A mother is launching a legal battle for possession of her dead daughter’s frozen eggs so that she can become pregnant with her own grandchild.
In what may be the first case of its kind, the 59-year-old woman and her husband, 58, are challenging an independent regulator’s refusal to allow them to take the eggs to a US fertility treatment clinic.
The couple say it was the dying wish of their daughter, an only child who died of bowel cancer in her late twenties, that her eggs be fertilised by donor sperm and implanted into her own mother’s womb.
The daughter initially had her eggs frozen after being diagnosed with cancer in the hope that she herself could have children in the future. Her parents want to export the eggs to New York, where a clinic has indicated it is willing to provide treatment at an estimated cost of up to £60,000.
Dr Mohamed Taranissi, who runs the ARGC fertility clinic in London, said: “I have never heard of a surrogacy case involving a mother and her dead daughter’s eggs. It’s fair to say that this may be a world first.”
But the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has refused to issue a “special direction” allowing the eggs to be removed from storage in London and sent to the US. Its statutory approvals committee took the decision last year, saying there was insufficient evidence to show that the daughter wanted her mother to use donor sperm to carry her child.
The committee argued that there was no clear, written consent and it was entitled to use its discretion to refuse to issue a special direction, without which it would be unlawful for export of the eggs to go ahead.
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