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Modern science met the law this week, and a little girl lost out. Brynn Beeler is the biological daughter of a man who died from leukemia in 2003. But an Iowa court determined this week that Brynn has no rights to Bruce Beeler's Social Security death benefits. After all: she didn't even exist when he died.
Brynn is the result of what some would call a miracle. Modern science allowed Bruce to bank his sperm before undergoing cancer treatment. After he died, wife Patti was able to make a baby with her beloved thanks to in-vitro fertilization (IVF). It's a beautiful and heart-wrenching story. But it doesn't mean she deserves money from the government.
Go on and call me a total Grinch, but I'm a big fan of following laws. I haven't murdered anyone -- as tempting as some people make it. When Hurricane Irene knocked out my power (and thus my supply of the sweet caffeine-y goodness that is cold Diet Pepsi), I didn't break into the local grocery store to curb my cravings.
And the law in Iowa when Brynn was conceived dictated only someone's surviving children at the time of death were eligible. It's since been changed by Iowa and 11 other states: something I frankly take issue with, but that's a whole other blog post. Still, on the day that Patti Beeler walked into a fertility clinic and said, "I want to make a baby," the law in the State of Iowa was clear: she would be going it alone.
The horrors of losing a spouse and having to contemplate going the IVF route to create the child you always planned to have are palpable. I feel for Patti Beeler and her daughter both. But it can't be ignored that it's a process that allows you time to plan. Knowing she didn't have the potential of a second income to support her daughter, it was her responsibility to do her homework, to determine if she would be able to do it alone. It was her responsibility to talk to someone -- a lawyer preferably -- about the legal ramifications of her child's conception being post-mortem.
She didn't.
That's her problem. Certainly not the Supreme Court's -- although the signs are that's where the Beeler case is headed. Nor is it the problem of the people in the State of Iowa, where money Bruce Beeler paid into the Social Security system has already been sucked back into the system. That's what happens to the benefits not expended to a surviving spouse or surviving kids. That's how the Social Security system keeps going -- because we all put in money, and we're all limited in what we can take out.
Do you think Brynn or babies like her deserve a government paycheck?
Image via bradbrundage/Flickr
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