The Delhi High Court has relied on international laws to permit a 60-year-old couple to access the frozen sperm of their 30-year-old unmarried son, who passed away from cancer in 2020. The parents intend to use the sperm for posthumous assisted reproduction.
In a landmark judgment the Delhi High Court grant sexagenarian parents the right to use their deceased son’s sperm sample for posthumous assisted reproduction. This follows a four-year long legal battle.
The court allowed the plea of the parents of a 30-year-old male patient, Preet Inder Singh, who was suffering from Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The doctors had placed him under treatment, allowing the parents to continue his legacy. Preet Inder, who died of cancer in 2020, had stored his sperm after being advised by Sir Ganga Ram Hospital that any treatment could damage its quality.
After his death, the grief-stricken parents tried to access the frozen sperm of their son. The hospital refused to give them access, basing such a denial on an absence of guidelines regarding the release of gametes in the absence of a surviving spouse. According to the hospital, a court order was necessary to release the gametes.
Preet Inder’s mother, Harbir Kaur said she was grateful to the court for giving her “last glimmer of hope.” Her lawyer, Suruchii Aggarwal also referred to a case in Pune where a woman had successfully taken the sperm of her deceased son for surrogacy.
The ART Act, 2021, provides posthumous retrieval of sperm procedures but allows it only in cases where the deceased is a wedded person. In an affidavit, it has come out that the legislation was not intended for what the court termed as “postmortem grandparenthood” and the Surrogacy Regulation Act applies only to intending couples.
It was apparent that the intention of the parents was to use the sperm to continue the legacy of their son, who died intestate. As Preet Inder was unmarried, his parents were the legal heirs. A “legal vacuum” this court felt prevailed over the case of law in question as neither the ART Act nor the Surrogacy Act provided for such an eventuality.
The court noted the complexity of posthumous reproduction, let alone when the parent in question-a single father-had never had a partner, who had frozen his sperm before he died. The bench dealt with the deceased’s sperm sample as “property” for which the parents are entitled to its access as heirs of the deceased.
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