HC gives nod to use comatose soldier’s sperm for wife’s IVF treatment

New Delhi: Underlining the right to reproductive autonomy, Delhi high court has permitted the extraction and preservation of sperm of a comatose Army soldier, paving the way for his wife to undergo an IVF procedure to try for a child.The soldier is in a persistent vegetative state with no foreseeable scope of neurological recovery. In a recent order, Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav noted that the soldier's earlier consent, given when he started the IVF procedure, was sufficient even at this stage, and the nod of the wife would be treated as valid consent on his behalf for the purposes of the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act.The high court acted on a petition by the wife seeking directions for extraction and cryopreservation of her husband's genetic material for IVF.

She said that in June 2023, the couple opted for an IVF procedure to conceive a child but in July 2025, the husband fell from a considerable height while patrolling, which resulted in severe traumatic brain injury. Subsequently, while the soldier was undergoing treatment at an Army hospital, the IVF treatment of the couple was stopped, making her move court for relief. Asserting her right to motherhood, dignity and reproductive autonomy under the Constitution, she sought HC’s intervention.

The court in its order pointed out that in any case, the couple had volunteered for the IVF treatment before his injury and there was no material on record or any indication to show that the husband had not consented. HC said it was only “fair, reasonable, and just” for the authorities to take steps to take the IVF procedure to its logical end.“It is trite law, that procedure is indeed the handmaiden of justice. Non-compliance with the bare, strict text of a procedural provision, destroying the substantive intent of the legislation ought not to be countenanced.

The right to reproductive autonomy must be remembered is a fundamental right. The ART Act must be so interpreted which furthers the said right, and not derogates from it,” observed the court. With respect to the opinion of the Army hospital’s medical board that the possibility of retrieving viable sperm was “meagre” in this case, the court said whether the wife would beget a child or not was “not in human hands”. “It is destiny that determines whether or not the fortune of parenthood shall get bestowed upon persons. This court ought not to interdict the fate of the petitioner by insisting from the husband that which is physically impossible and impracticable,” it said. “A living being obtains a body under the supervision of daiva (divine),” the court said, quoting ‘Bhagavata Purana’.