Dead man may yet be a father

More than four years after her 20-year-old soldier son was killed in the Gaza Strip, Rachel Cohen is hoping for a grandchild after winning a court case to have a woman inseminated with his sperm.

The case, decided this month by a court near Tel Aviv, is the first in the world in which a court permitted a woman to be inseminated with sperm from a known, dead donor who was not her partner, said the lawyer who argued the case, Irit Rosenblum.

Staff Sgt. Keivan Cohen’s parents had his sperm extracted and frozen after his death and fought a legal battle for the right to use it to inseminate a woman he never met. They chose a 35-year-old unmarried economist.

The Cohens argued that their son had expressed a wish to become a father.

“I’m terribly sad that I don’t have my boy; it’s a terrible loss,” Rachel Cohen, 43, said. “But I’m also happy that I will have a grandchild to hold, and that I succeeded in carrying out my son’s will.”

Cohen has three other children and a grandchild.