Frozen Embryo to Go to Mom, Not Pop, Israeli Court Rules

An Israeli court has awarded custody of a frozen embryo produced by a now-divorced couple to the mother, in the first case of its kind to confront the Israeli legal system.

The Haifa District Court on Thursday rejected the request of the woman’s ex-husband to prevent the embryo’s implantation in a surrogate mother.

The case began several years ago, when Haifa resident Ruthi Nahmani had to undergo an operation of which a side effect was her inability to have any children in the future.

Since she and her husband, Danny, were at the time married and wanted to have a child, they decided that she should become pregnant and that the fertilized egg would be gestated in a surrogate mother.

But after the fertilization took place, the couple separated and divorced. The husband left home, married and started a new family.

He subsequently made a legal demand that the implantation process be stopped, arguing that he was not willing to be forced to become the father of a child he would not raise.

But the mother responded that since this was her only chance to have a child, the fertilized eggs should be regarded as a pregnancy-in-progress.

In a precedent-setting ruling, Judge Hanoch Ariel ruled that there was no further need for consent from the former husband, since he had previously agreed to the procedure.

According to the judge, the father had no right to retract his original consent.

Nahmani’s ex-husband said he would appeal.

A similar case in the United States, involving a divorced Tennessee couple, went the other way, when a court affirmed the father’s right to have the embryos destroyed.