## Facts

- Yigal Amir was convicted of assassinating Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and sentenced to life imprisonment.
- While incarcerated, Amir married Dr. Larissa Trimbobler.
- The Israel Prison Service (IPS) denied the couple conjugal visits for security reasons.
- Amir requested permission to provide a sperm sample for transfer outside the prison for artificial insemination; the IPS approved the request.
- Two Knesset members petitioned for judicial review, arguing the IPS lacked authority to approve the sperm transfer and that allowing Amir to have a child was substantively unreasonable, immoral, and contrary to public sentiment.

## Issues

1. Whether the IPS needed express statutory authorization to permit a prisoner to provide sperm for artificial insemination, or whether its general administrative powers allowed it to facilitate the exercise of a protected right.
2. Whether prisoners retain a constitutional right to parenthood during imprisonment, and what limits incarceration and security needs may place on that right.
3. Whether public morality and societal revulsion toward the prisoner’s crime can justify denying the possibility of parenthood.

## Decision

- The High Court of Justice denied the petition and upheld the IPS decision permitting the sperm transfer.
- The Court held the IPS acted within its authority; specific legislative authorization was not required to respect and facilitate a retained fundamental right.
- The Court recognized a constitutional human right to parenthood grounded in human dignity that does not end automatically upon imprisonment, though it may be limited for legitimate incarceration-related reasons.
- The Court rejected morality-based and public-outrage arguments as bases to curtail the right, warning against imposing punishment beyond the criminal sentence through administrative action.
- Concurring justices agreed with the outcome and the core rights-based and administrative-law reasoning.

## Legal Principles

- Parenthood is a constitutionally protected aspect of human dignity; incarceration limits rights only to the extent justified by the nature and purposes of imprisonment.
- In public law, statutory authority is generally required to restrict or infringe a right, not to respect or facilitate it.
- Prison administrations may regulate prisoners’ rights for legitimate penological interests (e.g., security and order) but may not add punitive restrictions beyond the sentence imposed by the criminal court.
- Public abhorrence of an offender and moral condemnation of the crime are not lawful substitutes for a rights-limiting justification tied to legitimate imprisonment-related objectives.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld the IPS’s approval of sperm transfer for artificial insemination, ruling that prisoners retain a constitutional right to parenthood and that administrative authorities may facilitate that right absent a lawful, incarceration-related basis for restriction; public outrage could not justify additional, unauthorized punishment.


Dobrin v. Isr. Prison Serv., HCJ 2245/06 (Isr. 2006)