Ted Audio Collective

This is the Ted Health Podcast, I'm Dr. Shoshana Unger-Lighter.

Today, a Ted Talk from Ellen Trackman.

As both an attorney and a writer, Ellen focuses on the legal issues surrounding technologies

to treat infertility, like in vitro fertilization and egg freezing.

Ellen makes the case that while reproductive technology has helped so many people start

families, the laws lag behind the advancements.

And that's caused some unthinkable embryo mix-ups and thorny lawsuits.

An IVF isn't the only area where medical technology is outpacing the law.

I'll get into that more deeply after the talk.

Before his death in California in 1991, a man named William Kane wrote a letter to the children

from his first marriage and to his fiance, Deborah.

It read,

I address this to my children, because although I have only two of you, Everett and Katie,

it may be that Deborah decides, as I hope she will, to have a child by me after my death.

I have been assiduously generating sperm samples for that eventuality.

If she does, then this letter is for my posthumous offspring as well,

with the thought that I have loved you in my dreams, even though I never got to see you born.

What happened after William Kane's death was a lawsuit that would forever change the law.

His ex-wife and adult children argued that Deborah should not be allowed to use the sperm samples.

They should be destroyed.

And a trial court agreed with them, but Deborah appealed,

...