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of tree grafting has changed nowadays, a shoot is no longer grafted
onto a tree as used to be done. Instead, the sap containing the seed
is poured into the tree. This has therefore become the normal way of
grafting and a person is liable for grafting nowadays with this type
of practice.” In view of the fact that nowadays many babies are born
through artificial insemination, the bris of such a child will set aside
Shabbos [and the mother will become impure from childbirth]. This
is particularly true in view of the fact that Rabbenu Chananel gives
as the reason that giving birth following bathtub insemination doers
not confer impurity,“because bathtub insemination is tantamount to
miraculous” which is not the case nowadays3.

2. Tainted Lineage – Even those poskim who allow a woman to be
fertilized with her husband’s sperm did not refer to a case where this
is done after his death, for she is then no longer his wife and the child’s
lineage may be tainted. It must be considered whether the stain on
the lineage of a child born to unmarried parents arises from the fact
that the parents are not man and wife or from the fact that his birth
comes about through a forbidden act of intercourse, whereas in the
case of artificial insemination there is no forbidden act of intercourse.

Logically it would seem that the defect in the child’s lineage is due
to his parents not being married. Therefore, while she may have per-
formed an act of true kindness towards her late husband by ensuring
that his semen was not emitted for naught, on the other hand the
child’s lineage is tainted.

3. Slander and Gossip – It may happen that people will gossip
that this child was born as a result of his mother’s promiscuity and
that he is not the child of her late husband. We learn in the Rambam
(Hilchos Gerushin 3:5): “A person who wrote out a bill of divorce in
order to divorce his wife and then changed his mind and decided not
to divorce her and was secluded with her after writing the get should

3. I repeated these ideas to me father-in-law Rav Y.S. Elyashiv zt”l and he agreed
to them. I have heard that he subsequently retracted.

A Husband’s request for Posthumous Artificial Inseminatio 2 67