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And should we wonder how she could become pregnant from such
weak sperm, we can say that in fact, the question itself yields two
possible explanations of this surprising occurrence – namely, how
3 could it happen that for seven years she never became pregnant and
precisely now during his terminal illness she became pregnant? The
Noda B’yehudah writes:

“Now, the reason that a man does not sire a child can sometimes be
due to his cold temperament and during his illness, if it was because
of burning heat, his whole body is excessively hot and his temper-
ament is hot and he would therefore then be able to sire a child. I
proposed this explanation to an expert physician in our congregation
and he said it is logical and that this is how the medical textbooks
teach. I then proposed an opposite rationale: that sometimes when
the man and the woman both have very heated temperaments, they
cannot have children together. Sometimes in the fullness of time
a change can take place in the constitution of one of them and the
woman will become pregnant (see Teshuvos Me’il Tzedakah 33, p. 39,
toward the end of col. 4). We can therefore say that this happened
here too – since the man is ill and weak, the woman did not derive
such enjoyment and pleasure from his intercourse so not all her usual
heat was generated, therefore she became pregnant exactly then.”

After much further sharp reasoning the Noda B’yehudah con-
cludes: “And I maintain that she is innocent and pure and did not act
promiscuously – she became pregnant from her husband and gave
birth to a viable child.” That would seem to absolve her from chalitzah,
because the husband left a child in the world. However, the Noda
B’yehudah concludes that there is still an argument to be made for
her requiring chalitzah despite her husband having left a child in the
world, as follows.

Tosfos in maseches Yevamos, (37a s.v. rov), pose a question on the
decree of waiting for ‘three months of discernment.’ [A widow or
divorcee who wants to remarry must wait three months from her
husband’s death or her divorce (Yevamos 41, Shulchan Aruch Even
Ha’ezer 13,1) lest she give birth seven months after her remarriage and
we won’t know whether it is the child of the first husband born after

Posthumous Artificial Inseminatio 2 49