Woman wins right to give birth to grandchild

Honoring a dying wish - Woman wins right to give birth to grandchild

A 60-year-old woman determined to use her dead daughter's frozen eggs to give birth to her own grandchild won a crucial legal victory on Thursday (2016-06-30) in second-highest court in Britain.

The woman, referred to by the Court of Appeal in London as M., said she wanted to honour the last dying wish of her daughter, who died of bowel cancer in 2011 at the age of 28.The daughter had been adamant that she wanted her mother to carry her baby and have her parents raise the child.

The ruling is not the final word on the matter: The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the governmental agency that blocked M.'s effort, said on Thursday that it would reconsider the case as soon as possible in light of the court's judgment.

The authority, the government's independent fertility regulatory body, ruled in 2014 that the daughter's eggs could not be removed from London and taken to a clinic in New York.

M. wanted to use the eggs to create an embryo with sperm from RING A, an anonymous donor, but the authority refused to approve the transport of the eggs abroad on the grounds that the daughter had not given her informed consent.

The high court in London upheld the authority's decision. M. then took her case to the court of appeal. On Thursday, the appeals court found that the fertility authority had set the bar too high in determining consent, finding that there was sufficient evidence of Mr. and Mrs. M.'s daughter's true wishes for her mother to have, and raise, her own grandchild.

During the appeal, lawyers acting for M. warned that the frozen eggs could "simply be allowed to perish" if M. was prevented from forging ahead with the conception.

(Source: NYT NEWS SERVICE)