Posted on 03/20/2012 7:55:38 AM PDT by Former Fetus
Next week, the Supreme Court will begin deciding whether President Obama’s health-care reforms live or die. But if you think that’s ambitious, consider what the modest justices were debating on Monday: what Americans are allowed to do AFTER they die.
Specifically, the question before the court was whether a dead man can help conceive children.
This odd point of law came before the court after a woman, Karen Capato, gave birth to twins 18 months after her husband died of cancer. She had used sperm he deposited when he was alive, and she was seeking his Social Security survivor benefits for the kids.
The Constitution is silent on the question of posthumous conception, in large part because people back then did not sire children after death. In addition, the relevant Social Security law, written in 1939, does not get into questions of whether a surviving “child” includes one who was fertilized in vitro. In other words, the justices pretty much had to wing it.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
I’d say the baseline problem with the pro-benefits side is that by definition, a “survivor” is somebody who is STILL HERE when somebody else is not. These post-death IVFs are, by definition, NOT survivors because they weren’t in existence at the time of Daddy’s death.
A little like the basic fallacy of “natural” homosexuality: sex between two creatures who can never, under any set of circumstances, naturally conceive and bear a child together is, by its very definition, “unnatural”.
Of course, there I go using actual logic...sorry, my bad.
Sorry, this is an easy one: The marriage contract is “to death do we part.” She had the children either as a single woman, in which case the children are bastards, or as a married woman, in which case the children are the children of her husband.
As for Mormons, whose marriages continue eternally, now that would be a bit tougher; but, just a bit. Since, by the non-establishment clause of the 1st Amendment, the Congress may not establish a church, Mormon belief about eternal marriage is not a federal concern.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.
Some religions are more equal than others, muslims are exempt from ObamaCare...
quote “in large part because people back then did not sire children after death”
um... people sire children after death all the time.
It takes 9 months to have a child after conception, I don’t see how having a child several years later is much different than having one 9 months later.
Again... My opinion
Sex with a corpse is a dead issue.
To me this is pretty cut and dry.
If a married man who qualifies for survivor benefits has sex with his wife, then gets into a car accident a hour later. And 9 months later that wife gives birth to a child from that... would that child qualify for survivor benefits?
I assume the answer to that is yes.
And if it is... then I don't see any difference in the child coming into the world 9 months later vs 2 years later.
The difference is that one is completely natural and the other is completely artificial. I suppose people can do whatever they want, but when they come looking for a government handout it darn well ought to be based upon something natural, IMHO.
ML/NJ
I am just a few short years from going on social security but for the good of the country I would rather shut the agency down NOW. I certainly don't want my multiple decades of hard earned money going to some twit that couldn't find a way of letting her dead husband rest in peace.
In my opinion your analogy is nothing more than a red-herring. Why not just clone the husband and get the social security administration to pay for that?
As one responder put it... It's "unnatural" to be artificially inseminated. People are free to do it but pay for the procedures and results yourself.
Unfortunately our society is now sick and devoid of the concept of "personal responsibility". Our Supreme Court is moderate to liberal in it's leanings and so I fear they too will side with your position. That doesn't make it right but rather sets a precedent that others will use to escalate the inevitable demise of social security and ultimately our country.
But what do I know? Common sense is frowned upon and mocked.
Both common law and statutory law recognize the possibility of a women being pregnant at the time that her husband dies. In such a case, the child, should the child be born and live the requisite time after birth, would be a surviving child. This woman was not pregnant at the time her husband died.
um... the social security death benefit is not a handout, it is a life insurance benefit meant to help widows and orphans, that you pay into.
The original intent of the benefit was to cover a situation like this:
A man is married to a wife who stays home and never works, and he works from age 20-65 and then promptly drops dead. You would argue that his wife and children get zip? even though he paid into the system for 45 years?
That is the situation the benefit is meant to cover. It gives a benefit to the surviving wife, and to the children until they reach adulthood.
A child conceived nine months prior to its* father's death was nevertheless alive (in utero) at the time of its father's death.
A child conceived in vitro after the father's death - i.e. a child whose father was already dead at the point in time of conception - cannot, in any sense of the word, be regarded as a survivor.
Otherwise, I could claim to be a survivor of the sinking of the Titanic.
Besides that simple logical objection, there's also the fact that the mother knowingly and willfully conceived a child whose father would not be there to nurture, support, and raise it.
Regards,
*By the way: For the record, I am using the neutral personal possessive pronoun (its) not because I doubt the personhood of the conceived child - I don't - but rather because, generally, its gender is unknown before birth.
so you are saying that any child conceived from IVF should be denied government benefits?
I am total confused about your “un-natural” comment.
Is your problem with this the fact that it was only the sperm that was saved? what if a fertilized embryo had been frozen and implanted 2 years later?
Sorry...
Regards,
And here in is the problem for pro-deathers. When does a "child" become a child? At conception or after he/she's breathed his/her first breath of air? If a child cannot be considered a child until after it's come out of the womb (9 months, 2 years, heck... 100 years) then the case can be made that it doesn't matter when the child was conceived and thus make murdering the child in the womb or pilfering the taxpayers retirement fund ok but... If it can be established that the child becomes a child at the moment of conception then all bets are off and civility, at least in part, will begin to return to our society.
This case is just one more attempt by the pro-abortion/deathers to dehumanize conceived, unborn children.
A living, fertilized embryo - even if conceived in vitro, and even if not yet implanted in the endometrium of the uterus - is, indeed, alive (that cannot be doubted); further, it is a person. A frozen embryo, however, is not alive. I.e. it does not meet the conditions of the definition of "alive." To do that, it would have to have a metabolism.
But as long as we're proposing thought experiments here, riddle me this: What if I took that sperm sample and used it to fertilize the ova of 100 million Chinese women. Would those 100 million resultant children be eligible for Social Security benefits?
What?! You're saying that that was not what S.S. was originally designed for?
Regards,
so a man works 45 years paying into the system.
his wife and him want to have children, but she is diagnosed with cancer and will have to undergo radiation treatments. So they collect her eggs before hand and combine them with his sperm and freeze the resulting embryo. After her treatments, she is declared free of cancer and they start planning to have the frozen embryo unfrozen and implanted into her.
But.. before the embryo is unfrozen and implanted, the husband dies in an accident.
According to you, if she goes ahead and implants the embryo a week after his death, the resultant child shouldn't get any benefits?
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