Mother's Request for Posthumous Sperm Retrieval: What Would Be Your Ethical Decision?

The Case Study in the January-February 2014 issue of the ethics journal "The Hastings Center Report" sets an ethics issue which, though not a major issue like assisted suicide for the terminally ill, nevertheless has occurred. The issue is that of sperm retrieval promptly after a patient is pronounced dead for later insemination in an attempt to create a child but without the specific documented request by the patient.  With a prior request made by the patient, certainly outside the various religious views and within the "Western" culture, this act could be ethically  acceptable. But in the case developed by the ethics journal, the mother of her 29 year-old son now virtually dead by neurological criteria ("brain dead") , and the mother as  his legal surrogate, requests the sperm retrieval, for future use, on the basis of, in the past,  her son's telling her that he "wanted to give her grandchildren." Neither the son's girlfriend nor the son's father was not involved in the mother's decision and request and, in fact, no one was specified as the recipient for later fertilization.  There was no written directive by the son requesting sperm retrieval.  My question for my visitors here is, if you called into the clinical situation as an ethicist, would you, with the history provided, tell the physicians faced with this request that it would be ethical to go ahead with the sperm retrieval?  One fact to consider is that organ retrieval such as kidneys for donation and transplant is considered legal and ethical if said by the family to have been requested by the patient. Do you see any difference between sperm retrieval and use and kidney donation and transplant? ..Maurice.

Addendum: For more information about posthumous sperm retrieval  read the Wikipedia article. You also may want to read the article "IVF AfterDeath" where through Google Images, the Graphic for this thread was obtained. Finally, come to your own ethical decision and post it here but then go ahead and read the free Case Study in The Hastings Center Report with the two commentaries.