As you read the heading to might think it impossible. But it is possible, through the various available medical options.
The only problem is the legality of the method, and the court battles that follow.
The son of a Chinese couple who died more than four years ago has been born to a surrogate mother, according to Chinese media.
Shen Jie and Liu Xi had been married for two years when they decided to try in vitro fertilization. Five days before they were scheduled to transplant one of the fertilized embryos into Liu, the couple died in a car accident in March 2013 in the Chinese coastal province of Jiangsu.
For the next three years, the parents of Shen and Liu fought for the rights to four frozen embryos left by their late children in a complicated and unprecedented legal case in China, according to a leading Chinese news agency.
After several court battles, both sets of parents finally won custody of the embryos, and in January of 2017, with the help of an underground surrogacy agency, they drove to Laos to find a mother.
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Surrogacy is illegal in China, forcing those who can afford it to look for potential options abroad.
Laos has become the latest impoverished nation in Asia to witness a flourishing but legally opaque commercial surrogacy industry after countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Nepal outlawed the practice in recent years.
n December last year, Shen and Liu’s baby, a boy, was born in a hospital in Guangzhou. Liu’s mother gave him the name Tiantian, or “sweet”. Last month, the family celebrated Tiantian’s first 100 days by holding a small party.
Liu’s mother, Hu Xinxian, told the news agency: “Tiantian’s eyes look like my daughter’s but overall, he looks more like his father.”
The grandparents had to clear several hurdles to transport the embryos out of China and prove the paternity and nationality of the baby once it was born.
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“First we thought of using air freight, but none of the airlines were willing to take the thermos-sized bottle of liquid nitrogen where the four embryos were stored,” Liu Baojun, a surrogacy expert who assisted the families, told The Beijing News.
So the families decided to transport their precious cargo by road to Laos, where commercial surrogacy is legal.
The next problem was getting the baby back into China. Children born through surrogacy outside the country need to have a DNA test proving that one of the biological parents is a Chinese national.
To get around the issue, the Laotian surrogate mother was brought to China on a tourist visa and the families arranged for her to give birth at a private hospital in the southern city of Guangzhou.
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The child was kept in the hospital for 15 days, until all four grandparents gave blood and DNA tests, establishing the baby was indeed their grandson and that both parents were Chinese nationals.
The grandparents have not decided how to tell Tiantian about his background. Shen Xinan, Tiantian’s paternal grandfather, told Beijing News that until Tiantian is older they will tell him his parents are overseas.
“This boy is destined to be sad on his arrival into the world. Other babies have their fathers and mothers, but he doesn’t. We will definitely tell him in the future. How can we not?” Shen said.
The landmark ruling that allows parents to inherit frozen embryos created by their children has triggered a wide-ranging debate on Chinese social media.
Dozens of commentators said it highlights the plight of parents who have lost their only child under China’s controversial one-child policy. Others discussed the need to legalize surrogacy.
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