Warning: This case could decide that life begins at conception

A New Jersey mom is seeking Social Security survivor benefits for twins conceived in vitro after her husband's cancer death.

Karen Capato has been fighting the agency's rejection of her claim in federal court.

And this week, a U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia sided with her, ordering a federal judge who rejected her claim to reconsider.

The court says there's no doubt the 7-year-old twins are the biological children of Capato and her husband, Robert, who died in 2002. They were conceived using sperm frozen before he started treatment.


http://www.northjersey.com/news/010611_NJ_mom_seeks_late_dads_benefits_for_in_vitro_kids.html

But I don't think we should give human rights to sperms and eggs.

of human development, so in that sense, a blastocyst is H. sapiens in the blastocyst stage. Life of that particular human being started at conception. But it's not a person, IDT.

of chromosomes, while a germ cell (like the egg or sperm) has only a half.

A blastocyst, zygote, fetus, child, teen, adult, senior, are all developmental stages of Homo sapiens. This is just biology textbook stuff. The legal question is when, during this development the human becomes a "person" in the legal sense (entitled to 4th Amendment protections, for example). Right now, it is at birth. But biologically, that's fairly arbitrary. A child's brain right after birth is not much different from a fetus' brain just before birth. So it is farly obvious to me that a fully developed fetus is a person, but I do not think a blastocyst should be declared a person because it does not have a neural network. Hell, it does not even have a single neuron. I think the fetus becomes a person when it becomes aware of its surroundings, but that's just my opinion. I hope I made this clear now.

and the open question is whether they were dependents at the time he died.

Since they had not even been conceived, that would assume that his sperm would count as dependent children. I don't see that happening.

Since she wasn't pregnant at the time of his death it doesn't matter if life begins at conception. What matters is if they were dependents. I don't think frozen sperm is a dependent.

Be interesting to see what the courts say about this

Why the "warning"?

The central point of Roe is a balance between (a) a person's right of autonomy in medical decisionmaking, and (b) a state interest in preserving life.

The Roe decision basically said that as a pregnancy continues, the balance progressively tilts from a to b. Hence the degree of permissible restrictions increases as the pregnancy proceeds.

That is Roe in a nutshell.

It is not premised on some notion of "when life begins". That is a rhetorical argument device used by anti-choicers.

The reasoning in Roe is not dependent on any notion of "when life begins".

If she had been impregnated before he died that might be another issue.

can be eligible for the Social Security benefits, that legitimizes legal life in utero, giving ammunition to legislators who are trying to equate abortion with murder in the womb.

Roe v. Wade is not premised on whether life begins at conception. Roe v. Wade expressly recognizes that life in utero is life. The point of Roe v. Wade is a shifting of relative interests as pregnancy proceeds.

The hysteria over this case signifies a triumph of anti-choice rhetoric to the extent that people don't even know what Roe v. Wade SAYS.

and was amazed at what it said and didn't say. Many people do no know what Roe v Wade actually is. It is quite interesting, though rather convoluted at times.

Scenario one is the embryos were in existence, i.e. fertilized and dividing, at the time of his death. If that were the case the issue to be decided is whether they were dependents for purposes of survivor benefits at the time of his death. One argument is in order for them to be dependents they would have to be recognized as being "live" at that time. I don't know that is necessarily true. Survivor benefits are intended to provide benefits to those that survive the death of a parent. The idea is that the parent would have provided for them had the parent continued to live. It isn't necessarily conclusive that a ruling that the children that were subsequently born after the father's death are entitled to survivor benefits means they are deemed to have been legally alive at the time of his death. It can be that the fact the embryos had the potential for life at the time of his death entitle them to benefits because had the father survived he would have provided for them.

Scenario two is the embryos were not even in existence at the time of his death, i.e. the mother became pregnant using the deceased father's sperm. Here I think it is more difficult to see where the embryos are entitled to survivor benefits. They weren't in existence as embryos at the time of his death. This was an action taken by the mother after his death.

The case does raise interesting legal and ethical issues.

Corpses? The notion that "life begins at conception" is ridiculous. Live began some billions of years ago and every organism born today shares an unbroken chain of descent from the present to that last common ancestor.

Look-- for life to "begin" at conception or anytime during fetal development, it must not have existed previously, right? So the gametes that produced the zygote must not have been alive, with either the parents producing dead gametes that somehow miraculously "begin living" sometime after syngamy, or with the parents themselves being zombies. If life "begins" ANYTIME during the lifetime of any organism, then what was it's condition before life "began?" This whole train of thinking is ridiculous.

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