A YOUNG widow last night vowed to fight on, and "let God decide" whether she should conceive, after losing a High Court battle to have her dead husband's child by artificial insemination.
Determined to battle on to the Court of Appeal, Ms Diane Blood (30) said: "I think I have as much right as anybody to my husband's sperm."
"I desperately want his baby. We planned a baby before he died. I just want that back. I don't see why my life as I planned it should have ended."
The businesswoman, who remortgaged her house to fund her legal battle and who has refused to sell her story to newspapers, said her struggle involved "an issue that has no price".
She accused the judges and health officials who have blocked her dream of "putting a stop on something which is ultimately up to God".
Hours earlier, she had wept as Sir Stephen Brown, president of the Family Division of the High Court, ruled that the law banned her from being artificially inseminated with sperm taken from Mr Stephen Blood as he lay in a coma in March last year.
Ruling on the first case of its kind to come to court, Sir Stephen said his "heart went out" to Ms Blood.
But he said the law required written consent from Mr Blood for his sperm to be used even though he was unable to give it as he was in a coma after contracting a form of meningitis.
The judge also ruled that the law prevented Ms Blood from taking the sperm abroad to have the child she so much wanted.
But he praised her for doing a "public service" in seeking the ruling.
The case, which has sparked a widespread debate on the ethics of artificial insemination, prompted fertility experts and a senior Labour MP to call for a change in the law.