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I just haven't made up my mind on this.
The mother of a 21-year-old assault victim who died of his injuries received permission Tuesday for his sperm to be collected post-mortem, giving her the chance to have a grandchild through a surrogate mother.
Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman ordered the medical examiner's office to maintain the body of Nikolas Colton Evans until his sperm can be taken.
Herman also said officials at the office must provide access so an expert can take the specimen.
Herman issued the orders after an emergency hearing at the request of Marissa Evans, whose son died Sunday after being punched and falling during a March 27 assault on East Sixth Street.
"I want him to live on," Evans said. "I want to keep a piece of him."
She said that her son had frequently talked about his desire to have three sons and had chosen their names: Hunter, Tod and Van.
Marissa Evans and her attorneys were trying Tuesday to find a urologist or other medical expert willing to collect the sperm. According to medical experts and published reports, whether such sperm is useful often depends on how quickly it is collected after death.
University of Texas law professor John Robertson, who specializes in bioethics, said that state law gives parents control over a child's body for donation of organs and tissues but that "this use is very unclear."
"There are no strong precedents in favor of a parent being able to request post-mortem sperm retrieval," he said.
Police have said Nikolas Evans was leaving a bar with a friend about 2 a.m. last month when they got into an argument with several men.
After that argument, police have said, another group approached Evans and his friend, and one of the men in that group hit both of them. Evans hit his head on the ground after he was punched, according to investigators.
No arrests have been made in the case.
Evans was taken to University Medical Center at Brackenridge, where he remained until his death.
Marissa Evans, who donated her son's organs, said she repeatedly asked whether his sperm could be taken during the donation process Monday but was told it was not possible.
Mic e Segovia, spokeswoman for the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance, said the organization deals in procuring major life-saving organs but provides families with information about a company that performs sperm collections.
She said the organization has gotten three or four such requests in recent years.
Evans said she was unable to find someone to collect the sperm Monday. Early Tuesday, she contacted Austin attorney Mark Mueller and asked whether he could help her file court papers to seek her son's sperm.
"I can understand her situation," Mueller said. "She has just lost her son, and she knew her son wanted to have children."
Mueller said he asked Herman for an emergency hearing, after which the judge granted the request.
"His mother wanted it done," Herman said. "There were other body harvesting that was going to take place, and I didn't see why this additional body harvesting shouldn't take place."
According to court do ents, donation workers began taking Nikolas Evans' organs at noon Monday and continued until 9 p.m., at which time he was removed from life support.
Court do ents said that it was essential for Evans' sperm be collected within 24 hours of him being removed from life support unless his body were cooled to no more than 39.2 degrees. Herman said the body is being kept at the appropriate temperature.
"Irreparable harm will be caused by the failure to harvest the sperm prior to that time," do ents said.
Attorneys representing Marissa Evans had initially asked that the medical examiner's office collect the specimen, but Herman said the agency wasn't equipped to do so.
Dr. Elizabeth Houser, a urologist for the Urology Team in Austin, said she is familiar with a case in which a man's sperm was collected 30 hours after his death and stored for 15 months before a woman was inseminated.
Evans, who also has a 22-year-old son, described Nikolas Evans as a quick-witted aspiring filmmaker who recently had been accepted into film school at the University of California at Los Angeles.
A memorial service is set for 2 p.m. Saturday at Shepherd of Life Lutheran Church in Arlington.
"He was just a pleasure to know," Marissa Evans said. "It was evident in the fact that at any given time, there were 15 to 20 kids at the hospital waiting to see if he was OK.
"He was just an all-around good kid."
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I just haven't made up my mind on this.
I don't have a problem with it.
I saw this on the Today Show. Creepy as crap. This is why we have Living Wills.
I don't really have a problem with this.
while I dont have a problem with it........the kid won't know it's dad or have a mom...
Interesting topic.
That kid is gonna feel odd after he finds out how he came to be though....
Science is an amazing thing
I think it's kinda cool. I mean after all the "oops" pregnancies, it must be nice to know that you were so wanted to badly that drastic measures were taken. I feel the same way about all lab babies (except Octomom) and adoptions too.
Why not clone him instead?
weird
this is kinda double sided for me, on one side i dont have a problem with this, but then again it is a bit weird.
Scientific necrophilia. Interesting.
as long as she pays for everything she can do whatever the she wants. if she wants to create some flipper baby using her dead kids spoiled she can be my guest. people do weirder things with their money
Exactly. Sad story, but she needs to accept that her son is dead and she can't recreate him.
get a dog
Yes that's real easy for those of us who have our sons to say. Same thing with that Cindy Sheehan person; I can't tell them to get over it because I can't predict how I would react if one of my sons died, but I know I wouldn't just be accepting it. I say if she has the money and strength, and she knew her son wanted children, she should go for it. I dunno.
But yes, cloning him would be awesome too
I'm very sympathetic. I can't imagine losing one of my children. But I sincerely hope if I was insane with grief and wanted to do something like create an orphan grandchild to replace my dead son somebody would stop me. Science is amazing, but so are ethics.Yes that's real easy for those of us who have our sons to say. Same thing with that Cindy Sheehan person; I can't tell them to get over it because I can't predict how I would react if one of my sons died, but I know I wouldn't just be accepting it. I say if she has the money and strength, and she knew her son wanted children, she should go for it. I dunno.
But yes, cloning him would be awesome too
I don't doubt that you are sympathetic, I'm just not ready to assume that because she is grieving, she is not thinking straight. Women whose husbands die do that sometimes, not to replace the husband, but in a kind of tribute to a person they loved deeply. And we don't know how old she is, but if she's 40 she has plenty of time to see the kid into adulthood; being raised by a loving extended family is not really being orphaned. We know a lot of kids raised by their natural parents get shorted all the time. I agree that's a lot of ifs that need to be answered just right, but if they are I have no problem with it. I just didn't get from that story that she had an underlying mental instability.
Good point. I still think it's a bad idea, but you make a good point.
so..
the kids that will be born will have been born from a man who was dead?
My take is.....once you're dead, you're dead. Your reproduction capabilities should die with you. I feel for the lady, but I think she's making a mistake.
It's definitely not fair to the child. It's just very weird.
I'd rather grow up alive with no dad than to have never been born.
But.......the "future child" has no idea that his existence is being called into question. If your mother had married someone else and conceived a child with him, it would not be YOU. In other words, you would not exist because it would be a completely different person. And so how would you know you never got a chance to grow up? There wouldn't be a you.
I'm not sure we have the right, capabilities, whatever-ness, to make this call. I just think it's a very slippery slope and ultimately, just plain creepy.
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