A mother is fighting for the right to create embryos from her late trans daughter’s sperm. (Envato)
A mother battling to save her late trans daughter’s frozen sperm from being destroyed has been granted a temporary reprieve.
Louise Anderson, 45, launched a legal bid to stop the NHS destroying the sperm samples of her 16-year-old daughter Ellie, who tragically died in July. Ellie’s last wish was to have a child of her own, and her mother hopes to honour this by using her DNA with a donor egg and surrogate.
As she plans to take the fight to the highest court in Scotland, the NHS has agreed not destroy the sperm before at least November 30 to allow more time for the case to be examined.
“It is a temporary reprieve but my goal is still to take this to court,” Anderson told the Scottish Sun.
“Ellie left me strict instructions that if anything happened to her, she wanted her children brought into the world. So I’m going to do everything I can. The law needs to change.”
Ellie began expressing her trans identity aged three, and delayed hormonal treatment so that she could have her sperm collected for future use. She planned to undergo gender-affirming surgery at 18.
Under UK law, had she been in a relationship at the time of her death, her partner would have the right to ask for her sperm to be saved.
There is no such arrangement for that right to be transferred to the deceased’s parents, however Anderson is asking judges in Scotland’s highest civil court to make a test case ruling that could set a legal precedent.
“I am going to do every I can to honour her wishes – not just for her but for anyone else caught in this position,” she told the Daily Record last month.
She has started a petition in her effort to have the laws changed.