Academic

More Live Sperm, Dead Donor

By Kim Krawiec

Last week, I blogged about the Ninth Circuit decision in Vernoff v. Astrue, which upheld the Social Security Administration?s (SSA) denial of child survivor benefits to Brandalynn Vernoff, a 10-year-old Los Angeles girl conceived from the frozen sperm of a dead man.   Now, it appears that another case involving the rights of posthumously-created offspring to claim SSI benefits is making its way through the court system.  According to the Des Moines Register, Patti Beeler has lost an appeals process through the SSA, which denied survivor benefits to her six-year-old daughter.  Beeler has now filed suit in federal court challenging the decision.  In contrast to the Vernoff case, in which the sperm was extracted posthumously and without any indication of consent by the father to the procedure, Bruce Beeler banked sperm prior to the start of chemotherapy treatments, which often cause sterility, so that the couple could have children after he recovered.  However, Beeler did not recover, and after his death Patti Beeler used IVF to conceive using Bruce's previously-banked sperm.

In looking through the secondary literature, it seems as if there?s been some amount of writing on the legal issues surrounding these cases, but I haven?t come across a whole lot yet on the broader policy issues surrounding them.  In other words, what are the policy consequences of allowing, or not, posthumously-created offspring to claim SSI survivor benefits?  Should it matter  (again as a matter of public policy, rather than black letter law) whether the sperm was extracted posthumously or not?  So, gentle readers, please post your thoughts, reactions, sources, and reading recommendations in the comments . . . so that I can steal your ideas and turn them into a law review article.

(HT: Egg Donor and Surrogacy Blog) 

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 30, 2009 (boomark / email).