Pru Urevu (Part 7) By Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

we'll hopefully finish theim of PR Vu today and the next two weeks we'll talk about Kana and then after that who knows I have to uh I can't think more than two weeks ahead of time so uh we'll work something out that hopefully will be will be interesting uh I want to end this series with uh dealing with some hypotheticals let's imagine that you have a husband and wife who uh have fertility issues and uh they enroll in a fertility clinic right United States Israel whatever it would be now uh they're going to do an IVF they're going to practice an invitro fertilization procedure uh and they're not using surrogates they're not using egg donors they're simply going to do what you might call plain vanilla it is going to be husband's sperm and wife's egg it will hopefully be fertilized uh in the petri dish and then be transferred to the wife and the hope would be after 9 months that will be a beautiful baby a standard invitra now here's the thing about invitra generally speaking uh when a woman ovulates it's only one egg one egg is released per month now for an invitro procedure that would be very very bad because uh an invitro procedure anyway does not have a tremendous percentage of success maybe it's 30% 40% and if there's only one egg and there's only one chance you may have to do you know five six seven inv vitros Each of which is expensive and even Insurance stops covering it uh Beyond a certain point so as a result it is standard procedure in invitro to give a woman drugs that stimulat uh multiple ovulation it's actually called super ovulation and they will extract five six 10 eggs and expose them and that greatly increases the probability of fertilization now if 10 eggs are extracted and one or two get fertilized no problem we simply give them you know we put into the woman one or two but the problem is going to happen when you have ex you have many eggs that are fertilized let's assume all 10 get fertilized so uh the the the term that's often used is although it's kind of a demeaning term these are spare embryos spare leftover extra what do you do with ext now the truth of the matter is even as a matter of law contract law uh when you sign a contract uh this is an important paragraph in the contract about you have to check off the options for the disposal of what are called spare embryos so let's analyze it Hally meaning that you'll be given a lot of choices which choices does halaka permit and which choices would halaka not permit if you're assuming you're a religious couple that keeps the Torah so option number one is freeze the embryos to use them for a later reproductive cycle uh Hally that's perfectly fine Hally embryos can be frozen uh interestingly enough that would actually mean that children might be born that might be years apart that were actually fertilized at the same time but what that's not a problem uh just because my younger brother was conceived the same time I was I'm still the older because I was born first so that's not a huic problem so embryo freezing is uh a well-known technology an interesting halic Shiloh would be are you allowed to desecrate chabas to save the life of an unimplanted embryo I mean let's imagine the freezer breaks down so to get a guy to fix it that's not a problem but could a Jew be for p does p extend to the life of a frozen embryo so rner actually has a chuva that yeah yeah because remember that the logic of shabas for any any life person is better to desecrate one chabas in order that many chabus be kept well same thing with the frozen embryo if we save this frozen embryo he or she may grow up and keep many many shabes therefore we're permitted to do so now uh yeah well well okay okay I think you're confusing two different time periods the rule the rule of 30 days is 30 days uh after birth 40 days is 40 days from conception it's a different rule no that's fine but but since the idea of shabas yeah the the embryo might might not be a living being yet but potentially uh it will be able to eventually keep chabas so the the hetra of chabas is desecrate one chabas in order to realize the potential of keeping many shabes that does not require that it actually have the status of a living being at that at that particular particular Point yeah yeah yeah that that would be the logic because of its future potential its potentiality so that's option one and again that's a totally much uh freezing for later later use okay option two uh donation of human embryo to another infertile couple which essentially would mean that whichever woman gets it would essentially be like a surrogate although it would be carrying it for herself uh could H so the question is Jewish not Jewish from not from so once again without repeating all of our discussion last week there are enormous halakic problems in donation to another couple uh because of the problem of who is the halakic mother remember we discussed if one woman is the genetic egg contributor and another woman is the birth mother there is considerable debate mlus if motherhood is halakic motherhood is determined by genetic origin or halakic motherhood is determined by the birth process and certainly if the couple that gets it is a guy you'd have a suff is the kid Jewish or not Jewish and even if it's to a Jewish couple well once again the kid for sure would be Jewish but if they're not from how can you give a child away to a non-religious couple and if they are from there'll still be confusion who are the relatives Etc so generally speaking we would not encourage donation of the embryo to an infertile couple so option one is freezing for later use option which is Hally fine option two would be donation to an infertile couple uh whether it's Jew or not Jew that would normally not be recommended not be recommended option number three would be essentially donating the spare embryo to science and in particular the particular science that's most applicable here is to get stem cells uh we know that stem cells are a very remarkable part of uh the human genome really even animal genomes as well and that is uh stem cells are well I remember um somebody once remarked someone who actually died of cancer but was being treated with stem cells said stem cells are cells that haven't yet decided what they want to be when they grow up and that is actually a very very perfect uh definition a stem cell is a cell in the early well there are adult stem cells but we're talking about embryonic stem cells stem cells obtained from embryos are cells that have not yet acquired a specialized function so they're not yet brain or kidney or skin or liver cells they are cells eventually they become something DNA gets activated but in on be before they I differentiate they're called stem cells now typically these have to be harvested within two weeks of fertilization or if you freeze them you know whatever it would be because after that point the cells get differentiated now stem cells uh because they're chameleon like because they can become anything uh are extremely valuable they could be used uh if a person has spinal cord injuries it can generate spinal cord tissue heart valve Replacements they can act eventually we're not there yet eventually stem cells might be capable of creating a whole organ a whole heart now to date that has not been done but but uh certainly stem cells have been Coes to become heart tissue spinal cord tissue brain tissue and this is really a very remarkable technology but the problem is if you're harvesting them from embryos the embryo gets destroyed so a very interesting question would be would a couple be allowed to essentially donate embryos that they don't want for implantation to be used to be Harvest harvesting of stem cell church now well well again this is connected again I this is connected to many many weeks of of of discussion uh the question becomes basically uh is the destruction of the embryo considered to be an abortion that that's really the problem again I'm not going to go over the laws of abortion other than to note that abortion is normally user okay that's fine the question is does abortion extend to an embryo that has not yet been implanted in a woman's body now the Catholic Church takes the position the Catholic Church of is of course anti-abortion they actually take the position that the harvesting of embryonic stem cells is an early abortion and the Catholic position is it is not permitted under any circumstances now that's the Catholic Church's position what is the halic position regarding the status of an unimplanted fertilized embryo VAV the abortion rule so now please I I you have to consider a number of of points first of all even if a woman is carrying a baby regular pregnancy there are some shetos that do permit abortion within 40 days of conception some shetos not all now obviously if abortion within 40 days of conception is going to be permitted based on the gamorra statement that an embryo within 40 days is mere water in terms of its development obviously if you are going to allow abortion within 40 days of conception in a woman's body you will allow the harvesting of stem cells from an externalized embryo Which is far less than 40 days in development so like those opinions for sure the harvesting of stem cells would be permitted however not all pokim agree to the 40-day limit uh many poim do take the position that abortion is starts the prohibition of abortion starts upon conception if it's within the woman's body so the question would be how would you then apply it to an external embryo now one might make another argument one might say well wait a second here abortion is permitted for PES to save the mother's life right that's a well-known idea so maybe you could look at harvesting embryonic stem cells in a different way instead of saying it's not abortion let's say it is abortion but it's abortion that potentially May save lives so yeah let it be abortion but Hally it would still be proper because of the PES rule so here I want to say this is again as you might expect a much deeper question than you might uh think because it's true it is absolutely true that the mishna says explicitly that if a woman is in hard labor and the emergence of of the baby may possibly kill her the is very beish that you terminate the pregnancy in order to save the mother's life that's given but the question is why should that be Sy we normally have a rule that you don't prefer One Life over another life if a if a if a bandit goes over to me and says kill him or kill this innocent person or I'll kill you the is you must allow yourself to be killed you can't you you can kill the guy threatening you because they're a Roda a pursuer but you can't kill an innocent person so why does the mishna say you can kill the fetus to save the mother let the birth happen let the mother die and let the fetus live meaning what gives you the right to prefer the life of the mother over the life of the fetus is this not the famous principle called nees we don't set aside one life for another life so on this there's a fundamental M Rashi and the rambam trying to explain the reason for preferring the life of the mother Rashi says the following Rashi says that even a fetus Beyond 40 days is not yet a complete nephesh it is not a complete nees until it's born the mother who of course is already born is a complete nefes so as a result the PES of a complete life overrides the PES of a quasi life and therefore the life of the fenus oh the life of the mother overrides the life of the fetus this is Rashi rambam doesn't buy that rambam apparently maintains that you would not be permitted to favor mother over baby based on inferior status of unborn child rambam invokes a new principle a principle of Roda amazing the law of Roda is a well is a wellestablished law right someone's trying to kill me or kill somebody else I'm allowed to I'm allowed I'm even commanded to kill them this is the HRI to kill a terrorist uh that H you to kill anybody brandishing a weapon who might kill somebody Etc the Kish of the Raba which is not his Kish it's it's from the gamorra is that a r doesn't have to be a bad person aode doesn't have to be a terrorist or a criminal or somebody with malevolent intent but an unborn fetus can be a Rodi if this fetus is the reason why the mother's life is in danger this fetus is endangering the mother's life you can abort the fetus because of Roa now again the Kish of the rambam is that uh even a normal Act of nature so to speak can create a den of Roda now now here's the thing the rule that a fetus can be a Roda this does raise a very very difficult problem because if you go back to the whole source of this which is the Mish again the Mish lays down the rule you abort a fetus to save the mother's life right that but then the mishna says listen to what Mish says but if the fetus's head most of its forehead has has emerged from the mother's womb that is halachically a birth once a halakic birth has taken place you cannot kill the baby even if that means the mother is going to die now according to Rashi that's beautiful it's very understandable because according to Rashi the heter of aborting the fetus is because the fetus is not a complete nephesh and the mother is a complete nephesh so saving the mother will override the child once the child is born which is how be defined as a majority of the forehead coming out so now the child is a complete nefes so now it's not nephesh versus partial nephesh now it's nephesh versus nephesh you're not allowed to kill the mother to save the baby like like Rashi in other words the Mish is very understandable but according to the rambam it's actually a Pella because if according to the rambam the fetus by endangering the mother's life has the status of a Roa so even if he was born I mean we can kill a Roda even if a Roda is born right so the question becomes and the funny thing is or the hard thing is the rambam himself after giving the explanation of Roda the rambam then proceeds to say exactly what the mishna says that once the kid sticks out his head we cannot push aside one nees for another nees this is one of the great great great difficulties in the rambam's formulation uh there are like seven or eight answers given to this a very very lengthy uh essay very deep explanation of it we don't have the time to go over it uh but nevertheless at least if the fetus did not come out yet the ramban predicates it on R so Rashi says the hetes to abort is based on the The Unborn not being a full nees the rambam says the hat is based on the law of R now the when the brings down the rule that we perform abortions to save the mother's life the uses the rambam's rationale of rad now let's apply this to stem cell research I suggested an argument that if there's a surplus embryo it might be permitted to harvest stem cells because they may be used in a lifesaving procedure and therefore it's m well that may be true according to Rashi because the the embryo is not yet a nephesh and I may use stem cells to save a real nephesh so according to Rashi maybe that argument works but according to the rambam that's not going to work because there's no way the embryo in California is a Roda of a cancer patient in Tel Aviv I mean that embryo is doing nothing to that cancer patient to say I can Harvest stem cells from this embryo because I'm going to Save a Life somewhere else is totally inconsistent with the Roda rationale although it does fit rashi's rationale and since the shul follows the Roda rationale so the harvesting of embrionic stem cells would not be justifiable on the grounds of PES if if it has the status of abortion so the final argument would be this and this is actually accepted by many poin and that is even if abortion is prohibited prior to 40 days that is only when there's implantation in the woman's body because it is in an environment where its potentiality can be actualized through a gestation but as long as it's in the petri dish it is not regarded as capable of living because it can't it can't develop Beyond a certain point and therefore it's not an abortion in other words instead of saying it's an abortion and it's m disposal of unimplanted embryos is Hally not an abortion now I see the or there's an organization in AR toell here it's a very valuable organization poor some of you might have heard about it uh Pua uh deals with all of the issues concerning infertility and and and the like you know surrogacy all of these all of these issues and somebody just sent me a letter I don't know what the letter was I don't know what they were responding to but they said it is our firm con our firm conviction Hally that life begins when the embryo is implanted in the woman's uterus uh which actually means exactly what I'm saying the externalized preemo is not yet subject to abortion status uh unlike the Catholic church and therefore Haka would permit the harvesting of embrionic stem cells from unimplanted embryos and therefore an infertile couple going through a fertility regimen would be able to donate uh unwanted embryos for that particular purpose so now I want to switch gears to a different hypothetical and uh over the years many of you are probably familiar for sure with dor yarim now dor yarim uh started a long time ago already started in the 1970s and it was this this is uh when genetic testing was not a common place but the very beginning of widespread genetic testing and this was designed to deal with the problem of TX tasac Jewish ashkanazi genetic childhood disease uh so far to this day there is no cure for it uh there's a lot of suffering a lot of pain a lot of loss of function kind of like ALS uh and uh genetically it requires that both parents carry the gene for it and if both parents are carriers there is a one in four chance one in four that a child will have the disease if only one parent is a carrier then the child will not have the disease except in the extreme I mean truth of the matter is there are actually extremely rare cases of a spontaneous mutation me me meaning if you're asking me is it possible for a child to get taxs if neither parent is a carrier the answer is it is possible but it is like one in a million I mean there is a phenomenon of spontaneous mutation so I'm aware of that but that is extremely rare so we can ignore it for now in the normal course of events if both parents are carriers there's a one in four if only one parent is a carrier or or nobody's a carrier then basically it won't there won't be that disease so what Doria shum started off doing only for TX only for T is that they recommended that when a man is dating a woman uh they get tested and uh and dorya Sharm would then notify them are you compatible or you're not compatible now if they tell you not compatible then you know both of you are carriers if they tell you compatible they didn't want to tell you if anybody was a carrier you don't know maybe we both are not carriers maybe I'm a carrier and she's not or maybe she's a carry and I'm not they didn't want to say they didn't want to put stigmas on people now of course truth of the matter is today uh th those those confidentiality things are kind of very artificial because now you can go to any doctor's office any Clinic you can get genetic testing if you pay for it so there's no secrets anymore meaning you don't really you don't need dorm as an entree for genetic testing and if you want to know if you're a carrier you could certainly find it out and then by implication you could guess figure out what the other person is but be it as it may Doria Sharm started off for KX and at the time they did get a from raos because people raised the question well maybe you should have auna why should you check things out why should you look for problems just accept things so ra mosha wrote that since kazal warn us about not making shim where there are diseases like epilepsy that could affect the children kazal were concerned that we should try to avoid situations that may transmit uh these hereditary diseases I'm sorry I didn't hear you yeah therefore rosha says if a person simply ignores finding out you're closing your eyes to what uh you should have an obligation to check out now what has happened I'm not going to uh opine on this but what has happened is that over the years dor Shar has enlarged all of the conditions that it is testing for uh of course you can specify a limited test or a full test and they have more than 200 conditions some of them are indeed life-threatening similar to TX others are you know Tendencies towards deafness you know obesity different types of things and many people are critical of the direction of tax because not of D sharam rather because uh they're trying to create the perfect the perfect child and at some point the person has to realize that will runs the world okay again I don't want to get into that but in many many situations people say a lot of times they will not allow their child to go out with somebody unless they do doram tests I mean it's it's like you know that and the apartments in you know you know conditions a half a million dollars and dor sharim are my my two conditions you want to see go out with my go out with my son or whatever whatever whatever it is uh yeah yeah people sa a lot of money on KN issues early right so so I'm gonna go I'm gonna go over that in a minute yeah yeah so now here's my question this is exactly the situation I want I want to hypothesize with you let's imagine that you have a couple that didn't do dorar and after they're married they discover unfortunately that both of them are carriers of this potentially very very serious illness so what should they do what can they do what is a proper thing to do what's an improper thing to do so I'm going to give you a list of options and ask yourself in each case is this the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do Hally ethically morally and the like so option number one is get a divorce uh if there's a risk that the children we're going to have may carry very serious and fatal genetic flaws particularly when there's pain and suffering maybe we ought to get divorced and try elsewhere well obviously people have a right to make that decision but as you would imagine Judaism generally very much is not in favor of breaking up happy marriages right we don't do that uh what does thear say anyone who divorces his wife and say it's the first wife the first marriage even the altar in so to Simply tell people they got a divorce that's a bit cruel but again it is an option option number two permanent contraception okay we'll have a marriage we won't have kids well uh there's a real problem with that because obviously the very first Mitzvah of the Torah is PR Vu and forer generally speaking uh if a man and woman are capable of having children they are generally to try to have at least a son and a daughter because of PR or Vu so permanent contraception because of a fear of possible genetic defect would not in itself be Baer uh option number three let's try pregnancies and we'll do amniocentesis uh right that's to determin so here we get into a huge huge issue uh meaning if the baby's healthy we'll go on everything is great if not well then the question is if not what so here's the question there's a huge mlus between RAB elazar venberg who was a great po particularly in medical he wrote uh more than 20 volumes of shos chubos called sitzer on all areas of Hal but but medical was I mean he was a post but medical was probably his greatest specialty he was the POS of shared for many many years and R venberg wrote many many Pim U many are not controversial but this is the most controversial of his Pim in which he permitted abortion of a tasac fetus until the last trimester meaning up to six months and he made the argument that the pain and suffering of the child is so significant that this qualifies as a that would permit termination of the pregnancy even if the mother's life is not in danger now now it's very important it's very important that you don't you don't overgeneralize this Pak sometimes people paraphrase that sit elzar is saying you're allowed to abort If the child has a genetic defect absolutely not uh you cannot abort a Down syndrome fetus you cannot abort a cleft pallet which is correctable by surgery this is dealing with a unique it's not the only type of CAS but a unique situation of an illness that has no cure an illness that starts very early an illness that has tremendous pain and suffering it is not a heter to abort a Down Syndrome baby God forbid under no circumstances but still rev venberg did permit the abortion of a TX fetus uh until the last trimester so according to rev venberg early early anoesis would certainly be advisable but I have to say rosha Feinstein was absolutely incensed he used very harsh words he said R venberg needs the Forgiveness of Hashem for permitting such a horrendous sin and because of this it's yua that rosha FR was against amnios Andis at all because he said what are you gonna do with the information meaning if you're not going to be able to abort no matter what you find then maybe it's better not to know because there is a kind of a cabalistic idea that until you know something God could change the msas miraculously once you know it it's not going to be changed now if you could correct it that's one thing uh if you have a heter of abortion like renberg that's one thing but dha's argument is am amniocentesis is not justifiable if if there's no response you can have towards that so this would be the m venberg and and and and moia so I mentioned I think three options uh divorce permanent contraception anoesis right so that Remos would say is not available uh the fourth option we might call the option of thead and the sad and that is whatever Hashem does is for the good so number one who says Jews are governed by statistics you know one again as anyone understands statistics the fact that there's a one out of four chance of a disease does not mean one out of my four children will have the disease you know uh statistics are in the aggregate so I'll take my chances and ifom a child is sick that's also gamova and that's my niss in life and what do I have to get involved in abortion in contraception in divorce I will take it as I get it or if I'm not able to do that a child could be put up for adoption as well uh know there are families that specialize in adoption of special needs children so that's an option number four but that option is a very difficult option because not everybody is on the madrea to do that that's a a very very high high high level it may not be Ben from for many people yeah no I understand but you got but you got the same problem in other words you can't do abortion right I'm saying you of mosha you wouldn't be able to abort right so you'll just have to go go with what you have whatever it is whatever it is well uh okay so let let me mention option five because option five is really very interesting in light of what I said I had told you that many postum take the position that there is no prohibition of abortion on an embryo that is not yet implanted so now let's consider the following husband and wife are carriers of TXS or any other serious genetic illness they can have interor through some typee of birth control or whatever it would be but they could attempt all pregnancies through an invitro fertilization procedure as a result eggs will be extracted they will be fertilized in vitro they can then be examined prior to implantation for any type of genetic abnormality and even rosha who does not allow abortion of its aex of course Rosia didn't address but but at least theoretically uh it would be M according to this to destroy or not implant those embryos now this indeed is a well-known technique this is called pre-implantation genetic screening and halaka would support preimplantation genetic screening as a way of not passing down serious birth effects in point of fact although you need to talk to RV about this the heer of pre-implantation andic screening may even apply to defects that are not so serious again one has to talk to a REV about that but the lumus that it's not an abortion would seem to allow for any reason at all even sex selection theoretically although once again I have to admit it makes me extremely uneasy uh that you would destroy embryos for trivial reasons but the lumus would support because once you say there's no iser of abortion then it's not it's not a problem so be it as it may though based on the idea that abortion doesn't kick in until there's implantation pre-implantation genetic screening is actually a very good solution for a lot of these genetic problems without getting involved with amniocentesis and abortion and that very difficult area and it also means they can have children in other words the eggs that are or the not the eggs the embryos that don't have the defect will be the ones that will be implanted and be there can be healthy children yeah no that that yeah yeah and goes places she does things shees in aoup and she's a very happy person and she Happ y I might not haveen if I you know but I of these yeah um okay so well again again that that's a very again it's a very very powerful Testament I I know your daughter I know that she's a happy person and accomplishes things in the world and it's a great braa and uh it's something you have to think about again I'm approaching this maybe from a very dry legalistic halic discussion but in reality in reality the whole issue of special needs handicapped whatever vocabulary you want to use that's not important is something we have to think about because when we have the attitude that these are problems that we got to figure out a way you know we should look at them also ases has many many different types of people in the world and they all have purposes and they all have functions and we have to appreciate those functions so it is a difficult issue I understand and as I had mentioned I did mention as one of the options to Simply go with the go with the flow go with what Hashem gives you uh but just but just to be truthful not everybody is always capable of that people have different tolerance levels different abilities of what they feel they could they could take so Haka does allow these Escape valves in various situations but again your point is extremely extremely valuable and it's a perspective that we need to have always in fact in all areas of raising children you know um you know even if there's no identifiable sickness or handicap of and our kid is not the way we would like the the kid to be uh and we might be disappointed we might be frustrated but when we so much focus on what it is we don't have we don't see the The Treasure of of what we do have and you know that's that is a very important lesson for sure yeah but I happen to know a family where was four in one four in one wow wow well it's it's just shows you that statistics uh you know are misleading uh because you can have a whole family in which no one will have it and you have family where everybody has it because statistics are just looking at you know the whole picture but in any particular part of the picture there could be a total reversal or Distortion what did Mark Twain say Mark Twain once said there are lies there are damn lies and there are statistics which statistics are the biggest the biggest lie lie lie of all um yeah okay yes yeah yeah so this is uh yeah this is a very very exciting technology and uh here is the distinction that's often suggested and that is there is distinction between what you might call a Curative U intervention versus an enhancement intervention meaning to say the Torah gives us license to try to heal illnesses so if there is something in the genetic structure like down syndrome or whatever it might be at which you might you might correct the defect so it would not express itself that would in theory be a permissible intervention on the other hand enhancement would mean I want my kid to be able to run 300 miles an hour uh so that you kind of take what God gives you now this distinction is not going to be obvious in every case you know one might you know there's a lot of verbal manipulation meaning hey if I can only run you know two miles an hour or whatever it is you know maybe I'm defective you you know when is when is enhancement considered to be Curative is a difficult question but but an easy case an easy case I think would be if you could correct tax or even down syndrome uh by by some type of genetic engineering that would be within the license the Torah gives to cure illness uh when you're talking about enhancements that would be a much more questionable questionable area um now another problem though is that there's a steep a steep learning curve for these types of new technologies and it is very very likely that initially you things will become worse before they become better meaning to say it could very well be uh that children born from these genetic manipulations might in fact have more serious birth defects and then the question becomes guinea pigs you know it's not moral to kind of make children's lives worse in the course of trying to develop a technology that in the long run will help so that that's another problem with all of this uh I'll just call your attention to uh the movie Jurassic Park uh about the thing or the movies the things that happen when we try to improve on God's uh natural plan and all sorts of bad things can happen so that's a cautionary note but in theory it would be Rua it would be would be permitted yeah no no so so what I was saying is that under those circumstances they should not be donated but they can be used for stem cell retrieval that that's basic basically what what what what we're saying but by the way the issue of Frozen embryos has very very interesting um mous ramifications as well uh this is an actual case uh a very wealthy couple went through an invitro procedure and there were fertilized embryos again husband sperm wife's egg and these are frozen and then both husband and wife died in a plane crash and their estate was several million dollars you know a big estate and technically who are who are the yam the yam are those eggs not eggs those embryos so what happens here so there were a number of very well-meaning public-spirited women who came forward um and uh they Vol they volunteered to uh carry the embryos to chm and since they would be the birth mother presumably they would be the trustees for the estate or whatever it would be um so I I don't believe uh they were successful I think the the SEC the secular Court in California ruled that the embryos have to be destroyed under those circumstances uh what halaka would say is actually a little little bit of a mystery halaka does say that born fetuses can inherit property but the question is these are not yet implanted so it's not clear that these even have the status of unborn embryos uh and that would actually mean that this is a couple that di died childless and therefore the halic airs would be the brothers or whatever it would be it would not be the Frozen embryos because they're not yet capable of of of yusa by the way one other technology I want to mention so sperm can be frozen of course uh embryos can be Frozen and eggs can be frozen actually eggs unfertilized eggs can be Frozen and egg freezing is actually a very interesting option for older single women uh who think that they haven't yet met their sh uh but they're approaching the end of the reproductive cycle so uh their eggs could be Frozen and as a result you know even after menopause uh woman can actually carry uh maybe able to carry a baby even though there's no ovulation but there's her egg and through invitro she would then be able to carry the baby so egg free of course that's still presos she'll find a but but it gives her a little time so there are rabbis who actually Advocate that uh religious women who are approaching 40 uh might consider egg freezing as a way of prolonging a reproductive uh cycle we discussed about uh Anonymous sperm donor impregnation that I mentioned there were some problems with perhaps but egg freezing uh in the sense of being used when she gets married that that is actually a perfectly helically viable solution now conversely let me give you something on the men's side that's an interesting problem uh banking sperm in advance of something like prostate surgery or or testicular cancer uh this is an interesting problem uh let's assume uh that God forbid a man has a condition that will render him unable to produce sperm testicular cancer so the testes have to be removed so he will not be able to have biological children after that condition but right now he's capable of producing sperm so the question would be would he be permitted so to speak to bank sperm to be used in an IVF procedure uh after he has the the cancer uh logically the answer is yes because although you're not allowed to emit sperm latala like masturbation this is the other way around this is the whole purpose of this is to use the sperm for fertility so one would have said that it is permitted uh and some say that other poim and I I I find this a hard pck I don't like this pck but but other poim say they differentiate between a single man and and a married man and they say if he's a single man he doesn't yet have the MIT for to have children because he's not married yet therefore he would not be allowed to emit sperm for later use if he's a married man who already has puru he could again I I I think that's a difficult P because I think logically even a single person certainly anticipates and hopes to get married and to fulfill prer vu so if he's doing it with that intention I don't think there ought to be a difference but just to be honest with you there are post which will not allow a single man uh to uh procure sperm through a masturbation uh for use uh in an IVF yeah well uh Coen well well I'm not sure which problem exactly I will mention this did tell us that even if a Jewish woman was inseminated with non-jewish sperm uh she is still allowed to marry a Coen meaning if a woman has relations with a GU she could not marry a CO but he took the position that insemination was not the same as sexual relations now in terms of kahuna generally uh an IVF child from a Coen is be a Coen that's that's what you're asking meaning Coen sperm fertilizes wife's egg and then wife carries the embryo and gives birth to it there is no problem in Kahuna status there that is considered to be a a a coing okay uh so um again I uh I think we we covered a lot of things over the past few weeks this is the end of this particular sugya God willing next week will be khek uh a of khah what is it yeah a of khah so so we'll talk about Kana that week and the week after so the next two sessions will be about khah so anyway