A British-based couple who had twins through an overseas surrogacy agency later discovered they had no biological connection to the children after the agency mistakenly used donor sperm.<\/p>\n
The couple, referred to as PP and QQ in court documents, were \u201cdevastated\u201d after making the discovery via DNA tests while applying for British citizenship for the children.<\/p>\n
The Sri Lankan surrogacy agency used by the couple initially confirmed the embryos had been created using the intended father\u2019s sperm, but later claimed the couple had signed a consent form allowing them to use donor sperm. The couple deny this.<\/p>\n
The children\u2019s mother said the DNA result had \u201cstruck us like a thunderbolt\u201d but they wanted to protect the children and bring them home, saying they were \u201cmeant for us\u201d.<\/p>\n
They were forced to withdraw their application for a parental order, which confers legal parentage from the surrogate to the intended parents, and instead apply for an adoption order for the children, which was granted.<\/p>\n
In a judgment handed down last week, Mr Justice Peel said the couple were \u201cblameless\u201d and were \u201cdesperate to bring up the children, whom they adore\u201d. He said whether the sperm mix-up had been \u201can inadvertent error, perhaps as a result of poor internal processes, or was intentionally done (for whatever reason) is not clear\u201d.<\/p>\n
The couple, who are from Sri Lanka and met in the UK in 2016, had spent years trying to conceive after marrying in 2017, and embarked on IVF treatment, which proved unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
They travelled to India for further IVF, which led to the birth of twins, who died within a few days due to health complications. Their mother, QQ, was advised not to attempt to get pregnant again.<\/p>\n
They then travelled to Sri Lanka after a family friend offered to be a surrogate for them. The women became pregnant with twins.<\/p>\n
The surrogacy agency used by the couple, Wish Fertility, confirmed in writing that the embryos had been created using donor eggs and PP\u2019s sperm, as they had specified.<\/p>\n
But DNA tests, carried out as part of the British citizenship application process for the children, revealed that PP was not the child\u2019s biological father. The Home Office was informed of the negative DNA test, and British citizenship was granted to the seven-month-old twins in March.<\/p>\n
Wish Fertility claimed the couple had signed a consent form allowing them to use donor sperm as well as PP\u2019s sperm. They said embryologists had used both samples in the fertilisation process, and it had been impossible to tell which sperm was used in the implanted embryos.<\/p>\n
Peel rejected this claim, saying that as two embryos had been created and transferred, leading to the birth of the non-identical twins who are both unrelated to PP, it appeared likely PP\u2019s sperm was not used at all.<\/p>\n
He also said there was no evidence of the couple having signed a form authorising the use of donor sperm, and that no issues had been raised about the quality of PP\u2019s sperm, so there had been no need to use a donor.<\/p>\n
Peel also said the clinic\u2019s assertion that it had been impossible to tell the difference between the two sperm samples during the embryo creation process was \u201cstartling\u201d and \u201cimprobable\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A British-based couple who had twins through an overseas surrogacy agency later discovered they had no biological connection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-678180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}