Baby born in China four years after parents' death

A baby boy was born in China to a surrogate mother from Laos four years after his parents died in a car crash, reports Chinese media. According to South China Morning Post, Shen Jie and his wife Liu Xi were killed in a crash in Yixing in Jiangsu province in March 2013. The couple had been undergoing fertility treatment before they died. After the couple’s death, their parents fought a prolonged legal battle to be allowed to use the embryos, writes BBC. This week for the very first time, the story of the baby boy, who was born in December last year, was reported by The Beijing News. The news outlet explained how the lack of precedent for a case of this kind had compelled the deceased couple's parents through a “legal minefield” before the surrogacy could proceed. At the time of the accident, the embryos were stored safely in a Nanjing hospital, frozen at minus 196 degrees in a liquid nitrogen tank, writes BBC, adding that a court battle gave the four grandparents-to-be the right over the fertilized eggs. According to reports as cited by BBC, there was no precedent as to whether they could inherit their children's frozen embryos. However, they were eventually granted the embryos which could only be taken from the Nanjing hospital if they had proof that another hospital would store them. Given the legal uncertainty around “untransplanted embryos,” it was difficult to find another medical institution in China willing to get involved – what with surrogacy being illegal in China, the only realistic option for the grandparents was to look beyond the country's borders. Eventually, they worked with a surrogacy agency and decided on Laos – given how commercial surrogacy is legal in the country. Since no airline was eager to carry a thermos-sized bottle of liquid nitrogen, the precious cargo had to be transported by car, reveals BBC. The baby boy, named Tiantian, faced another problem – his citizenship. He had to be born in China and not Laos and that is why the surrogate mother had to travel to China on a simple tourist visa before his birth in December, 2017. The child’s grandparents also had to give blood and take DNA tests to prove that he was indeed their grandson and his parents were Chinese nationals.