The wife of a convicted killer who wants to be artificially...

The wife of a convicted killer who wants to be artificially inseminated before her husband's execution is forcing the justice system to clarify what it means to "strip a prisoner of his political and individual rights".
The rights to vote and to run for office were among those stripped from Zhejiang province's Luo Feng when he was sentenced to death in August for premeditated murder. But the court's delay in implementing his execution gave his wife, Zheng Xueli, the opportunity to question if he was also stripped of his right to reproduce.
"Luo Feng has been stripped of his individual rights and cannot have a child in the normal way," said one academic in a Beijing Morning Post report. "But prisoners are stripped of their individual and political rights and not of other rights."
Some scholars privately say Zheng's case would have more strength if she argued on behalf of her own rights under China's marriage law and the women's rights protection law - both of which enshrine her right to bear children - instead of taking up the questionable rights of her convicted husband.
American judges appear are facing a similar problem. William Gerber, who is serving a life sentence in California, won the right to artificially inseminate his wife, but the US Court of Appeal is reconsidering the decision.
Among the issues the US Court of Appeal wants to probe, which will almost certainly be considered by its Chinese counterparts, is if such a ruling inevitably implies that female inmates have the right to be inseminated and bear children in prison and, if so, who will bear the costs.
As neither California nor China allows conjugal visits, some legal scholars argue that prisoners should not have additional rights to procreate only because of advances in science.