A 59-year-old woman, whose name was not released, experienced the loss of her daughter, who had signed a consent form agreeing that her eggs could be stored after her death, in 2011, according to CBS News.
Britain’s High Court reportedly rejected the woman’s request to send her daughter’s eggs to a fertility clinic in the U.S., where they would have been fertilized and transferred into the woman so she could give birth to her own grandchildren.
The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) decided in 2014 that there was not enough evidence to show the daughter wanted the eggs used in the way her parents suggested after her death, according to BBC News.
“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 honor their daughter’s dying wish for something of her to live on after her untimely death,” stated the High Court judge Justice Ouseley.
The woman’s daughter reportedly had her eggs frozen after being diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of 23. She reportedly asked her mother to “carry my babies” once she knew she wouldn’t survive the illness, according to the deceased woman’s parents.
“She was clear that she wanted her genes to be carried forward after her death,” explained the mother.
“She had suffered terribly, and this was the one constant in her remaining years from which she never wavered.”
Catherine Callaghan, who appeared for the HFEA, reportedly stated that its decision was just, as there was no clear evidence that the woman’s daughter had wanted her mother to carry her child.
“There may be a natural human temptation to give the claimants what they are seeking, but the court should be very reluctant to assume that, because this is the proposed course the claimants want, it must inherently follow that it was also what the daughter wanted, in the absence of clear evidence to that effect,” explained Callaghan.
