The latest news in the brave new world of reproductive medicine is that sometimes miscarriage is a good thing.
Julie Garber was a 28-year-old single woman who died a year ago of leukemia. Before her death she presumably told her parents, Howard and Jean Garber, that she wanted a child. Embryos were made through in vitro fertilization, using Julie’s eggs and donor sperm. The embryos were then frozen, awaiting transfer either to Julie’s uterus, or (should she die) another woman’s uterus.
No one really knows whether Julie wanted a child after her death. She left no advance directive for her embryos and designated no one to carry out her wishes to become a “mother.” But according to her parents, Julie wanted her embryos implanted in a surrogate. They claimed their deceased daughter has a right to be a mother and that they have a right to be grandparents.
After Julie’s death, her parents found a woman who agreed to enter into a surrogacy contract with them and proceeded with embryo transfer. The procedure failed about four weeks after embryo implantation. The Garbers said they believed they had done everything possible to honor their daughter’s “wishes,” saying “now Julie is not alone, she is with her `child.’ “
This case raises serious ethical questions. Is there a right to reproduce after death? Can a dead woman be a mother? Is expressed consent over the disposition of one’s gametes sufficient to justify posthumous reproduction? Is the family entitled to make reproductive decisions for dead relatives?
There have been only a handful of publicized cases of posthumous reproduction in the world (two in France, one in Great Britain, one in Italy and two in the United States). Except for the Italian case, all of the cases centered around women requesting sperm banks to release the sperm of deceased husbands or boyfriends so that the women could proceed with posthumous insemination.
The rights to reproduce and to avoid reproduction are fundamental rights. Denial of either creates burdens on individuals and affects their lives in ways that they alone best appreciate.
People value reproduction during their lifetime for the experience it entails, including birth and rearing offspring. Decisions to procreate are to most people valued decisions that include more than the mere desire to have genetic offspring, and extend into a genuine interest in fulfilling responsibilities as parents, ensuring the well being of offspring and establishing a long and meaningful relationship with them. These values and interests are lacking in posthumous reproduction.
Julie Graber will never know whether she had a genetic child or even be aware of the child’s existence. She will never be able to experience motherhood and bear parental responsibility.
And for all their desire to be grandparents, Howard and Jean Graber could never achieve this goal through Julie’s embryos. One cannot become a mother (or grandmother) by proxy. The Grabers may contract with another woman to gestate Julie’s embryos, but the woman, and not Julie, would have been the mother of the resulting child, and the woman’s parents, not Julie’s, would have been grandparents.
Nor could Julie’s desire change this. Dead people are dead. They can have their organs donated to others (to save their lives), but they are incapable of reproducing.
The Grabers posthumous reproduction decision was wrong because it attempted to produce “souvenir babies” as a medical treatment for their grief. There is no treatment for their grief. There is no treatment for death.
Posthumous reproduction violates the interests of children to be born with the possibility of having two living parents. And because it will always require a woman’s body as an essential means to the reproductive ends of others, posthumous reproduction also depersonalizes women and turns them into commodities. To produce babies with dead people’s gametes and to treat women as reproductive accessories devalue both women and children.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (formerly The American Fertility Society) and, if necessary, state legislatures, should prohibit the posthumous use of gametes for reproduction. Only this strong action will end the fantasy that dead people can be parents.
