A Phoenix woman can't have a baby using frozen embryos her ex-husband had fertilized, a court has ruled.
The decision, handed down Thursday in Arizona Supreme Court, ends a nasty court battle between Ruby Torres and her ex, John Terrell. The couple had some of Torres' eggs fertilized and frozen before she began cancer treatment in 2014 that left her infertile and they divorced in 2017. When Torres decided to have a child last year, Terrell objected -- and the two went to court to fight it out.
In siding with Terrell, the Supreme Court judges overturned a previous ruling and said the contract the couple signed with the fertility clinic became void when they divorced. "We are cognizant of the unavoidable emotional fallout attendant to the disposition of the embryos here," Justice Ann Scott Timmer said. She went on to say she and four other judges agree with Terrell's suggestion that Torres should "donate the embryos absent a contemporaneous agreement for use by one of them."
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