A mum is fighting to save her transgender daughter’s sperm from being destroyed after she died aged just 16.
Louise Anderson says her daughter Ellie’s “biggest desire” was to become a mum, but she died suddenly last month.
However, Mrs Anderson has discovered that sperm samples saved by Ellie could be destroyed within days.
And now she plans to take her fight to the courts in a bid to become a grandparent and realise her daughter’s dream.
Ellie was born a boy, but identified as a girl from the age of three and planned to have gender reassignment surgery at 18, according to the Daily Record.
The teenager, from Stirling in central Scotland, delayed taking hormone blockers to allow her sperm to be collected and retained, and had always planned to eventually have a baby.
“Ellie’s biggest desire was to be a mother,” said Mrs Anderson.
“She had made me promise that if anything were to happen to her, her children would be brought into the world.
“I am going to do everything I can to honour her wishes – not just for her but for anyone else caught in this position,” she said.
Now her mum wants to honour Ellie’s wishes posthumously, using an egg donor and a surrogate to produce a grandchild using Ellie’s sperm.
Under current UK human fertilization rules, if Ellie had been in a relationship and had a partner at the time of her death, that person would have had the right to ask for her sperm to be retained.
But without a test case ruling, or “declarator”, from the Court of Session, that right can’t be transferred to her mum.
So Mrs Anderson is going to fight for Ellie’s wishes in court, with judges set to be asked for an interim interdict preventing the Glasgow Royal Infirmary Fertility Clinic from destroying Ellie’s sample.
The courts would then be asked to use a special power – the nobile officium – to find a legal solution to the matter.