Survivor Benefits and Post-Death Conception

Sign of the times of the day:

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether children conceived by in vitro fertilization after the death of their biological father are entitled to collect Social Security survivor benefits.

The court granted cert today in the case, Astrue v. Capato, report SCOTUSblog, Courthouse News Service and Bloomberg News.

The case involves twins conceived after their father, Robert Capato, died of cancer. Capato’s widow, Karen, used frozen sperm for the in vitro process. The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in January that the twins fit the definition of “child” in the Social Security Act.

The issue is surfacing more often, according to government court papers cited by Bloomberg. More than 100 applications have been filed for survivor benefits for children conceived posthumously.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Restoring Man at Notre Dame

Carl R. Trueman

It is fascinating to be an outsider on the inside of an institution going through times of…

Deliver Us from Evil

Kari Jenson Gold

In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…

Natural Law Needs Revelation

Peter J. Leithart

Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…