‘Positive’ move in Ellie legal battle Deadline extension for transgender teen sperm fight
Lawyers fighting for a tragic Stirling transgender teenager’s right to father a child have been given hope in their bid to stop a fertility clinic from destroying her frozen sperm.
Ellie Anderson, born a boy, had always dreamed of becoming a parent and had delayed taking hormone blockers to allow for her sperm to be collected at a fertility clinic, with plans to use an egg donor and a surrogate to satisfy her wishes.
When the sixteen-year-old died suddenly in July from
“unascertained” causes, her mother Louise, 45, consulted lawyers in a bid to prevent the clinic, at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, from throwing out her sample.
UK fertility legislation says that while Ellie would have been able to transfer the right over her sperm to a partner if she was in a relationship, that right cannot be transferred to Louise.
Solicitors are hoping to use a legal manoeuvre to prevent the destruction of the sample and allow Louise to keep Ellie’s dream of parenthood alive posthumously.
A deadline of November 30 for destroying the sample has been extended to January 12, to allow time for health board lawyers to release Ellie’s medical records.
Louise’s solicitor Virgil
Crawford said last week: “They have extended the deadline for six weeks from December 1. The reason for this, essentially, is that we have asked for various medical records relating to Ellie. They are going to give them to us, but they need to go through them and redact them first, so we’ve not got them yet.
“We need them for various reasons to frame any court application, because what is in the medical records might be relevant, and because of the delay in getting the records to us the [NHS] Central Legal Office now accept that none of us are going to be able to meet the current deadline of November 30.
“The law on the issue is quite complicated, and there are lots of things in the background that we need to look at.
“There are specific things in the records we need to look at, because we will need to refer to them in any application.”
Louise said: “It’s a relief to be honest because it’s been a waiting game up till now and I was very aware that the clock was ticking.
“Now we can breathe a bit in the run-up to Christmas and our lawyers will have time to get our application in. I see this as a positive.”
The planned action would be in the Court of Session, where judges would initially be asked for an interim interdict preventing the clinic involved, the Glasgow Royal Infirmary Fertility Clinic, from destroying Ellie’s sample.
They would then be asked to use a special power called the nobile officium, unique to Scots law, to allow judges to provide a legal remedy where statute or the common law are silent – or plug any gap in the law or offer mitigation if the actual law, if applied to the letter, would be oppressive.
A spokesman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “We are unable to comment on an ongoing legal case.”
It’s a relief to be honest because it’s been a waiting game up till now...now we can breathe a bit Mum Louise