NEW DELHI: The central government has moved the Delhi High Court challenging a private hospital’s order to release the frozen gametes of an unmarried deceased to his parents.
The Center moved the Delhi High Court against the order allowing posthumous reproductionA bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyay and Justice Tejas Kariya issued notice to parents on the Centre’s appeal assailing the 2024 judgment of a single judge which said the consent of the owner of the sperm or egg can be shown but there is no ban against posthumous reproduction.
In its order passed on January 29, the bench listed the appeal for hearing on February 27.
During the hearing, counsel for the Center said that the single judge’s decision was in the teeth of the existing law on assisted reproduction and surrogacy.
He said the law did not provide for grandparents to be an “intentional” couple for the purposes of IVF and surrogacy, which were allowed by a single judge.
More Read
To the court’s question, the counsel further informed that the frozen gamete of the deceased was not yet released to his parents despite the order of the single judge and as a result the contempt petition of the parents was also pending in the high court.
The High Court asked the Center to explain the delay of over a year in filing the appeal.
On October 4, 2024, a single judge directed Ganga Ram Hospital to release the frozen gametes of the deceased to his parents. The judge made the order following the parents’ plea.
More Read
The court asked the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to consider whether there is a need for any legislation, legislation or guidelines to address issues related to posthumous reproduction or posthumous reproduction.
Postmortem reproduction refers to the process of conceiving a child using assisted reproductive technology after the death of one or both biological parents.
The applicant’s son, after being diagnosed with cancer, froze his sperm sample in 2020 before starting chemotherapy because doctors informed him that cancer treatment could cause infertility.
So she decided to store her sperm in an IVF lab at the hospital in June 2020.
The single judge in his judgment said that the sperm sample constitutes a property or an asset and in the case of a deceased person it is part of the biological substance of the person just like the human corpse or its organs.
Regarding the consent of the sperm owner in this case, the single judge noted that the petitioner’s son, while consenting to the storage of his sperm sample, had clearly stated that he was willing to store the sperm for fertility preservation.
More Read
The proposed child can be born through an identified surrogate mother or through fertilization of sperm with a consenting woman whom the applicants can identify through IVF, the single judge ruled.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without text modification
