kepdawg
04-10-2009, 10:28 PM
Mother gets court's OK to harvest dead son's sperm
09:24 PM CDT on Friday, April 10, 2009
By JAMIE STENGLE The Associated Press
Her son dead after being punched while trying to break up a fight on an Austin street, Missy Evans wanted to make sure he would still one day have a child of his own.
After getting a judge's consent to harvest sperm from 21-year-old Nikolas Colton Evans' body this week, she hopes to eventually find a surrogate and one day raise her son's child.
"My son wanted to graduate from college. He wanted to have children. And someone took that away from him," said Evans, 42, of Bedford.
It's a decision that ethicists say raises troubling questions, but Evans isn't concerned about what others might think. She says she is only doing what her son would have wanted.
She described her son as an "old soul" interested in filmmaking, politics, music and old movies. She said he once told her he wanted three sons and had already picked out names.
"He would love me so much for doing this," Evans said.
Austin police say Nikolas Evans was punched early March 27 and then fell to the ground, striking his head. He died April 5. Police are still trying to identify the person who hit him.
Evans said she came up with the idea late last week, after a doctor told her nothing more could be done for him. She discussed the idea with her ex-husband, her older son and other family members, and she said all supported her wish to help a part of Nikolas live on through his future offspring.
After donating his organs, Evans had to go to court to get permission to harvest his sperm. On Tuesday, a Travis County probate judge granted her wish – ordering the county medical examiner's office to keep her son's body chilled at a temperature not to exceed 39.2 degrees and allow access so an expert could take the specimen.
Evans' attorney, Mark Mueller, said no one opposed the plan.
An Austin urologist volunteered her services and collected tissue from the body Wednesday night. Evans said she has been told much of the sperm is viable and she is making plans for it to be stored.
Decisions such as Evans' must be made quickly and allow little time for a grieving person to reflect on the choice, one ethicist said.
"That child's biological father will be dead. The mother may be an egg donor, anonymous or gestational surrogate," said Tom Mayo, director of Southern Methodist University's Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility.
"This is a tough way for a kid to come into the world. As the details emerge and the child learns more about their origins, I just wonder what the impact will be on a replacement child."
He said the desire to replace a deceased child is a classic scenario that, in this case, took a nontraditional turn.
"The underlying desire would be very strong, even if she wouldn't describe it that way," he said.
It would be rare for a child to be born from sperm retrieved from a dead person, said Melissa Brisman, an attorney on the American Fertility Association's legal advisory council.
"This is an unexpected death in which there are tons of emotions and you don't even know if you want to do it," she said.
Art Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said that in the last decade, there have probably been about 1,000 such requests by spouses, mothers, girlfriends and others in the U.S., and most "don't wind up using it."
Caplan said hospitals may have a protocol for dealing with such requests, but there are few laws or regulations regarding the practice.
Mark Vopat, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio, questions whether the court should have granted the request. He said while Nikolas Evans may have told his mother he wanted children someday, it's wrong to assume he also would have wanted to father a child posthumously.
Evans said she is unsure when she'll be ready to seek a surrogate to carry her son's child. But she said she has no second thoughts about the plan.
"This is probably going to bankrupt me, and I will do whatever I can to make it happen," she said.
09:24 PM CDT on Friday, April 10, 2009
By JAMIE STENGLE The Associated Press
Her son dead after being punched while trying to break up a fight on an Austin street, Missy Evans wanted to make sure he would still one day have a child of his own.
After getting a judge's consent to harvest sperm from 21-year-old Nikolas Colton Evans' body this week, she hopes to eventually find a surrogate and one day raise her son's child.
"My son wanted to graduate from college. He wanted to have children. And someone took that away from him," said Evans, 42, of Bedford.
It's a decision that ethicists say raises troubling questions, but Evans isn't concerned about what others might think. She says she is only doing what her son would have wanted.
She described her son as an "old soul" interested in filmmaking, politics, music and old movies. She said he once told her he wanted three sons and had already picked out names.
"He would love me so much for doing this," Evans said.
Austin police say Nikolas Evans was punched early March 27 and then fell to the ground, striking his head. He died April 5. Police are still trying to identify the person who hit him.
Evans said she came up with the idea late last week, after a doctor told her nothing more could be done for him. She discussed the idea with her ex-husband, her older son and other family members, and she said all supported her wish to help a part of Nikolas live on through his future offspring.
After donating his organs, Evans had to go to court to get permission to harvest his sperm. On Tuesday, a Travis County probate judge granted her wish – ordering the county medical examiner's office to keep her son's body chilled at a temperature not to exceed 39.2 degrees and allow access so an expert could take the specimen.
Evans' attorney, Mark Mueller, said no one opposed the plan.
An Austin urologist volunteered her services and collected tissue from the body Wednesday night. Evans said she has been told much of the sperm is viable and she is making plans for it to be stored.
Decisions such as Evans' must be made quickly and allow little time for a grieving person to reflect on the choice, one ethicist said.
"That child's biological father will be dead. The mother may be an egg donor, anonymous or gestational surrogate," said Tom Mayo, director of Southern Methodist University's Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility.
"This is a tough way for a kid to come into the world. As the details emerge and the child learns more about their origins, I just wonder what the impact will be on a replacement child."
He said the desire to replace a deceased child is a classic scenario that, in this case, took a nontraditional turn.
"The underlying desire would be very strong, even if she wouldn't describe it that way," he said.
It would be rare for a child to be born from sperm retrieved from a dead person, said Melissa Brisman, an attorney on the American Fertility Association's legal advisory council.
"This is an unexpected death in which there are tons of emotions and you don't even know if you want to do it," she said.
Art Caplan, chairman of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said that in the last decade, there have probably been about 1,000 such requests by spouses, mothers, girlfriends and others in the U.S., and most "don't wind up using it."
Caplan said hospitals may have a protocol for dealing with such requests, but there are few laws or regulations regarding the practice.
Mark Vopat, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio, questions whether the court should have granted the request. He said while Nikolas Evans may have told his mother he wanted children someday, it's wrong to assume he also would have wanted to father a child posthumously.
Evans said she is unsure when she'll be ready to seek a surrogate to carry her son's child. But she said she has no second thoughts about the plan.
"This is probably going to bankrupt me, and I will do whatever I can to make it happen," she said.