A British man has today won the right to use the embryo from him and his dead wife to try to have a baby using a surrogate.
Ted Jennings’ wife died in 2019 while carrying twins conceived through IVF, and since then he has fought for the right to use their remaining embryo to conceive a child through surrogacy.
The HFEA originally denied the request, but today a judge ruled that he can use the embryo.
I have numerous issues with this.
Firstly, were it not for IVF, there would never have been an embryo, and the man’s choice to have a child with his now deceased wife would never have existed.
While IVF is undoubtedly a medical miracle, the fact is that IVF is designed in order for people to become parents, without one of those parents, there surely shouldn’t be a baby.
Secondly, he would be using a surrogate to carry the baby for him. Essentially he would be renting a woman’s womb, and she would be taking the risk of going through pregnancy and birth. It should be remembered at this point that Ted’s wife died as a result of a uterine rupture during pregnancy, so he is all too aware of the potential risks, however rare they might be. Is it ok to potentially put another woman at the same risk of happening what happened to his wife?
I’ll be honest here, I don’t agree with surrogacy anyway, but even if I did, this just sounds like a step too far.
And what of the child conceived of this arrangement? That child would be growing up without a mother. Not a mother who died when they were young, but a mother who, to all intents and purposes, never existed for them. Given that the law changed to allow the children of egg and sperm donations to find their biological parents due to the feelings of lost identity many of them felt, how is this child expected to grow up knowing that their mother actually died several years before they were born, that their father rented another woman’s body in order to be able to have a child. A child who is growing up with no real identity.
Ted Jennings is young enough to move forward, to fall in love again, and to have a baby with any future woman in his life. Even if he is the one with the fertility issues, and we don’t know what that situation is, if he’s had IVF once, then he could do so again.
Sometimes medicine is capable of miraculous things.
But just because something can be done, doesn’t mean that it should.
