WIDOW’S HISTORIC VICTORY TO BE A MOTHER
150 migrants pulled from sea off Spain
the UK, where gender selection isn’t legal.” The IVF procedure, which involved an egg donor and surrogate, is thought to have cost between £60,000 and £100,000.
Dr Smotrich, 55, created the first test-tube baby for a samesex couple in 1997 and in 2001 helped British businessman Ian Mucklejohn become Britain’s first single father of surrogate triplets. “I’m not here to judge who should be a parent,” said the doctor.
“In this case, from what the parents told me, their son absolutely wanted children. I was happy to help a tragic story end with a happy outcome.” CRAMMED into a tiny rescue boat, the latest batch of migrants is pulled from the Mediterranean after they attempted the perilous crossing from Africa to Spain.
Many waved and smiled at their heroes for saving them as they were transferred to the safety of a larger boat by Spanish rescuers.
While the overall number of migrants reaching Europe by sea has fallen from a high in 2015, Spain has overtaken Italy as their preferred destination.
The latest rescue this weekend saw more than 150 men, many of whom appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s, plucked from boats stranded in the Strait of Gibraltar.
The migrants were rescued by Salvamento Maritimo sea search and rescue agency along with the Spanish Guardia Civil.
According to the International Organization for Migration more than 33,000 migrants have arrived in Spain by sea and land this year alone and some 329 have died in the attempt. BRITISH widow Diane Blood won an historic battle for the right to have her dead husband Stephen’s baby without his consent in 1997.
The Court of Appeal ruled in favour of her request to export his sperm and be inseminated in a clinic outside the UK.
It was extracted from his body days before his death after he caught meningitis and fell into a coma at 30.
Mrs Blood, an advertising executive from Nottingham, called the decision, “a victory for commonsense and justice”.
She said: “I just wanted the right to do what I thought was right for me, and to be left alone to get on with it.
“It was my life, and I wanted to have children with someone I loved. I lost Stephen but I didn’t lose all the other things we’d planned. I didn’t lose the ability to have children.”
Mrs Blood gave birth to Liam in 1998 and Joel in 2002 after IVF treatment in Brussels. A ruling in 2003 allowed Stephen to be recognised as their father on their birth certificates.
Despite not prompting a change in law, the Blood case was featured in academic books.
Liam, 19, who studied production arts at college, said last year that life without a father did not seem strange as it was all he had ever known.
“I have only known him as this person I never met. I almost think it would be seem a bit strange to have a dad around,” he said.