A new “right” to be a parent?

When my brother-in-law was a student at West Point, a fellow cadet suffered a fatal skiing accident. As an organ donor, Peter Zhu was kept on life support for three days after he was declared brain dead, according to The New York Times. In the meantime, his parents were able to obtain a special court order that allowed them to harvest his sperm.

Because the United States doesn’t have extensive regulations on how donor gametes can be used, Zhu’s parents aren’t restricted in how they can use his sperm in the future. According to the Times, his family declined to comment on any particular plans. The case was unusual enough at the time to make news headlines, as extremely few posthumous sperm retrieval procedures take place in the United States.

Fast-forward several years to war-torn Israel. Harvesting sperm from dead Israeli soldiers is becoming an increasingly common practice, according to recent reporting from the Times.

Israel has long been ahead of the curve when using assisted reproductive technologies. Families can access free in vitro fertilization until a woman turns 45 with the state footing the bill. While elsewhere in the world, the cost of a round of IVF can be prohibitive, Israel has mastered the art of nearly free fertility. One woman explained to the Times that “there is something deeply humane about this policy, the idea that people have the right to be parents.”

That belief has birthed a strange new frontier in assisted reproductive technologies, with Israel once again leading the way. Families of soldiers killed on the front lines of the Gaza war can now opt to harvest sperm from their sons through a new policy encouraged by the military. Although the Times reports still only 200 cases so far under this new policy, numbers of retrievals are expected to increase. However, unlike in the United States, Israeli families must endure an arduous court process to use the harvested sperm to produce a child, proving that their son desires to become a parent.

One can imagine the host of ethical and legal issues raised by this practice. It’s challenging to picture telling a child conceived through this process that their father died, perhaps many years ago, and that they are the result of a posthumous harvesting process that leaves them fatherless.

War has always preyed on vulnerable children. The sad fate of a war orphan is an ancient story, one that holds ancient wounds. Today, war orphans are created on purpose.

The tragedy of a soldier’s death when serving their country isn’t solved by creating a host of new, wounded children, intentionally made to be fatherless. But sadly, what happens elsewhere in the world often serves as a preemptive warning for the United States.

The state of artificial reproductive technology use in the U.S. military is already egregious. In March, the Department of Veterans Affairs allowed “eligible unmarried Veterans and eligible Veterans in same-sex marriages” to access IVF, with donor eggs and sperm provided by the VA. Eligible veterans would be those with a fertility-specific injury acquired while in service.

To be more clear, taxpayers are funding gamete donation to disabled unmarried or gay veterans and active duty service members. There is no age limit on who might be eligible for this service, as it’s explained as a “lifetime” benefit.

The VA doesn’t currently cover sperm or egg harvesting posthumously, addressing this new policy change explains the commitment to “ensure maximum support” for eligible veterans, using assisted reproductive technologies to “benefit severely injured or seriously ill” soldiers.

But it’s not unreasonable that this policy may be expanded in the future to cover harvesting gametes from dead soldiers.

Americans already concerned about the ethical issues raised by typical IVF use should be clear-eyed about the future use of assisted reproductive technologies in exceptional cases.

But Republicans have lost their footing on the moral issues surrounding IVF and its uses. Addressing these issues may be more fruitful after the results of this election cycle, but it will take a concerted, organized effort from Christians that will make us unpopular.

No one has the right to be a parent. Christianity alone offers the appropriate orientation when facing life’s deepest wounds and disappointments. Children do not exist to fulfill our sentimental desires or our goals to build particular types of families. For Christians, families exist for the glory of God alone. Thankfully, God remembers those for whom parenting, or the loss of the ability to parent, brings pain. He places the lonely in families. May we join him in that act of creation, not by using fantastic technologies to create ethical dilemmas but by making our families cross barriers of blood. In the kingdom of God, everyone is welcomed as a brother, sister, mother, father, daughter, and son.