"At least she will not be alone," Ilan Yehuda said Wednesday, in response to a petition filed by his ex-wife Olga Borisov, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for killing their four-year-old son, to undergo in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.
"She deserves to be a mother again, what happened was not intentional. She didn't want for something like this to happen," he said in.
Related stories:
- Mother who drowned toddler gets 8 years
- Woman who drowned son seeks pardon from Peres
- Inmate: Transfer me to Russian prison
Yehuda, who is in his 40s, will soon become a father again himself. He visits Borisov occasionally at Neve Tirza Prison, where she told him of her wish to conceive.
"I support her because she was the mother of my child," he told Ynet. "Only this can give her back what was lost. She was a devoted mother, loving and caring. What happened was the result of depression, and would not have happened if she was treated for it."
"There is no doubt she deserves to be a mother and when that happens it will make me
very happy. I don't want her to remain miserable and lonely all her life."
Borisov, 47, drowned her son at the beach at Bat Yam in 2008 and was convicted a year later as part of a plea bargain. She started to serve her sentence three years ago, and since then she divorced her husband and her parents died.
Borisov does not meet the Israel Prison Service's criteria for neither conjugal visits nor fertility treatments, due to her age, marital status and medical condition.
"On the human perspective it seems like an outrage," Attorney Irit Rosenbloom, founder and chairwoman of the New Family organization, told Ynet.
She further stressed that the legal issue of IVF is based on public health regulations dating back to the days of the British Mandate, and are therefore not clearly defined. "If a person takes a life, and society, according to its laws, takes away his freedom, it can also deny him the right to become a parent."
Lawyer Avraham Altalef, who specializes in Family Law, disagrees: "When a person is imprisoned he does not immediately loses his basic rights. His punishment is the denial of his freedom and expulsion from society, by being imprisoned, but he still retains his basic right of parenting."
In addition, Altalef claimed that usually the authorities responsible for the prisoner do not involve themselves with the question of parental capability.
"One doesn't need a permit for that, it's every person's right to realize, but in Borisov's case this question can definitely arise since she has a problematic record regarding parenthood."
Shiri Hadar contributed to this report
- Receive Ynetnews updates
directly to your desktop