Widower sues for cost of surrogacy ‘to honour his late wife’
A MAN wants to honour a wish he and his deceased wife had, which was to have a child, and he is claiming the costs of surrogacy in a High Court action following her death from cervical cancer.
Padraig Creaven’s case is against the HSE, three laboratories and a hospital centre on the alleged misinterpretation of the woman’s cervical smear sample in 2011, taken under the CervicalCheck national screening programme.
Mr Creaven’s wife, Aoife, was around 20 weeks pregnant through IVF in 2014 when she found out she had terminal cervical cancer.
The court heard how she had to travel to London and have the much-wanted pregnancy terminated as chemotherapy was the only option.
Jeremy Maher SC, for Mr Creaven, said the couple had “the most extraordinary and difficult dilemma”. The “necessary course of action was to terminate the pregnancy”.
After that, counsel said, the couple tried to find anything to prolong Aoife’s life but she died in 2015. Now, counsel says Mr Creaven is determined to honour his wife’s wish and proceed to have a child through surrogacy.
The case also includes a claim for aggravated or punitive damages in relation to an alleged comment by a consultant to a member of the deceased’s family during a meeting in 2018, in relation to the result of a CervicalCheck audit of the 2011 slide.
The consultant’s alleged comment – “well, nuns don’t get cervical cancer” – counsel said, was grossly insensitive.
Mr Creaven has sued the HSE and three laboratories.
They are Sonic Healthcare (Ireland) Ltd with offices at Sandyford Business Park, Dublin; MedLab Pathology Ltd, also of Sandyford Business Park; and US laboratory Clinical Pathology Laboratories Incorporated (CPL) of Austin, Texas. The case is also against Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital, Dublin. All the claims are denied.
Ms Mitchell Creaven had a cervical smear test under the CervicalCheck national screening programme on August 8, 2011. She was advised on August 31, 2011 that no abnormalities were detected. The case continues.