VS’is the story of a medical error with unprecedented consequences. It all started a little over a year ago at Assuta Hospital in Rishon Lezion, near Tel Aviv, an establishment affiliated with one of Israel’s major health insurance funds and which has one of the most of Israel in terms of in vitro fertilization. On this day in the fall of 2021, a woman is in the operating room. The medical team implants an embryo in her after fertilization in the laboratory of one of her eggs by a sperm obtained from her husband’s sperm. Everything is going well. The couple go home.
A few weeks later, the husband and his wife learn with joy that this test, unlike the previous ones, was successful. She is pregnant. A pregnancy that continues until doctors detect a heart defect in the fetus. Despite the risks for the mother and the unborn child, an intrauterine intervention is decided. And again, it’s a success. The heart of the fetus starts beating normally again and the pregnancy continues… until the 7the months, where, there, it is the drama. The results of extensive genetic tests show that there is no biological link between the fetus and the couple. At the Assuta hospital, it’s dread. The doctors who performed the embryo transfer must admit that they were wrong. It is the embryo of another woman which was implanted in the womb of the one we will call “Aïne”.
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My wife’s answer is unequivocal: it’s her baby; no one will take it from him.
Revealed in mid-September by a television report, the case has since not ceased to make a lot of noise. Each new development is relayed by the media: the investigation opened by the Ministry of Health, the search and discovery by this medical center of the identity of the “biological mother” of the unborn child, the television interview of the husband of “Aïne”, the pregnant woman. With his face blurred, the man proclaims his dismay: “It’s crazy! We can’t believe it! Especially my wife, whose answer is unequivocal: it’s her baby; no one will take it from him. “And the husband to evoke the years during which they tried everything to conceive a child, with for his wife the course of the fighter represented by several cycles of IVF: hormonal treatments, oocyte retrieval, implantation of the ovum fertilized, etc.
A few days later, the response from the “biological” mother, who has also been trying for years to have a child: “I am devastated. I no longer live, I no longer eat. My husband and I are no longer sleeping… The mere thought that it is my baby who is in another woman’s womb, while my husband and I are in this very difficult, arduous, complex process in order to giving birth to a child, that thought is real torture. »
We are both victims of this terrible mistake.
Terrible words that do not prevent the one who utters them from saying wholeheartedly with the woman who carries “her” embryo: “I identify with her. I would so much like to hold her in my arms and cry with her. Because we are both victims of this terrible error. The response from the so-called surrogate mother was quick. In a letter, she implores him: “Let me give birth in the calm of the fruit of my womb. »
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A “Judgment of Solomon”
In fact, once born – we know today that it is a girl – to whom will the child belong? Who will raise him? These issues are already the subject of a battle of lawyers and will, in all likelihood, be decided by the Supreme Court. A kind of “judgment of Solomon” version 2022. With in the background, in Israel, the absence of precise legislation concerning this kind of error. Abroad, there are two similar cases, which have been the subject of different court decisions: in the United States, the judges ruled in favor of the “surrogate” mother; in Europe, for the biological mother.
In this context and whatever the verdict of the Israeli judges, the emotion is not about to fall in Israel. And tongues are loosened. In just under a month, the press echoed the negligence in certain hospital departments specializing in IVF. One couple says that their embryos were lost, another that the mistaken identity of the embryo was discovered when the transplant had just taken place. The doctors immediately decided to destroy it. The couple took two years to recover. For the woman to whom the embryo belonged, it was her last chance to be a mother. Pain for each other.
Embarrassment of medical staff, department heads, regulatory and control bodies. In short, all this is messy in a country that has wanted to be a world champion for years, per capita, in vitro fertilization. Every year in Israel, 52,000 IVF cycles are recorded. A quarter of them result in a pregnancy and around a fifth result in a birth. In recent years, 4% of all deliveries in Israel have been the result of IVF treatments.