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Women loses fight to have her frozen embryos implanted

Jan 28, 2020

By Dave Andrusko

After court battles in three jurisdiction, an Arizona woman, at least for now, has been denied the opportunity to implant her frozen embryos.

In its ruling last week, the Supreme Court of Arizona pointed to the contract Ruby Torres signed at the fertility clinic with her then-boyfriend (later husband, later ex-husband) John Joseph Terrell as the reason for its decision.

In 2014, just weeks before they married, Torres and Terrell decided to freeze embryos because Torres was to undergo cancer treatments. 

One of the agreements “said if they split up the embryos could either be donated to another couple or used by one of them to have children — but only with the ‘express, written consent of both parties,’” CNN’s Dakin Andone explained.

And split up they did, in 2017.

 “After the divorce, Torres notified Terrell that she intended to use the embryos and asked for his consent,” Madison Dibble of the Washington Examiner reported. “Terrell refused, prompting Torres to file a lawsuit. The lower court [a family court] ruled in Terrell’s favor, claiming that his ‘right to not be compelled to be a parent outweighs (Torres’) right to procreate and desire to have a biologically related child.’”

On appeal, the state Court of Appeals overturned the ruling in March 2018. Terrell then appealed to the Supreme Court of Arizona which accepted the case and handed down its ruling last week.

“The court said it was ‘cognizant of the unavoidable emotional fallout’ that could come from the decision,” CNN reported. “But because the couple couldn’t come to an agreement, the court said, under the contract, ‘the court could only direct donation of the embryos.’”

Presumably, if she so chooses, Torres could ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider its decision or even attempt to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a story that appeared in People magazine, Claudia Harmata explained how “The appeals court claimed the agreement they entered into was unclear, as one clause in the contract seemed to suggest that a family court could be brought in to grant one of the parties permission to use the embryos should the couple be unable to agree on whether to donate the embryos or not.”

That was “Torres’s main argument,” her lawyer, Stanley D. Murray, told Harmata, with which the state’s highest court disagreed.

Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org and/or follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha.

Categories: Human Embryos
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