The boy’s mother had to battle Australia’s Supreme Court to get permission to ‘harvest’ her late husband’s sperm after he was killed in a motorbike accident.
Doctors were not certain it would be successful because it took the courts two days to decide whether the mother should be allowed to use his sperm to conceive.
It isn’t the first time that sperm has been taken from a dead man to create a baby, but it is 18 hours longer than has been done in the past.
IVF expert, Steve Robson, said, “On a professional level this has been, from my perspective, a love story, and it has been incredible to be involved with helping a woman who has so much love and courage.”
The mother had to go to Canberra from Adelaide to have the procedure because it is illegal in Adelaide.
Professor Kelton Tremellen, who carried out the procedure, said, “One reason was that I thought it was going to be a waste of time, and the other was I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do.
In the end I decided I would do it because I felt it wasn’t a battle she should have to fight at that point when she had just lost her husband.”
