Woman Fights Legal Battle to Get Pregnant With Her Own Grandchild
The 59-year-old woman, identified only as Mrs. M, is asking Justice Duncan Ouseley to overturn a 2014 ruling from the British Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority’s statutory approvals committee, which last year refused to allow the woman to have her daughter’s eggs taken out of storage.
Mrs. M’s daughter had her eggs frozen at IVF Hammersmith in London after being diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2008, but the HFEA said she did not fill out a document detailing her wishes for the eggs prior to her death in 2011.
The High Court heard the mother is seeking to have the eggs shipped to New York, where a fertility clinic has agreed to help her have the eggs fertilized by a sperm donor and implanted in her womb.
The court heard Mrs. M and her husband requested anonymity to protect the privacy of “an as yet unborn child.” The couple said their daughter would be “devastated” to learn her eggs could not be used.
“I have never heard of a surrogacy case involving a mother and her dead daughter’s eggs,” said fertility expert Dr. Mohammed Taranissi of the ARGC clinic in London. “It’s fair to say that this may be a world first.”
