Widow, 62, wins right to extract dead husband’s sperm

A 62-year-old woman in Australia has won the right to extract her dead husband’s sperm – but faces an ongoing battle to be able to use it.

The woman – who has not been identified for legal reasons – was looking into conceiving a child via surrogate when her 61-year-old husband died suddenly at their Western Australia home on Dec. 17, ABC reported.

She presented an “urgent” case before the Supreme Court the next evening, and Justice Fiona Seaward granted her permission to have the sperm tissue removed from her husband’s body, which was still being stored at a morgue in Perth, the outlet explained.

But the use of reproductive cells following death is against the law in Western Australia – so she needs to apply to the Reproductive Technology Council to use the sperm in another state where it is legal, ABC said.

The couple had been “talking about having another child” after their 29-year-old daughter drowned on a fishing trip 2013 and their 30-year-old son perished in a car accident in 2019, the court documents viewed by The Post stated.

While the wife had been told that she could not conceive due to her age, the husband’s sperm was previously tested and deemed suitable for in-vitro fertilization, wherein a female egg is fertilized by male sperm in a lab before being implanted in the carrier.

The woman’s cousin, who is in her 20s and lives in the Philippines, had even volunteered to be the couple’s surrogate, the court heard.

At the time of the man’s death, however, the couple was still grappling with legal obstacles to the surrogacy, which would have required them to live in the Philippines for a while, the documents explained.

In court, Justice Seaward ruled that there was no reason to believe the deceased man would have objected to his sperm being removed post-mortem, ABC said.

But the judge also questioned why the decision had not already been approved by a hospital delegate.

According to the grieving wife, she tried to get the extraction handled shortly after her husband’s death, but was forced to apply for the urgent order when the facility did not appoint a “designated officer” to handle the request, the court documents explained.

“It is disappointing that it appears that, once again, an applicant has been required to attend court on an urgent basis and in traumatic circumstances to obtain an order that may … be granted in a faster and more streamlined manner,” Justice Seaward wrote in her final decision, per ABC.

Experts in reproductive health, however, are generally divided on the issue of posthumous fertilization.

“Medically it’s all feasible,” University of Western Australia Professor of Reproductive Medicine Roger Hart told ABC.

“But it’s whether it’s the right thing to do … counselors, psychologists would be the best people to make that judgment,” he said.

“The woman is going to have to use donor eggs, because she’s 62 and she’s also planning to use a surrogate…It’s posthumous use of the sperm, so the child will never know its dad. There’s going to be an egg donor to have sperm inseminate those eggs, and we’re going to then transfer the embryo to a surrogate, so there’s several steps,” Hart explained of the lengthy process.

There are also risks with using the sperm of an older man, he added.

“We do know that sperm from older men, whether it’s posthumous, or from fresh sperm does have a higher rate of chromosome abnormalities deletions within the sperm, which pose a greater risk of the child born…So these are other things the woman will be counseled about,” Hart concluded.