A widow is battling to use sperm taken from the body of her dead husband, in a British legal first. The woman, who cannot be named, wants to use sperm taken from her husband after he died unexpectedly during a routine hospital operation last year. The mother-of-one applied for an emergency court order allowing his sperm to be taken shortly after he died and it is now being stored in a clinic. The law allows sperm only to be used with the written consent of the donor.
This article examines the new Model Act on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), which was approved by the American Bar Association in February, 2008.
Days after an Israeli court made a landmark ruling allowing the family of a deceased 17-year-old girl to harvest and freeze the eggs from her ovaries, the family has apparently bowed to domestic pressure to drop efforts to push ahead with the procedure. The family of Chen Aida Ayish, who was gravely injured in a car crash 10 days ago, had appealed to the court to extract her eggs after doctors declared her brain dead, Israeli media had reported. The court's ruling was unprecedented in Israel, and possibly globally, but immediately sparked a backlash from religiously conservative communities in Israel, a source familiar with the case said yesterday, prompting the family not to take the case any further. Ms Ayish, 17, fell into a coma after she was hit by a car 10 days ago. Doctors at the Kfar Saba hospital pronounced her brain dead last Wednesday, and her parents decided to donate her organs, and probe the possibility of harvesting her eggs.