A growing number of bereaved parents in Israel are asking to extract and preserve the sperm of their children killed in battle, according to news reports. BBC. Following the Hamas attack in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, parents no longer need a court order to apply for this procedure.
Avi Harush, the father of Rif, a 20-year-old soldier killed in the conflict, decided to ask for his son’s sperm to be extracted because he “loved children and wanted to have children.” Several women offered to carry the child for Rif, who had no wife or girlfriend.
According to the Israeli Health Ministry, the sperm of about 170 young men, both civilians and soldiers, has already been frozen. But for other families, legal proceedings are dragging on because it is necessary to prove that the men wanted to have children.
The first parents in Israel to ask to preserve the sperm of their deceased child were Rachel and Yaakov Cohen, whose son Keyvan was killed by a Palestinian sniper in 2002 in the Gaza Strip. “A lot of people didn’t understand or support” the procedure, said Rachel, who placed an ad in a newspaper looking for a mother for her son Keyvan.Today he has a ten-year-old granddaughter, Osher, born from his sperm.
The current rules are based on guidelines published at the time, but in the midst of armed conflict with Hamas, lawmakers have yet to specify the level of explicit consent required from the deceased, or whether the child will be eligible for the benefits typically accorded to the children of fallen soldiers. There is also disagreement over what should happen if a soldier’s widow does not want to use his sperm to bear a child.
Author: Morning mail
Source: CM Jornal
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