Baby Sophie returns to her genetic parents after two-year legal battle over fertility clinic mix-up
The genetic parents of Baby Sophie, born in a fertility clinic mix-up that shocked Israel, ended a two-year legal battle with the woman who carried and raised her.
Assuta Ashdod Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod on Nov. 29, 2023. Photo by Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS
“The best interests of the girl require her to grow up with her genetic parents, especially given their ability to provide a healthy and adapted narrative,” ruled Judge Oved Elias of the Rishon LeZion Family Court.
“Given that the starting point is that genetic parents are the natural parents and that it is better for every child to grow up with them, and given the circumstances that this is a serious mistake in the introduction of the embryos and that with cooperation and in an informed, controlled and supervised way it will be possible to fix it while reducing the damage as much as possible,” he ruled.
“The benefit that will arise from transferring the girl to her genetic parents and living with them, outweighs the damage that will be caused as a result of being separated from her nurturing parents. The benefit of living with the genetic parents is, among other things, in building the future identity, connecting to the family’s lineage, a similar family story, physiological similarity and family values,” Elias wrote.
In 2022, Israel was rocked by the news that an embryo was mistakenly implanted in the wrong woman at Rishon Lezion’s Assuta Medical Centre.
The mix-up was only discovered when doctors detected a heart defect in the fetus during the third trimester. Subsequent testing revealed that neither the woman who was carrying the fetus nor her partner were the biological parents.
The baby’s biological parents praised the decision. “The mistake has been corrected. She is coming home to live with the family she was supposed to be born to. We will do everything to protect her and her privacy and raise her comfortably. We are happy and waiting for the moment when we can finally hug our daughter, and she us, Something for which we have been waiting for so long.”
Patient safety, inadequate oversight, and staffing shortages were among the issues raised in a scathing study of Israel’s in vitro fertilization system in a scathing report released by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Tuesday.
Israel offers some of the most generous public funding for IVF in the world. The government subsidizes unlimited IVF treatments for women up to the age of 45, as long as they are trying to have their first two children.
Israel, which leads the world in fertility treatments per capita, has seen a 60% increase in IVF cycles over the past decade, reaching 61,000 treatments in 2021. However, the Ministry of Health failed to adequately prepare for this surge, according to Englman’s report.
