Lee Hsin-yu's (
Sun was killed on Sept. 7 when the armored vehicle he was trying to guide onto a truck accelerated suddenly and crushed him.
When Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (李傑) went to pay his last respects to Sun on Thursday, Sun's fiancee and girlfriend of 12 years hysterically pleaded with the minister, begging authorities to have his sperm preserved but to no avail, as it wasn't in accodrance with current law on posthumous sperm retrieval.
The Department of Health (DOH) reversed its position Friday evening and agreed to Lee Hsin-yu's plea to harvest sperm from her fiance's body so that she could then use in vitro fertilization in an attempt to get pregnant.
The DOH made the decision following an emergency meeting of its officials and experts on legal and medical affairs under the instruction of Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who allowed posthumous sperm retrieval procedures to go ahead, saying that "the most important thing right now is not to miss the optimum period for sperm retrieval."
The meeting reached the conclusion that since the legislative process of the artificial reproduction bill is still incomplete, the sperm harvesting would not break any law.
In an operation which took 30 minutes on Friday night, the sperm of Sun was successfully retrieved and subsequently stored in the clinic of gynecologist Lee Mao-sheng (
The DOH yesterday said that a decision would be made this week, pending a discussion involving experts in this area. The date of the meeting is still undecided.
This is not the first time that such a case has been brought up. In March 2003, the wife of a Japanese businessman, who had died in Taiwan, asked investigating officials and doctors to perform posthumous sperm collection. Sperm was subsequently successfully retrieved, but after the Japanese widow failed to get pregnant, the sperm was destroyed.
In the US in 1997, 82 requests for posthumous sperm retrieval were made, with the earliest case of posthumous sperm retrieval being performed in Los Angeles in 1980.
While technically there may be nothing in the way of posthumous sperm retrieval, cases like this have clear ethical implications.
Su Yiu-chen (
Shu expressed that there was an ethical responsibility to be paid to the child, whom he felt would "have an incomplete personality, if conceived, particularly when the child came to know how they came into being."
Shu also brought up the possibility that owing to the circumstances of the sperm retrieval, the child's health would "forever be the burden of the child, the mother and their family."
Shu said that the laws of nature have always been "to be born, to age, to weaken and to die," and that a more perfect love would follow the course of nature.
From a different legal standpoint, however, the Taiwanese Society for Reproductive Medicine expressed that provided proper thought had been given, no law should infringe on the rights of single women to conceive, and it suggested that the department of health should take a new perspective in making laws relating to human fertilization.
The head of the association, Liu Zhi-hong (劉志鴻), said that in Europe, the US and other countries, the rights of single women to conceive are well-protected and considered to be a basic human right. However, such a view is at the cost of the legal rights of the deceased. In the UK, sperm retrieval of the deceased is only possible providing the husband had adequate counselling at the time of semen donation and had furnished written consent.
From a more practical standpoint, the head of the gynecology department at Chen Hsin Rehabilitation Medical Center Hospital, Shih Guang-shing (
"What about the victims of the explosion a few days ago? Will they be asking for posthumous sperm retrievals, too?"
Shih said that this was "a decision made in the heat of the moment, but if the child is to be born, she or he will have a whole life ahead of them."
Shih also felt that the issue the government should face is how the accident happened, and not whether sperm retrieval is an option.
This remains a controversial issue worldwide. Like Taiwan, laws regarding posthumous sperm retrieval remain unpassed in Japan, and in the US there is no single definitive law relating to this issue.
A study published by online booking platform Expedia revealed searches for travel to Taipei have ballooned 2,786 percent following the lifting of COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions due to the city being a “designation dupe” for Seoul. The TikTok trend for duping — referring to substituting a designation for a more inexpensive alternative — helped propel interest in Taipei, it said in a consumer survey titled “Unpack ‘24,” which was conducted from September to October in 14 countries. Location dupes are “every bit as delightful as the tried-and-true places travelers love,” Expedia trend tracker Melanie Fish said of the year’s popular alternatives, which
SAFETY IN REGULATION: The proposal states that Chiayi should assess whether it is viable to establish such a district and draft rules to protect clients and sex workers The Chiayi City Council passed a motion yesterday to assess the viability of establishing a regulated red-light district. The council yesterday held its last session of the year, at which its fiscal 2024 budget was approved, along with 61 other proposals. The proposal to assess the viability of establishing a red-light district was put forward by independent Chiayi City Councilor Molly Yen (顏色不分藍綠支持性專區顏色田慎節). The proposal cited 2011 amendments to the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), which stipulate that city and county governments can pass autonomous regulations on the sex trade to manage the industry and guarantee industry workers’ rights. A ban on the
A small-scale protest that called on the government to cancel its plan to welcome Indian migrant workers in a bid to tackle Taiwan’s labor shortage was held in Taipei yesterday. During the protest, comprised of a few dozen people staged in front of the Presidential Office on Ketagalan Boulevard, the protest’s chief initiator, a woman identified only as “Yuna” said they wanted the central government to reconsider allowing migrant workers from India to enter Taiwan. Most people in Taiwan had little knowledge about the potential plan to allow in Indian migrant workers until a report in the media last month, she
CHINA illness surge: Of 88 travelers from China, Hong Kong and Macau with respiratory symptoms who were encouraged to get tested upon arrival, 70.6% had the flu Two hundred and sixty people with COVID-19 were hospitalized and 31 deaths related to the virus were reported last week — the highest numbers in four weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that cases are expected to peak next month. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said that of the 260 people hospitalized last week with moderate to severe COVID-19, 98 percent had not received the Omicron XBB.1.5-adapted COVID-19 vaccine. Among the people hospitalized this year, 78 percent were aged 65 or older, while most of the those who were hospitalized or died have or had
RSS