Creating new life from the dead by Biological Will™
Last week, the child of the IDF solider Keivan Cohen, shot dead in Gaza in 2002, was born eleven years after his death.
This miraculous birth is possible though The Biological Will™. The Biological Will™ is a legal testament that I developed that documents the intended use or disposal of any individual’s sperm, ova or embryos in case of death, incapacitation or infertility. Biological Wills™ offer singles and same-sex couples an alternative to anonymous sperm or ova donations by receiving sperm or ova from a known donor. All stakeholders benefit: the individual that fathers/mothers children in the face of incapacity or death, the designated parent, who knows his child’s full heritage, the donor’s family, who continue their family line, and the child, who gets a genetic record, a whole family tree, and a complete family.
According to my philosophy, a central derivative of the human right to reproduce is the right to know your origins. I argue that anonymous gamete donations rob children of their genetic record, complete family tree, and extended family. Children’s hunger to find their roots is so compelling that adopted children and those born of anonymous gamete donations may spend their entire lives unraveling the mystery of their origins.
From my proposal to establish a sperm bank for Israel Defense Forces soldiers in 2001 through the delivery of the world’s first and only child to be born of posthumous maternity by Biological Will™ in 2011, The Biological Will™ initiative broke the boundaries of nature to make this new paradigm in fertility and conception a reality. In 2011, a child was born to a surrogate mother from the frozen embryo created by his parents before his mother succumbed to cancer, and the child is being raised by his father and wife. In 2013, three new babies came to the world to single mothers years after their father’s death through the Biological Will™,.
The child will be raised by a single woman who chose to receive a sperm donation from a known father over an anonymous sperm donor. This child will bring incredible joy to her mother, who went to extraordinary lengths to conceive her, and to his extended paternal family, who fought for a decade for her birth. The child will grow up knowing that she is wanted and loved by so many,
I am privileged to be creating new life in ways that were inconceivable and legally impossible just a few years ago.
Irit Rosenblum is an attorney at law, an expert on family law and fertility technologies, founder and executive director of New Family Organization.