Awarding the Seeds of Life

"I'm the happiest woman in the world," declared Corinne Parpalaix, 22, last week after a civil court in the Paris suburb of Creteil awarded her possession of frozen sperm left in a sperm bank by her late husband Alain. In 1981 he deposited his sperm after learning that treatment for his testicular cancer could leave him sterile. He died last Christmas, two days after he and Corinne were married in a hospital ceremony. In February the young widow tried to recover the sperm from the bank in order to conceive her dead husband's child. The bank refused, on the grounds that the donor had not left instructions. But the court ruled that Parpalaix had the right to the sperm, which it described as "a secretion containing the seeds of life."

Partly because of the Parpalaix case, the French government has proposed legislation governing the operation of sperm banks that would avoid similar cases in the future. But the new laws would not help Parpalaix in one respect: should she succeed in becoming pregnant, she will run into the Napoleonic Code of 1804. It states that any child born more than 300 days after the putative father's death is not considered a legitimate heir.