Biological Wills
New Family promotes a new legal concept of biological wills which specify whether or not an individuals’ reproductive material may be used after their death, who may use it, how long it may be preserved, how many children may be created with it, and legal status of any resulting children. Biological wills apply property law to biological matter and assume that human reproductive material is property that can be willed and inherited like other assets. Biological wills ensure that a person’s wishes for a biological legacy are legally binding. New Family founded the world’s only Biological Will Bank, and is the only known organization drafting and storing biological wills.
In the landmark 2006 Keivan Cohen case, the parents of a 20-year old soldier killed in action won the right to use the sperm retrieved after his death for posthumous reproduction after proving in court that it was his explicit wish to father children. The case, which was reported in media from around the world, was unique, both because Cohen had not left his wish in writing, and because the woman that would carry his child was not known to him during lifetime. Since then, court attitude in Israel has been changed to require written consent for posthumous reproduction.
Read more about this topic: New Family Organization
Famous quotes containing the words biological and/or wills:
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)
“Thus were we weaned to knowledge of the Will
That wills the natural world but wills us dead.”
—Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)