so their partners can have their future children. Today, posthumous parenthood is an issue that policymakers, medical professionals and faith leaders everywhere must prepare to face.
Even ancient Jewish sources, written long before modern science enabled such procedures, discuss intrauterine insemination and posthumous fatherhood as legitimate concepts, linking the sperm donor to the conceived child and thus recognizing the paternal relationship between baby and donor, even if the latter is deceased.
Courts and other advisers, including religious leaders and health professionals, must address the psychological and ethical issues. We need to be careful not to create children as “living memorial candles,” babies created for the sake of the grieving family. Many have questioned the ethics of knowingly bringing an orphan into the world; a recent survey in Israel revealed that 47.3% of men would oppose their parents’ using their sperm in such a way. In certain circumstances, 38.3% would be fine with it.
Some studies have shown that posthumous parenthood presents risks to remaining family members’ mental health. The family must grieve its recent loss and gain distance from it; that process cannot play out if they bring a child of the deceased into the world.
Other studies have shown that raising such a child can help the grieving and healing process. No matter which approach is correct, and this likely depends on each family’s situation, professionals should carefully consider the impact on the grieving process and mental health of the family. Perhaps mandating appropriate counseling would be an effective approach. Organizations that provide guidance on organ donation or will preparation should begin to address posthumous reproduction too.
In Jewish tradition, we add the Hebrew words for “May they rest in peace” after mentioning the name of a deceased person, but what does that really mean? Does it communicate that the deceased deserve to rest in peace and that their genetic material should not be reproduced in any fashion? Or does it mean that the deceased can truly rest in peace when their legacy lives on and their loved ones find healing through the creation of new life?
Ultimately, every individual and family must answer this question for themselves, but it is up to policymakers, medical professionals and faith leaders to build the frameworks needed to help grieving families navigate these increasingly relevant and complex questions.
• Rabbi Kenneth Brander is the president of Ohr Torah Stone, an international network of 32 religious educational institutions. He previously served as a vice president at Yeshiva University in New York and is the rabbi emeritus of the Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida.
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