Two years after US soldier's death, widow has his son

[proud2BlibKansan]

AUSTIN, United States (AFP) - Fifteen-month-old Benton is the spitting image of his father, a US soldier who died in Iraq two years before his son was born.

"He looks so much like his father, it's kind of scary," his mother Kathleen Smith told AFP, as she talked about her unusual decision to have her soldier-husband's baby posthumously, using semen frozen before he was deployed.

"Benton is the child Brian and I could have had. I have part of what Brian and I could have had -- part of my dream was possible even after he died," Smith, 42, said.

"My husband and I had talked about the probability of needing to do in vitro fertilization because I already had a fertility issue. That's why he went to a sperm bank before he went to Iraq," she said.

Smith is not the only US soldier to have semen frozen and held at a sperm bank before deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071019/sc_afp/usiraqwomenscienceivf