LONDON- Following the negligence on the part of a London hospital, the woman who was rendered infertile wants the hospital to pay for her four surrogate pregnancies in the USA. As of Monday, the case has reached the Supreme Court in Britain.
The woman, unnamed for legal reasons, had cervical cancer and the Whittington Hospital has admitted negligence for failing to detect it over the four year period. However, the hospital believes that the must not have to pay for the four surrogate pregnancies in the U.S., which the woman’s lawyers claim could rack up a bill as high as 558,000 pounds.
Medical professionals will closely watch the case as this could set a precedent for the extent and type of damages to be paid to medical negligence victims.
The process of commercial surrogacy, wherein a woman is paid money in order to bear a child for someone else, is deemed legal in the US. In contrast, in Britain, they are only lawful in cases of the agreement for altruistic reasons where the surrogate mothers are given no other compensation other than the reasonable expenses.
The 35-year old woman underwent a series of biopsies and smear tests in Whittington from the ages of 25 to 29 years old. Coming from a large family, she intended to have four children of her own.
Owing to defective result analysis, her cancer remained undiagnosed and it was too late for fertility-saving surgical intervention. Her complete infertility was a result of chemo-radiotherapeutic treatment.
The woman delayed surgery for her life-threatening cancer as her desire to mother children was so strong. On delaying the surgery, she has 12 of her eggs harvested and frozen.
Using a surrogate mother in California, the woman wants to have four children. Commercial surrogacy agreements in California are binding and the intending parents are legally confirmed as the parents prior to the child’s birth. In contrast, in England, the law states that the legal mother is the surrogate and they have the option to refuse to hand over the child to the intending parents.
The two issues that the Supreme Court has to deal with are whether the negligent hospital must pay for the four surrogacies in the US or if it must pay for any donor egg pregnancy (not using the woman’s own eggs).
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.