A couple in India has triumphed in a four-year legal battle to reclaim their deceased son’s frozen sperm.
The BBC reported that the Delhi High Court ordered a hospital to return the frozen sperm of a man in his thirties to his parents.
Preet Inder Singh, an unmarried man, passed away from blood cancer at the age of 30 on September 30, 2020. Three months before starting chemotherapy, he froze his sperm based on the hospital’s recommendation to protect against potential infertility.
After Singh’s passing, his parents expressed their desire to have a grandchild using his frozen sperm. However, the hospital denied their request, stating that the sperm could only be returned to a legal spouse. This decision was grounded in concerns about bioethics and the potential for irresponsibility of bringing new life into the world.
In response, the parents filed a lawsuit, initiating a legal dispute. In court, they emphasized their commitment to “raise the child themselves” and submitted an agreement stating that their two daughters would assume responsibility for the child’s upbringing after their passing.
The couple’s legal representative argued, “India’s surrogacy laws are intended to prevent the commercial exploitation of surrogates, not to restrict the personal freedoms of grieving parents.”
The court ruled that “under Indian law if there is consent from the sperm owner, posthumous fertilization cannot be prohibited.” It clarified that if the deceased has no spouse or children, the parents become legal heirs and are thus entitled to receive the sperm samples. Currently, a relative of the couple has agreed to act as the surrogate.
In this context, the BBC noted that some countries, including the U.S., U.K., and Japan, allow posthumous fertilization with written consent, while others, including India, still prohibit it. The report also highlighted a growing number of requests for such procedures, particularly due to recent conflicts like the Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine wars. Notably, Ukraine is offering free sperm storage services for soldiers.
There are precedents for posthumous fertilization using a deceased person’s sperm. In 2018, a 48-year-old woman in India became a grandmother through a surrogate using her son’s sperm, who had died of a brain tumor at the age of 27. In 2019, the New York Supreme Court granted permission for the parents of a deceased Army cadet to use his frozen sperm following his accidental death.
