Creating life after death

Everyone tells five-year-old Shira Malka she looks just like her dad. She has his green eyes. But she’s never met him, because he died seven years before she was born. Shira was conceived through posthumous reproduction, where a child is created from the frozen sperm or eggs of a person who has died. The practice is banned in some places, tightly restricted in others. But Israel - a country that leads the world in assisted reproduction - is testing the boundaries on allowing this new method of family creation.

Shira is a one of a small but growing number of children to be born through posthumous reproduction in Israel over the last two decades. Her grandmother, Julia Pozniansky describes how she struggled for seven years to fulfil her son’s dying wish to father a child and leave her a grandchild. She was helped by Irit Rosenblum, a family lawyer who specialises in these cases and has even created a legal tool document she called the ‘Biological Will’ that enables people to express their wishes about becoming a parent after death. Shira’s mother, Liat Malka discusses why posthumous reproduction was a good alternative for her to anonymous sperm donation. Irit is adamant that the state should be removing barriers to the practice and instead allowing those who die, and their bereaved loved ones, to continue their legacy. But the practice does have its critics and has generated headlines and national debate. Israeli bioethicist Vardit Ravitsky - professor at the University of Montreal and the President of the International Association of Bioethics - explores the ethical arguments on both sides of the issue, and describes how Israeli culture and Jewish tradition have allowed the country to become ‘a unique pressure cooker for allowing reproduction’. She debates the subject with the fiercest critic she knows - her son.

Producer/presenter: Viv Jones

Editor: Penny Murphy

(Photo: Shira and Liat Malka, courtesy of the family)