Court rejects woman's attempt to bear grandchild with frozen eggs
LONDON -- Britain's High Court has denied an attempt by a woman to use her dead daughter's frozen eggs to create her own grandchild, after deciding it wasn't clear whether the daughter wanted the procedure.
The daughter died in 2011 at age 28 and had signed a consent form agreeing that her eggs could be stored after her death but had not specified how they should be used.
In the ruling issued Monday, the U.K. court rejected a request by the 59-year-old woman and her husband, whose names were not released, to send their daughter's eggs to a U.S. fertility clinic, where they would have been fertilized and transferred into the woman.
Britain's fertility regulator refused to ship the eggs abroad, arguing there was no clear proof the daughter wanted her mother to use her eggs.
British media reports say the daughter froze her eggs after she was diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of 23, and the family claims she asked her mother to act as a surrogate if she didn't survive.
In ruling against the parents Monday, the BBC reports High Court judge Mr. Justice Duncan Ouseley said, "I must dismiss this claim, though I do so conscious of the additional distress which this will bring to the claimants, whose aim has been to honour their daughter's dying wish for something of her to live on after her untimely death."
The BBC reports the family may file an appeal.