Tampering in God's Domain Dept.

Extracting semen from a cadaver.

Woman Allowed to Have Dead Lover's Child: Associated Press

A New York judge has given a woman permission to harvest her dead lover's sperm so she can still have his baby.

Johnny Quintana was only 31 when he died Thursday of an apparent heart attack.

He had wanted to have a second child with his fiancee, Gisela Marrero, but the only way to make it happen was to quickly collect his sperm, which stays fresh for only 36 hours after death.

A court order was needed because Quintana and Marrero were not yet married.

The Bronx judge said "yes" Friday with only four hours left until the deadline.

Sperm bank staffers then rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, where Quintana's body lay.

Marrero already has a 2-year-old son with Quintana.

This is wrong on so many levels. It is basically an injustice to the child who may be born in this process to have be deprived of a father. This assumes a likely scenario where Gisela Marrero will continue to choose not to be married.

Can me skeptical but I doubt that he made an explicit desire to become a posthumous father.

There's a disturbing aspect to this about a girlfriend having marital rights in some areas but not others. The state and city denied survivors pensions to all the girlfriends/boyfriends of the police and fire employees killed in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 for example.

It's like judge-supervised lottery.

Tampering in God's Domain Dept.

Girl born a record 22 years after father's sperm is frozen: Times UK

Doctors selected the best of the remaining [sperm] cells and injected them into ten eggs harvested from Mrs Biblis, of which seven fertilized successfully in the laboratory. Two of the embryos were implanted, though only one survived, and five remain in storage, allowing the couple the option of having more children.

This is one of the hard cases. Our sympathy rushes to the Chris Biblis who at 16 was rendered incapable of fathering children because of the treatment for his leukemia. The language of the article is coarse -- never giving human dignity to human embryos, or having ethical second thoughts about the collateral damage

Brave New World Dept.

I had no concern about working with old sperm – bovine and equine sperm has been frozen for long periods and has resulted in successful gestations.

Hey! It's science and the scientists are in charge. Stella may eventually learn of her sibling in the womb and her frozen siblings. Perhaps when she is an adult, the consciences of the world may just accept this as a routine way of being born.