MaggieD
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Justices ponder whether babies born through artificial insemination should get benefits
WASHINGTON — Karen Capato used the frozen sperm of her deceased husband to conceive twins, but the government denied them Social Security benefits as their father’s survivors. Her situation, more common as reproductive technology advances, had a mostly unsympathetic Supreme Court grappling Monday with the definition of “child,’ inheritance law and artificial insemination.
The case had justices trying to shoehorn a 1930s law that gave Social Security survivor benefits to the dependent “child or legally adopted child” of a person into a modern situation where a man can bank his sperm for use months or years later to produce a child he will never see.
“You want us to sort of apply this old law to new technology,” Justice Stephen Breyer said to Charles Rothfeld, the lawyer for Capato, the mother of twins fathered by her deceased husband, Robert. Lawmakers who wrote the survivor benefits law “never had any inkling about the situation that has arisen in this case,” added Justice Samuel Alito....
Justices ponder whether babies born through artificial insemination should get benefits - The Washington Post
Justice Scalia says, on the other hand, to the effect that this isn't about applying an old law to new technology, this is about whether children who are born after the death of one parent are entitled to Social Security benefits.
I'm on the fence and am interested in reading others opinions.
Should these children (who were conceived after their father died) be entitled to benefits from their deceased father? What was the intent of the original benefit?