Baby born four years after parents died in tragic car crash
Four years after a Chinese couple died in a car crash, their baby was born to a surrogate according to local media reports.
The baby named Tiantian was born in China in December to a Laotian surrogate, The Beijing News reported this week.
The baby’s paternal and maternal grandparents have reportedly proven relations through DNA.
The couple, who died in 2013, had frozen several embryos hoping to have a child through IVF. After the accident, their parents fought a protracted legal battle to be allowed to use the embryos.
The newspaper explained how the lack of precedent for a case of this kind had forced the couple’s parents to go through a legal minefield before the surrogacy could proceed.
FROZEN EMBRYOS
At the time of the accident, the embryos were stored safely in a Nanjing hospital, frozen at minus 196 degrees in a liquid nitrogen tank.
The court granted the four grandparents-to-be the right over the fertilised eggs.
There was no precedent as to whether they could inherit their children’s frozen embryos, according to reports.
Their next challenge was finding a surrogate. Since the service is illegal in China, they had to look abroad, eventually hiring an agency and settling on Laos, where surrogacy is not prohibited.
But no airline wanted to take a thermos of liquid-nitrogen encased embryos onboard, BBC reports, so the eggs had to be transported across the border by car.
TOURIST VISA
To ensure Chinese citizenship for the baby Tiantian, the surrogate travelled to China, and gave birth there on a tourist visa.
According to BBC, the four new grandparents said they were thrilled that they are able to continue the families’ bloodline.