Using sperm posthumously: national guidelines versus practice

Abstract

Under pressure from involved families and time limitations, Israeli judges tend to authorize postmortem sperm retrieval and freezing, even in unmarried men and in contradiction to current, albeit non-legally binding, guidelines of the Attorney General. Postmortem sperm retrieval in our institution (2003 to June 2009) was successful in 17 cases, motile sperm was found in 16/17, and cryopreservation was performed in 15/16: no application for use of any of the postmortem frozen samples has been performed thus far.