Mother wants dead daughter’s frozen eggs to give birth to own grandchild

A mother has launched a court battle to get her dead daughter’s frozen eggs so she can become pregnant with her own grandchild. The 59-year-old mum says her daughter never wavered in her wish that her mother should carry her child after her death from cancer. "Mrs M" is challenging an independent regulator’s refusal to allow her and her husband, 58, to take her daughter’s eggs to a US fertility treatment clinic. In what may be the first case of its kind, the court heard how the daughter would have been “devastated” if she had known her dying wish would be refused.

From the outset one of the issues that troubled A were the implications of her illness in terms of her ability to have a child.

Jenni Richards QC

The court was told how the daughter was an only child who died in 2011 of bowel cancer while in her late 20s. Her dying wish was that her eggs be fertilised by donor sperm and implanted into her own mother’s womb, the court was told. The daughter initially had her eggs frozen after her diagnosis hoping she herself could have children in the future, but lost her battle for life. Her parents want to export the eggs to New York, where a clinic has indicated it is willing to provide fertility treatment at a cost of up to £60,000.

Americas