2023-12-01 08:27:00
(CNN) — As a medical social worker at Israel’s Kaplan Hospital, Professor Shir Daphna-Tekoah is no stranger to trauma.
But when she was called to work on October 7, the day Hamas attacked farms, villages and a music festival in Israel, the magnitude of the disaster quickly became clear.
“I’ve seen dozens of people die in accidents or shootings, but this was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Daphna-Tekoah told CNN by phone.
As director of the hospital’s rape crisis center, she was called in when allegations of sexual assault arose. Soon everyone got to work as the emergency room was filled with injured people.
“I saw the horror on their faces,” Daphna-Tekoah said. “I saw in their eyes that they had seen something incredible.”
Worse things followed. “Then the bodies of young people dressed in party clothes arrived,” she said. “They were no more than 23, 24 years old, the age of my own children.”
Daphna-Tekoah had to support the families who were saying goodbye to their murdered loved ones. Of one family she said, “I asked them if they wanted to thank their son or apologize for something. The mother said, ‘I’m so sorry I let you go to the party and didn’t protect you.'”
Then, Daphna-Tekoah posed another question. “I asked him, ‘Do you want me to tell you regarding sperm conservation?'”
Medical social worker Shir Daphna-Tekoah suggested the idea of sperm extraction to grieving families on October 7, 2023. (Photo: Shir Daphna-Tekoah)
“I can’t even explain what I saw,” said Daphna-Tekoah, who knew little regarding the process other than the need to act quickly.
“Before there was only agony and darkness in the mother’s eyes and suddenly a flash of light and hope appeared,” added the specialist.
Daphna-Tekoah immediately contacted the hospital management, and a few hours later they had the necessary legal approval. By the next morning, sperm had already been recovered from several victims of the Nova festival.
Now, more than seven weeks later, Israeli hospitals have been inundated with requests to cryogenically freeze the sperm of those killed in the conflict, hospital officials say.
Previously, posthumous sperm retrieval (PSR) was open to couples – as long as other relatives did not object – but parents of the deceased had to apply for legal permission.
But the Ministry of Health has just drastically reduced bureaucratic procedures. In a statement published on its website, states that hospitals have been instructed to, during the war, approve RSP applications “from the parents of the deceased, without referring them to family court.”
Sperm remains alive briefly following death, so it is possible for doctors—usually a fertility or urology specialist—to recover it from testicular tissue. Any live sperm found are transferred and frozen in liquid nitrogen.
Dr. Noga Fuchs Weizman, medical director of the sperm bank and male infertility unit at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, says there have been many requests from grieving families.
“Demand has been very high,” he told CNN in a video call, adding that dozens of families have accessed the service since October 7.
According to Dr. Shimi Barda, the unit’s laboratory director, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) offers families the option when they are informed of their loss. “They suggest it proactively,” he said.
Doctors Noga Fuchs Weizman (left) and Shimi Barda (right) participated in the procedures at the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. (Credit: Noga Fuchs Weizman/Shimi Barda)
Shortly following the attacks of October 7, The case of Israeli singer Shaylee Atary made headlineswhose husband died trying to protect their baby in the Kfar Aza kibbutz.
According to him Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Atary “did everything he might to get his sperm back,” hoping to expand his family in the future. He did not succeed, but his experience served to raise public opinion.
The recovery initiative is supervised by the Ministry of Health, which distributes the cases among four hospitals.
Detection of live sperm is most likely in the first 24 hours following death, so timing is crucial, Barda said.
“We have limited the time frame to 72 hours; however, the literature and our own experience suggest that 44 to 45 hours is the maximum.”
The manner of death is also important.
“It depends on the condition of the body, how it was preserved and the severity of the injuries,” Barda said.
The hospital speaks directly with families, Fuchs Weizman said. “We tell them what we managed to freeze… and briefly regarding the subsequent process, if they decide to use it.”
Barda added: “It’s very emotional, very hard, but we give them some hope.”
A long process
Irit Oren Gunders is the founder of Or Lamishpachot (Light for Families), a non-profit organization that supports the families of fallen soldiers. She has long campaigned for parents to have access to the RSP.
“We have to give them hope and open their hearts once more, and only the grandchildren will do that. It’s not that they want a baby instead of their child, it’s the grandchild,” Oren Gunders told CNN by phone.
Irit Rosenblum, pioneering attorney and founder of New Family, which advocates for family rights, also works with grieving parents.
Attorney Irit Rosenblum has helped achieve the birth of more than 100 children. (Credit: Irit Rosenblum)
Rosenblum made history in 2007 with the case of a woman whose son died in Gaza. This person became the first mother of Israel and one of the first in the world to obtain the right to have his son’s sperm extracted. But it took more than one of each on becoming a grandmother.
PSR may be the easy part, Rosenblum told CNN. “It’s a long process,” he said in a telephone interview. “We’ve had regarding 40 extraction requests recently and it was easy to allow them, but the next step will be to find women who will use the sperm.”
Rosenblum claims to have contributed to the birth of more than 100 children. He has long campaigned for biological wills, which provide unambiguous guidance following death. Since the Hamas attacks, she has made it quick and easy to fill out a biological will online.
“I am not a religious person, but Israeli society is very family-oriented and continuity is essential,” he says.
“The mourner has lost the will to live; the only way to restore meaning to his life is through the continuity of the person he has lost. Not allowing it, even if we have the technology, is not moral.”
Yulia and Vlad Poznianski, whose son Baruch died of cancer at age 25, are among those helped by Rosenblum.
Fifteen years later, Yulia still finds it difficult to talk regarding Baruch’s death. Instead, she focuses on the future and her seven-year-old granddaughter, Shira.
“We made a new life,” says Yulia, of her collaboration with Liat Malka, a single woman who had Shira using her son’s sperm.
Baruch Pozniansky (left) died in 2008. Today, his memory lives on in his 7-year-old daughter, Shira (right). (Credit: Yulia Pozniansky/Liat Malka)
“We are very grateful to her, but she is also grateful to us,” says Yulia of Malka, explaining that they are very active grandparents.
Yulia describes Shira as a “brilliant” girl whose resemblance to her father is “unbelievable.”
“She is a big girl and she understands it. She is not the first nor will she be the last girl whose father is not alive, especially now,” says Yulia.
Soldiers sent into a conflict must know their options, Yulia says. “They have to know that they can leave their biological will to their parents or their wife.”
Israel “goes further”
Gil Siegal, director of the Center for Health Law and Bioethics at Kiryat Ono College in Israel and professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, told CNN by phone that “it is no coincidence that Israel is a pioneer in reproductive medicine.”
“The combination of high-tech medicine and a strong cultural, religious and existentialist inclination towards reproduction results in the largest number of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) clinics per capita and the largest number of IVF cycles for women in the world “.
He said traditional ethical perspectives have been upended by the loss of life — especially among young people — since Oct. 7.
“This is a new turn and Israel is going further,” he said. “On the one hand we have science and technical knowledge, and on the other hand we have the impulse, which is religion, culture and history.”
However, ethical issues must be taken into account, he said.
“When you are faced with such a horrendous loss you do anything that is some sort of panacea for your endless grief and pain, but this is not the way to do politics.”
He believes grieving parents should be allowed access to the RPS, “but then it stops”.
With “zero urgency,” he said, “we have time to sit down and debate and think regarding the implications of planned orphanhood, motivated by the request of the deceased’s parents.”
And he added: “Planned orphanhood in the sense that this child was born from a tragedy as a living memory of the deceased soldier.”
But for Daphna-Tekoah, the answer is clear following the Hamas attack.
“If, as a country, we encourage people to donate organs following death, why don’t we give people the right to donate sperm? We don’t live in the Middle Ages and technology is here. It’s their human right,” he said. .
“It was a catastrophe and we owe it to them.”
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