Posthumous sperm retrieval has been legal in Israel since 2003.1 This procedure, being made possible by technology, involves the extraction of sperm from the body of a man post his death to be later used by his surviving partner via IVF or insemination. When the person who asks for the retrieval is the wife, she only needs to complete documents to have the procedure approved and performed, a procedure that must take place 24 hours post-mortem to be successful. In other cases, the court must be addressed for the procedure to be approved. In the past, this procedure came to public and legal attention when the deceased person's parents asked to retrieve their son's sperm in order to themselves raise their potential grandchildren. Those couples did not receive permission from the court to bring their grandchildren into the world as their children. However, other couples who asked the court's permission to extract their deceased child's sperm to be donated to women did receive permission.
Recently, this procedure came back to public discussion in Israel when, during the 72 hours following the Hamas massacre of October 7, women who lost their partners but whose partners' bodies were found, applied to perform the procedure that would enable them to have more children. The scale of the event of October 7 brought a surge in these applications, which the hospitals and the state could not satisfy due to the short window of time in which the procedure must take place.
This brought many cries of pain, which were expressed in a social media campaign by one of these women immediately after the event with the hope to expediate the process. As the hospitals and the courts were not able to meet the demand, the campaign failed. She accused the state of having abandoned her husband's body.2
The Real of the sexual non-rapport comes to the fore with the loneliness of death. Posthumous sperm retrieval is an attempt to deal with this Real, but the question arises whether this attempted solution works for these subjects, even when the procedure is granted and performed. The execution of this procedure of course gives rise to other questions as well, in having technology producing children who are being born to a dead father.
[1] See, for example, Ghert-Zand, R., "Embryologists inundated with requests for sperm retrieval from the fallen and dead," 12 October 2023, available online: https://www.timesofisrael.com/embryologists-inundated-with-requests-for-sperm-retrieval-from-the-fallen-and-dead/; Goldberg, E., "Grieving Parents Ask: Should They Freeze Their Dead Son's Sperm?," 20 November 2024, available online:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/business/israel-soldiers-sperm.html; Shuval, M, "The Israelis who want grandchildren from their dead sons' sperm," 30 July 2024, available online: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c978m6pl99go
[2] Ibid.
