New hope for mother fighting to have her dead daughter’s baby
A WOMAN who wants to fulfil her daughter’s dying wish by using her frozen eggs to give birth to her own grandchild won a landmark legal case yesterday.
The 60-year-old’s ‘much loved and only child’, who died of bowel cancer in 2011, had asked her mother to give birth to her baby and bring it up.
But the fertility regulator denied them permission to use the eggs, ruling that the daughter, who was 28 when she died, had not given explicit consent for them to be implanted into her mother. Yesterday three Appeal Court judges ruled this decision was ‘flawed’ and ordered the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to reconsider the case.
The parents – referred to only as Mr and Mrs M – were not in court yesterday.
The court heard that the daughter, referred to as A, had finished university and had a good job before she was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 21.
But she was desperate to have children and had three of her eggs frozen, asking her mother to ‘carry my babies’.
As she lay dying, the court was told she said to her mother: ‘They are never going to let me leave this hospital, Mum. The only way I will get out of here will be in a body bag. I want you to carry my babies.
‘I want you and Dad to bring them up. They will be safe with you. I couldn’t have wanted for better parents. I couldn’t have done this without you.’
Despite the HFEA accepting this conversation took place, it claimed Mrs M could not have the eggs implanted because her daughter’s consent had not been established. Although the daughter had filled out a form agreeing to the eggs’ storage and use, she had not specified how they would be used after her death.
Her parents launched legal action against the HFEA’s refusal in September 2014 to allow them to take their daughter’s eggs to a US fertility treatment clinic to be used with donor sperm, but the High Court backed the HFEA.
Yesterday the parents’ barrister, Jenni Richards QC, told the Court of Appeal there was ‘clear evidence’ the daughter wanted her mother to carry her eggs after she died. The panel of judges agreed and ordered the HFEA to look at the case again.
An HFEA spokesman said: ‘The Court of Appeal reaffirms the need for informed consent but concludes there is sufficient evidence of Mr and Mrs M’s daughter’s true wishes. We will now reconsider their case as soon as possible in the light of this judgment.’
Mr and Mrs M did not want to speak about the case.
‘I want you and Dad to bring them up’