Woman gives birth to stranger’s baby after ‘nightmare’ IVF mix-up

The birth of a child whose mum was mistakenly given a stranger’s embryo could spark a ‘nightmare’ legal battle, experts say.

Australian fertility company Monash IVF apologised yesterday after an internal investigation confirmed the error at one of its clinics in Brisbane.

It’s not clear how long after birth the mum became aware of the mix-up, which was only discovered when she and her partner asked to transfer their remaining frozen embryos to another provider in February.

Monash IVF said an embryo ‘from a different patient had previously been incorrectly thawed and transferred to the birth parents’.

Queensland senior medical negligence lawyer Frances Bertram said it may not be legally clear which couple are the child’s parents.

‘It leads into all sorts of custody questions as well once you start looking at who then are the parents and whether the child is raised by the biological parents or by the parents who carried and gave birth to the child,’ she told The Guardian.

‘It just becomes such a nightmare.’

Both couples may get ‘very significant’ compensation if they launch claims, Ms Bertram added.

Family lawyer Sarah Jefford said the case is ‘unique to Australia’, even though it’s happened elsewhere in the world, and could set a legal precedent in the country.

‘There are presumptions in Australia about the birth parents being the legal parents of the child,’ she told the ABC.

‘But whether the genetic parents want to come forward and start a discussion about that, then we’ll have to wait and see.’

Last year Monash IVF settled a A$56 million (£26.8 million) claim by hundreds of patients whose embryos were destroyed despite being viable, due to faulty testing.

Around 20,000 babies are born through IVF in Australia and New Zealand each year.

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