Johnny Come Lately

Nick Gillespie | September 17, 2005

Reader Eddy Ito points us to this story from Taiwan that delivers on the threat central to the Rolling Stones' tune "Start Me Up":

Lee Hsin-yu's four-day battle to harvest sperm from the body of her deceased fiance, Army Captain Sun Chi-hsiang has met with great controversy, raising moral and legal questions related to posthumous sperm retrieval.

Sun was killed on Sept. 7 when the armored vehicle he was trying to guide onto a truck accelerated suddenly and crushed him.

When Minister of National Defense Lee Jye went to pay his last respects to Sun on Thursday, Sun's fiancee and girlfriend of 12 years hysterically pleaded with the minister, begging authorities to have his sperm preserved but to no avail, as it wasn't in accodrance with current law on posthumous sperm retrieval.

Whole thing here. The story summarizes the rather robust body of international laws dealing with the basic issue.

Comments

|9.17.05 @ 10:08PM|#

Basic "issue." So to speak.

|9.17.05 @ 11:17PM|#

My favorite line;
In the UK, sperm retrieval of the deceased is only possible providing the husband had adequate counselling at the time of semen donation and had furnished written consent.

|9.18.05 @ 1:26AM|#

Not only that, but basic issue is standard, since he was in the army.

The uniform they gave him in basic was standard issue. Therefore, his basic issue was standard. Once we agree that basic issue is standard, then we can agree that ordinary, mundane issue is of a minimal average level, and who could argue in favor of resricting access to mundane, minimal issue? See? It's just like algebra.

|9.18.05 @ 11:23AM|#

I take issue with the issues issuing forth regarding this issue.

|9.18.05 @ 12:23PM|#

The issue as I see it is does the state have a right to impose its will into a situation that is so innately private. In other words, who owns the body and hence the sperm? Does the state have a right to take the whole thing if it's not written in a will? Is it, the state, entitled to 18-55% of the sperm or is there an exception because the potential tax revenue generated by the offspring?

Putting the proverbial shoe be put on the other gender and harvest eggs from well, anywhere, and is the state able of making such a decision and should it have that ability? Taken a step further, will dead women be kept on life support more often to provide the next best thing to an artificial womb?

|9.18.05 @ 1:05PM|#

Shu expressed that there was an ethical responsibility to be paid to the child, whom he felt would "have an incomplete personality, if conceived, particularly when the child came to know how they came into being."

Damn, if I found out that my life was owed to the vigilance of my mother, to go through such lengths to simply bring me into this world, I might be somewhat flattered. Why would he have an "incomplete personality"? And who is the standard-bearer for "complete personalities"? Who is the judge of whether a personality is "complete"?

"Shu also brought up the possibility that owing to the circumstances of the sperm retrieval, the child's health would "forever be the burden of the child, the mother and their family."

As opposed to who? The gubmint? The taxpayers? So, if I conceive iin a normal manner, then my child's health's responsibility is everyone's. But if I do it in a non-traditional manner, then it is ours alone. Agh! LOGIC, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN THEM?