A British woman, who won a Court of Appeal hearing last year allowing her to use her dead husband's sperm for fertility treatment, confirmed yesterday that she was pregnant.
Ms Diane Blood (32), whose husband Stephen died after he contracted bacterial meningitis in February 1995, held an impromptu press conference in her local pub and declared: "Obviously I am over the moon. I found out quite slowly that I was pregnant. It is not an immediate test in the way somebody might know if they were pregnant naturally. There were lots of hugs and kisses all round."
She said she was looking forward to having the baby, due early next year, and that she was no different to any other pregnant woman. "It has just been a harder battle to get there."
The news of the pregnancy was mistakenly leaked to the media during a medical conference in Sweden last week, and Ms Blood admitted that she would have preferred to have told her family first rather than having to confirm it to a newspaper. Asked if she believed that the ethical debate surrounding her pregnancy would ever subside, she said she would be naive to think it would. "Sooner or later it was going to become obvious that I am pregnant and I rather wish that it had not been sooner and I just hope everything continues to go well."
Ms Blood's long campaign to use her husband's sperm began when she asked medical staff at the hospital where her husband was being treated to remove two samples of his sperm and store them at the Infertility Research Trust. The couple had been married for four years and they were trying for a baby.
However, after her husband's death, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) - the fertility industry watchdog - refused to allow Ms Blood to use the sperm on the grounds that he had not provided written consent. An arduous legal battle ensued, during which she was refused permission to take her husband's sperm abroad, but the Court of Appeal finally ruled in her favour in February 1997 and the HFEA decided to make an exception in her case.
It is believed that Ms Blood received treatment at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at the Brussels Free University in Belgium, although she has refused to confirm where the fertility treatment was carried out.
A spokesman for the HFEA said the body was "very happy" for Ms Blood. The government is due to receive recommendations soon following a review of the laws governing fertility and the HFEA has been keen to involve the public in the consultation and review of changes to the law. "There are wider ethical and social implications with some of the new technologies involved in modern fertility treatment," the spokesman added.