Postmortem fatherhood: life after life.

摘要

On Aug 20, 2002,19-year-old Staff Sergeant Keivan Cohen, of Petah Tikva, Israel, was mortally wounded by a Palestinian sniper near Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. According to news reports, he died in a hospital with his parents at his side. Distraught, Keivan's parents pleaded with physicians at the hospital to remove and freeze a sample of their only son's sperm, which the physicians did, hours after his death. The parents' hope was that they would locate a woman willing to serve as a surrogate and through artificial insemination produce a grandchild who would, in some small measure, represent a genetic memory of their son and, in this manner, offer partial consolation from their tragedy.