A YOUNG widow won the right to try for a baby using her dead husband's sperm when the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that although the sperm could not be used in Britain, she could take it to Belgium. "I am absolutely delighted," Ms Diane Blood (32), told reporters after the ruling. "I think it's a victory for common sense and justice and it's a credit to the judges."
Last year Ms Blood was refused permission to be inseminated with her dead husband's sperm because he had not given his permission in writing.
She argued that the couple had been trying for a baby for a year before her husband's death from meningitis in 1995, and that his approval of her action could thus be taken for granted.
However, on what would have been her husband Stephen's 32nd birthday, three Court of Appeal judges overturned an earlier lower court decision and ruled in her favour.
They said Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which governs artificial fertilisation, had been right to refuse to give Ms Blood permission to use the frozen sperm in Britain or abroad without the written consent, but it said she could use her husband's sperm in Belgium, where doctors have said they are willing to give her in-vitro fertilisation treatment.
The authority chairwoman, Ms Ruth Deech, hailed the decision as "a judgment of Solomon with which everyone can be pleased". She said the authority had won two-thirds of its cases and was pleased the court had upheld its insistence on the need for written consent.
The authority will meet on February 27th to decide if there are any public policy objections to the export of the sperm, but Ms Blood said she was confident there would be none.
Ms Deech said the authority would reconsider the matter "in the light of the facts that it's a unique case and that it does not open the floodgates".
The judges stressed that a similar case would not be possible in future, because under English law Mr Stephen Blood's sperm should not have been preserved as he had not given written permission. -
After the Appeal Court decision, the British government announced it would review the written consent requirements in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
Ms Blood's case caused a public outcry in October when she asked the High Court to overrule the decision by the authority. The judge said he sympathised with her plight but could do nothing to help her because it had acted- with in the law.
The Court of Appeal also awarded Ms Blood costs for her appeal and for her earlier High Court case.