A Russian woman who had a grandson two years after her only son died by using his frozen sperm and a surrogate mother faces losing the child just three months after he was born. Headmistress Ekaterina Zakarova, aged 55, lost her law student son Andrei two years ago but managed to persuade doctors, after his death, to use his frozen sperm to fertilise a donor egg that was then implanted into a surrogate mother. Andrei had had his sperm frozen before having treatment for the cancer that eventually killed him.
But now Russian officials say that because Andrei died two years ago he cannot be registered as the father, and, because the egg donor was anonymous, the baby also does not have a mother. Consequently the baby has no legal parents, does not officially exist, and cannot have a birth certificate.
The Civil Registry Office says that Mrs Zakarova has no claim on the boy, and as she is too old to adopt him it wants to take him away from her and place him in an orphanage. The office has now taken her to court.
She said, “Gosha is a perfect copy of my son. Now I face losing it all again.” Mrs Zakarova, who owns the private school where she works, explained that just before treatment in Israel, her son had arranged for his sperm to be stored, in the hope that one day he would have children. After his death, she contacted the sperm bank and a fertility clinic in Ekaterinburg, in western Russia, and they agreed to help.
Doctors used an egg donated anonymously from abroad and fertilised it using the son’s sperm, which was sent from Israel. The resulting embryo was then transplanted into a surrogate mother.
Her grandson was born three months ago, a healthy baby boy, whom she named Gosha. Doctors say that the youngster could only have been born in Russia, because if Mrs Zakarova had lived in the West, the legal obstacles would have been insurmountable.
The chief embryologist from the Ekaterinburg Centre for Family Medicine, Sergei Balezin, said, “We are the first in the world to use a combination of four methods: posthuman reproduction, transportation of living material from another country, conception in a test tube, and a successful surrogate maternity. This combination just would not have been permitted in the West.
“We carried out the medical part and there was nothing to prevent us from doing that, but the patient has to sort out her legal questions independently. We’re not really sure how to act in this case, as it’s a first.”
But Liliya Shakurova, a specialist in Ekaterinburg’s custodial department, said, “I think that the court will reach a positive decision concerning adoption.”
The case comes as the European Court made a landmark ruling this week that a British woman left infertile after treatment for cancer could not use her frozen embryos to have a baby against the wishes of her former fiancé. Natallie Evans and her former partner Howard Johnston had fertility treatment to create six embryos using their eggs and sperm. When the pair split, however, Mr Johnston withdrew his consent for them to be used.