A 62-year-old woman in Australia has won the right to extract her dead husband’s sperm, but faces an ongoing battle to use it.
The woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, was considering conceiving a child through a surrogate when her 61-year-old husband died suddenly at their Western Australia home on December 17, the ABC reported.
She brought an “urgent” case to the Supreme Court the following night, and Judge Fiona Seaward granted her permission to extract sperm tissue from her husband’s body, which was still stored in a morgue in Perth, the outlet explained.
But using reproductive cells after death is illegal in Western Australia, so you must apply to the Reproductive Technology Council to use the sperm in another state where it is legal, the ABC said.
The couple had been “talking about having another child” after their 29-year-old daughter drowned on a fishing trip in 2013 and their 30-year-old son died in a car accident in 2019, according to court documents seen by The Post. .
The 61-year-old died suddenly at the couple’s home in Western Australia. aradaphotography – stock.adobe.com The Western Australian court ruled in favor of the woman. fake images
Although the wife had been told she could not conceive due to her age, the husband’s sperm was previously tested and deemed suitable for in vitro fertilization, in which a female egg is fertilized by male sperm in a laboratory before to be implanted in the carrier.
The woman’s cousin, who is in her 20s and lives in the Philippines, had even volunteered to be the couple’s surrogate mother, the court heard.
However, at the time of the man’s death, the couple was still dealing with legal obstacles to surrogacy, which would have required them to live in the Philippines for a time, the documents explain.
In court, Seaward ruled there was no reason to believe the deceased man would have objected to his sperm being removed post-mortem, ABC said.
The couple had planned to use the man’s sperm to conceive a child through IVF, the woman said. Joshua Resnick – stock.adobe.com
But the judge also questioned why the decision had not already been approved by a hospital delegate.
According to the grieving wife, she attempted to have the removal ordered shortly after her husband’s death, but was forced to request the urgent order when the facility did not designate a “designated official” to handle the request, court documents explained.
“It is disappointing that it appears that, once again, an applicant has been required to appear in court urgently and in traumatic circumstances to obtain an order that can… be granted in a more expeditious and expeditious manner,” Seaward wrote in his report. final decision, according to ABC.
However, reproductive health experts are generally divided on the question of posthumous fertilization.
It is unclear what the woman will do with her husband’s sperm, given that posthumous fertilization is illegal in Western Australia. Monkey Business – stock.adobe.com
“From a medical point of view, everything is feasible,” University of Western Australia reproductive medicine professor Roger Hart told ABC.
“But the question is whether it’s the right thing to do… counselors and psychologists would be the best people to make that judgment,” he said.
“The woman is going to have to use donor eggs, because she is 62 years old and also plans to use a surrogate mother… It is a posthumous use of sperm, so the child will never know his father. There will be an egg donor for the sperm to inseminate those eggs and then we will transfer the embryo to a surrogate mother, so there are several steps,” Hart explained of the long process.
There are also risks in using an older man’s sperm, he added.
“We know that sperm from older men, whether posthumous or fresh sperm, has a higher rate of deletions of chromosomal abnormalities within the sperm, which poses a higher risk of the child being born… So these are other things that women will have to face. advised,” Hart concluded.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn