Politics
Friday July 16, 2004
IVF Child Conceived With Dead Man's Sperm is Ruled by Court to be His Child
TODAY'S HEADLINES
E-MAIL
PRINT
TAKAMATSU, July 16, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The moral labyrinth created by the IVF industry is producing some of history's more memorable legal decisions. A Japanese court has ruled that the child born of IVF using a dead man's sperm is, in fact, the man's child. The child was conceived in a lab after his father died of leukemia. When the child's mother tried to register the birth, the local government refused to allow it on the grounds that the father had died more than 300 days before the birth date. The normal length of human gestation is about 270 days.
The woman filed a lawsuit to have her son legally recognized as the child of his father. The first court denied the suit on the grounds of "common sense" saying it was impossible to recognize the father-child relationship in such a case. The Takamatsu High Court overturned the lower court ruling.
Gillian Long, Research Director for Campaign Life Coalition who monitors the Japanese scene said, "The situation is so convoluted now with all the re-defining of what a human being is, what marriage is, what a parent is, that we now need court decisions reached by lawyers with no scientific competence to tell us what ought to be obvious to any fifth grader."
The deceased man had signed a statement that he did not want his sperm used to impregnate his widow after his death. Under the Japanese Civil Code a child has a right to be recognized as the child of his father up to three years after the father's death. However, the law makes no provision for the problems created by the new technologies.
"What is so hard to understand about all this, is that tomorrow a different court somewhere is going to decide that some other IVF child has no rights at all," Long said. Japan has just decided that with cloning for stem cells, those people are not people either. Some time, the law is going to have to make up its collective mind about what a human being is and what human rights really are."
Further coverage from Mainichi Daily News:
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040716p2a00m0dm009000c.html
ph
Back to TopLatest Headlines
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase out Lab Rats
- Ohio Supreme Court Allows Planned Parenthood to Conceal Abortion Records in Sexual Abuse Case
- LifeSiteNews Canada Day and Independence Day Message. Taking a few days off. LSN returns Monday July 6
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Pro-Life Groups Announce New Colorado Personhood Initiative
- Judge Puts Kibosh on DC Gay "Marriage" Referendum
- Al Franken Win Hands Supermajority to Senate Democrats
- Group Funded by Canadian Bishops' D&P Joins with Others to Denounce the "Natural Family" and "Family Rights"
- Financially Troubled Planned Parenthood of El Paso Closes Doors
- Abortion Linked to Subsequent Pre-Term Births, New Research Again Confirms
- New Orleans Homosexual Couple Ask Fed. Court to Overturn Marriage Amendment
- Slim Hope Of New Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Promoting Pro-Life, Pro-Family Issues
- Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Caught Involved in Homosexual Encounters
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Northern Ireland Politician Cleared of Wrongdoing after Reiterating Christian Teaching on Homosexual Acts
- UK Conservative Leader Speaks at Gay Pride Fundraiser
- More Letters to the Editor on Canadian Catholic Development and Peace Scandal (July 1)
- Letters to the Editor - Readers Respond to Development and Peace Scandal
- Watch This Dramatic New Video on Catholic Bishops Conference Funding of Pro-Abortion Groups
Most Read this Week
- Homosexual Duke U. Director Charged with Offering Adopted 5-Year-Old for Sex
- Famed Fr. Corapi Calls Canadian Bishops' Dissent from Humanae Vitae "Catastrophic"
- Pope: It is a Childish Faith to Oppose the Church Teaching on Life and Family
- LifeSiteNews Detailed Response to Canadian Bishops' Whitewash Report on Development and Peace
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Is Pro-Choice the New Pro-Life?
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase Out Lab Rats
- Swedish Parents Won't Tell if Child is Boy or Girl as Gender Experiment
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.