The death of a young person is a tragedy: the loss of a life, and the loss of potential — including reproductive potential. One aspect of the surrogacy debate is the ethics of removing gametes from a recently deceased person to posthumously conceive his offspring through IVF and surrogacy.

Ten years ago, a wealthy British couple who lost their only child and son in a motorcycle accident when he was 26 had their dead son’s sperm extracted and took it to an IVF clinic in San Diego, Calif. The Times of London reported that “gender-selection techniques, which are not permitted in the UK, were used to ensure a male heir.”

Last year, the 68-year-old Spanish actress, Ana Obregón, obtained her grandchild through IVF and surrogacy, using sperm from her son who died of cancer in 2020 at age 27. Her granddaughter, also her legal daughter, was born to a surrogate in Miami, Fla., to bypass Spain’s surrogacy ban.

Or take Israel. Last month, CNN reported:

Israeli hospitals have been inundated with requests to cryogenically freeze the sperm of those killed in the conflict, hospital officials say.

Posthumous sperm retrieval (PSR) was previously open to partners — provided other relatives did not object — but parents of the deceased had to apply for legal permission.

But the Ministry of Health has recently slashed the red tape. In a statement on its website, it says hospitals have been instructed, during the war, to approve requests for PSR “from the deceased’s parents, without referring them to a family court.”

Setting aside the complicated family disputes that may emerge in such cases, one argument against the use of donor gametes and surrogacy is that the child created is, in effect, an orphan. In cases of posthumous sperm use through surrogacy, the child created is literally an orphan.