Woman is stricken with cancer, man wants embryos destroyed.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: An unprecedented and historic court battle between a divorced couple to decide the fate of their frozen embryos ensued Monday with Stephen Findley testifying that his cancer-stricken ex-wife, Mimi Lee, through an agreement gives him the purview to have their jointly produced embryos destroyed.
Adding to the murkiness of the lawsuit is the fact that Lee’s aggressive cancer treatments, while successful, have left her infertile, meaning the cryogenically frozen embryos that are still stored at UC San Francisco’s fertility center, represent the last vestiges of Lee’s ability to bear a biological child.Follow @ambazaarmag
“I believed that [the terms] were binding between me and UCSF and Mimi,” Findley, a financial analyst, said of the agreement he and Lee signed with UC San Francisco less than a month after their wedding ceremony in September 2010, according to SFGate.
The agreement was signed with the university and stated the embryos would be returned to one of the spouses if the other died, but would be discarded if the couple divorced.
Lee’s attorney, Maxwell Pritt, disputed the meaning of the contract and said a woman’s right to determine her reproductive future must take precedence.
“The right to procreate, to have one’s own biological children, is one of the central liberties guaranteed by our Constitution” and should outweigh Findley’s objections to Lee’s use of the embryos, Pritt said Monday in his opening statement to San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo, who is hearing the case without a jury.
UCSF appears to have taken the position that its signed directives should be considered “valid and enforceable” by the courts, reported the San Jose Mercury News.
“A party cannot simply change his or her mind at any time and unilaterally revoke a directive created … with another party, at least not without some material change in circumstances or other compelling reason,” stated the university.
Legal ethicists across the nation and the public at large are divided over how the lawsuit should be resolved.
John Robertson, a University of Texas law professor and chair of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s ethics committee, told the Mercury News “the overwhelming case law” is to uphold signed agreements to dispose of frozen embryos in divorce.
However, Judith Daar, a Whittier law professor, informed the Los Angeles Times, “While the vast majority of cases resolve in favor of the party wishing to avoid procreation, two recent decisions award the embryos to the woman who wished to use them to have a child,” and also noted that in both cases the women had received cancer diagnoses and were infertile.
The trial could last as long as a week, and according to the L.A. Times, will test the enforceability of contracts couples sign before obtaining reproductive technology and will probably serve as the catalyst for new laws in the state of California.