Should IVF Kids Get Social Security Benefits When Conceived After Parent Dies?

Tuesday, March 27. 2012

Should IVF Kids Get Social Security Benefits When Conceived After Parent Dies?

If children are conceived through IVF after one of the parents dies, are the children entitled to the social security benefits of the deceased parent?

That is what the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding in Astrue v. Capato. Before Robert Capato died of cancer, he banked his sperm. A year later his widow, Karen Capato, used that sperm to create IVF embryos and gave birth to twins. Karen applied to Social Security for "survivor" benefits for the twins, a provision added to the Social Security Act in 1939 to provide benefits to dependents of deceased wage earners. Those benefits were denied and now the case is before the Supreme Court.

This case has many facets and elicits conflicting thoughts on how the Court should rule. On one hand the fiscal conservative in me says, "No way!" Children knowingly conceived with the gametes of a deceased person are not entitled to survivor benefits. Once Robert died, the marriage was over making Karen a single mother.

But the Catholic pro-lifer in me realizes that this is an untenable situation for these children. They were intentionally brought into this world never to know their father. They have been wronged by an out of control fertility industry that willingly creates life in a dish, en masse, for any reason, for anyone. An industry that purposefully and knowingly creates children that will never meet their father. If anyone needs our compassion and our support, it is these twins who, in this Brave New World, are forced to argue, to the Supreme Court, that they deserve their father's benefits. They are as much children of God as anyone who was naturally conceived and should not be punished for the decisions of their genetic parents.

The Life Legal Defense Foundation, a pro-life organization whose mission is to "give innocent and helpless human beings of any age, particularly unborn children, a trained and committed defense against the threat of death, and to support their advocates in the nation’s courtrooms," agrees. Along with Jennifer Lahl, director of Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, Dr. Anthony Caruso, a former IVF practitioner, Stephanie Blessing and Kathleen R. LaBounty, donor-conceived adults, and Kathleen Sloan, a women's rights advocate and Program Director at the Council for Responsible Genetics, the Life Legal Defense Fund submitted a friend of the court brief in favor of the Capatos.

Continue reading at LifeNews >>

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in IVF at 10:07 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that posthumous IVF descendents should be treated like any other posthumous births.

The rational solution to this problem is simply to stop doing IVF. We shouldn't be validating people's primitive desire for "blood-kin", when there are so many children waiting for adoption.

#1 Tom in AZ on 2012-03-27 20:08 (Reply)

This is the one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read! The woman sounds like she is just trying to milk the system. She intentionally had those children after her husbands death. She went into the procedure KNOWING that she would be a single parent. She knew what she was doing before she got pregnant. Maybe (subjunctive) if she didn't spend all her money on IVF she wouldn't, now, want government/tax payers to support her and her children.

Should IVF Kids Get Social Security Benefits When Conceived After Parent Dies?

Mary Meets Dolly

Tuesday, March 27. 2012

Should IVF Kids Get Social Security Benefits When Conceived After Parent Dies?

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