Could Posthumous Egg Donation Ever Be Morally Acceptable?
A recent report from NEJM about a surviving husband to have the eggs of his dead wife harvested in order to create a posthumous child has raised the question of gender equity in the posthumous harvesting of gametes. With the harvesting of sperm from dead men having been well-explored, women's reproductive material is also entering the post-life harvesting category.
The concerns in the particular NEJM case were clear: the wife had recently suffered irreversible brain damage as the result of a heart attack, life support was removed, and then the husband asked to have the respirator turned back on (yes, turned back on) to keep his wife alive long enough to have the hormone injections put into her necessary for the harvesting of her eggs. Luckily, the medical team did not accede to his request.
Why?
According to the NEJM article, the patient had never clearly expressed such wishes, nor had the husband. Until now. Moreover, she was on oral contraceptive pills to prevent pregnancy. No advance directive existed--not that it would have likely covered posthumous reproduction!
So what could have ever justified such a case as this? In my mind, nothing. But could there be such a case of posthumous egg harvesting, of course. In a case where a married woman suffers a tragic, sudden, life-threatening event and where she had previously expressed to her partner/husband/family the strong desire to have a child, one could strongly argue for the posthumous harvesting of her eggs.
And yes, I think this is the same standard to which the posthumous harvesting of sperm should be held to as well.
Unfortunately, this NEJM case was not one of those. The pull that the husband must have felt not to "lose" his wife must have been incredible, but the answer was not to put her through a medically inappropriate procedure, keeping her alive unnecessarily and harmfully to try to result in a reproductive act that neither she nor he would have wanted under ordinary circumstances.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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I have a worry about this analysis. The woman didn't express the desire to have a child, in fact indicated the opposite, so (using the parallel to organ donation), it makes sense not to harvest her oocytes.
But using the argument that she would have been put through an unnecessary procedure does not make sense - if she was considered dead, then "she" isn't put through any procedure at all. I think we need to be consistent about using "death," if we're going to talk about issues around life support.
- by Ina on Jul 23, 2010 at 12:56 PM | link
I disagree with INA in this regard.
A person does have an interest in whether they will be a parent and this goes beyond the issue of one's current life span. After all, most of us do pass on before our children do. However, we draw up wills to try and distribute financial assets equitably. To say that dead is just dead and all subsequent events are irrelevant is like saying that there should not be beneficiaries of a life insurance policy, or wills. The issue of parenthood is even larger from a moral perspective.
- by Michael Orenstein on Jul 24, 2010 at 12:02 AM | link
It seems as though for most cases when our partners pass away that there is always reflection of the "I wish we had..." and "Why didn't we...?" Would not this thought of "We didn't have a baby.", "I need a piece of her to go on.", be the same thing? It seems to me that this is a normal reaction and we should not rush about into the idea of now we need to start preserving ova a sperm posthumous.
Carmen Gaines
- by Carmen Gaines on Jul 25, 2010 at 11:41 AM | link