If that title isn't strange enough, read the rest of the story:
Earlier this month a widow in her early 40s, referred to as Ms H, obtained a court order in the UK to get surgeons to extract sperm from her dying partner so that she could bear his child. The man, who had
suddenly lapsed into a coma after a heart attack, had never given his consent.
Apparently the couple were not legally man and wife, although they had been married in the UK in an unrecognised Islamic ceremony.
Extraction without consent is of questionable legality in the UK. Physically, the procedure is quite brutal and in a conscious person, would be described as assault. As bioethicist Anna Smajdor, of the University of East Anglia, said about a similar case in 2008, “The bodies of dead and dying individuals are vulnerable to assault and exploitation, and the law's function is to protect them.”
However, a judge agreed to Ms H’s request so that she could search for evidence of her partner’s consent. Although this was never produced, she took the sperm out of Britain to an overseas IVF clinic, perhaps to Romania or Cyprus, where it is legal to use sperm without proof of consent. Transporting the sperm out of the country without consent is also illegal.
The UK’s fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, did not contest any of these breaches. This means, as the Daily Mail’s correspondent put it, “the regulatory body effectively supported her and her doctors in breaking the law”.
Wait a minute, doesn't a man, like a woman (we're constantly told) have a right to his own body?
Apparently not.
