Israel Court Grants Family Permission to Freeze Deceased Daughter’s Eggs, Family Declines

Seventeen year old Chen Aida Ayash died in a road accident in Israel on July 31. After doctors declared Ayash as brain dead earlier this month, her family requested that doctors extract and freeze Ayash’s eggs. The family petitioned the court in Kfar Sava for permission for the extraction and freezing of Ayash’s eggs. Additionally, the family asked the court for permission for the eggs to be fertilized with donated sperm as embryos have a higher survival rate than unfertilized eggs. The court denied the request that the eggs be fertilized, but gave the family legal permission to extract and freeze Ayash’s eggs.

The courts’ ruling is the first known ruling in Israel, and possibly the first known ruling in the world, granting a family permission to remove a deceased female’s eggs (rulings across the world have granted similar permission for families to remove a deceased male’s sperm). However, after struggling with domestic pressure to forgo extracting and freezing Ayash’s eggs, the family has apparently decided to not push forward with the procedure.

See Harriet Sherwood, Israeli family can freeze eggs of daughter killed in road accident, gurdian.co.uk, Aug. 8, 2011; see Catrina Stewart, Family drops efforts to harvest and freeze eggs of dead girl, The Independent, Aug. 9, 2011.

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.