
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, December 13, 1994                   TAG: 9412130071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS                                 LENGTH: Short

RIGHTS AFTER DEATH? MOTHER GOES TO COURT

A woman who used her husband's stored sperm to become pregnant after he died of cancer asked a court Monday to have their 3-year-old daughter declared his child and heir.

The aim is to win Social Security survivor's benefits for Judith Christine Hart, who was born in 1991, a year after her father's death.

``Even when I was reluctant to talk about the possibility that he would not survive, Ed said, `There could always be a child for you,''' said the girl's mother, Nancy Hart. ``Judith was Ed's last gift to me.''

No state recognizes a child conceived after the father's death as legitimate, said Kathryn Kolbert, vice president of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, which filed the federal lawsuit.

Kolbert said it's apparently the first lawsuit in the United States to seek benefits for a child conceived after the father's death.

Edward William Hart Jr. was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in March 1990 and died that June.

When he was diagnosed, doctors told him that the treatment probably would leave him sterile. Since the couple wanted children, doctors suggested he store his sperm.

- Associated Press

by CNB