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The Children of Dead Men
Do you lose ownership of your body after death?
It’s an undeniable truth that almost the all the people writing America’s new anti-abortion laws are men. As critics often point out, the people who have nearly 100% of the say have exactly 0% of the wombs.
This almost certainly affects how politicians think about abortion. After all, it’s easier to move fast and make radical decisions — like creating the harshest anti-abortion laws in the developed world — when you know they won’t affect your own bodily autonomy. If you’re a man, the idea of “my body, my choice” seems almost superfluous. Nothing can happen without your participation. No one can forcibly take your sperm. No one can make you make a baby without your consent.
Or can they?
It just so happens than someone else might be able to force you into fatherhood, so long as you’re dead. And — just so we’re clear — we aren’t talking about donations you made to a sperm bank or embryos you froze before an untimely accident. We’re talking about doctors harvesting your sperm hours after your death, and giving that to someone else to make a baby on your behalf. And, although you might expect that “someone else” to be a wife or live-in partner, it could also be a parent, and it can happen without you having agreed or even considered the possibility of…
