ABSTRACT
The case of Diane Blood is widely discussed as the first high-profile contemporary case of reproductive travel. In 1995, Mrs Blood’s husband died after contracting bacterial meningitis and falling into a coma. Since Mr and Mrs Blood had been trying to reproduce before he fell ill, Mrs Blood wanted to use her husband’s semen to have a child with him posthumously. This was not permitted in her native United Kingdom because there was no written record of Mr Blood’s consent. However, Mrs. Blood succeeded in achieving her reproductive objective by traveling to nearby Belgium, where legislation permitted the use of her deceased husband’s sperm (Deech 2003). On two separate occasions, Mrs Blood was successfully impregnated using in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryos created with her ova and her husband’s spermatozoa, and she gave birth to two sons three years apart.
