Sperm From Dead Fathers

Posted by Joanna Karpasea-Jones Jun 17, 2008

I know that losing a spouse is one of the most painful things that can happen to a person, especially if you're young and had the rest of your lives ahead of you and all your dreams and plans for things you wanted to do together. Sometimes love only comes once. There is no guarantee in this age of throw away marriages that you ever would find another. So if a woman has lost her husband to an early death, it's natural to want his baby, to want a part of him which is still physically alive and to be able to fulfil the ambition for a family despite death. It would be comforting not only to the widow but to his parents, who would see the grandchildren they never would have had otherwise.

But if the law was changed, what would this new generation of babies make of it? Would they not be disgusted to realise that they are the product of a dead man? While other kids get to kick a ball around with their dad, these children would only get to visit a cemetary. Is that fair, that they would never be able to have a relationship with him?

On the other hand, plenty of single mothers choose IVF in order to have a baby and those children are in a similar position which people do not give much thought to. Lesbians have babies and there is also no father and one in three marriages end in divorce, usually with the father leaving his children. So the phenomenon of no dad certainly isn't a new one.

I do think that children should be told as soon as possible how they came to be because a recent study showed long term anger problems in young adults who weren't told earlier.