Appeals Court Hears Arguments In Custody Dispute Over Frozen Embryos
(CBS) -- For the second time, an Illinois Appeals Court panel Tuesday heard arguments which seek to decide who gets custody of three embryos -- the woman who can no longer produce eggs because of cancer, or her ex-boyfriend.
The position of Jacob Szfranski and his attorney, Brian Schroeder, was that regardless of what he may have said to then-girlfriend Karla Dunston, the only signed document requires both to agree to implantation.
Outside of court, Szfranski said he cannot see that happening anytime soon because Dunston has adopted.
"I believe Karla is very fortunate and that she is, in every sense, the mother of her child," Szfranski said.
Asked when he could reconsider, he said, "I'm telling her not now, not like this and not until I'm ready."
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In court, while hearing Schoeder's argument to that effect, Justice John Simon characterized it as "Jacob's lament."
Dunston's attorney, Sara Fletcher, told the panel that had her client sensed any hesitation on Szfranski's part, she never would have allowed the last eggs that could be harvested before she began chemotherapy for non-Hodgkins lymphoma to be fertilized using Szfranski's semen.
Fletcher is relying on verbal statements by Szfranski that he wanted to help Dunston have a baby and a co-parenting agreement that Szfranski read but neither signed.
Fletcher calls the signed form, which requires both to give consent before implantation, "boilerplate," even though Schroeder said personnel at Northwestern Memorial Hospital made clear how the form read.
Whichever side loses the appeal is expected to petition the Illinois Supreme Court to hear the case. The high court has already refused to hear the case once, remanding it to the courtroom of Cook County Judge Sophia Hall, who ruled in Dunston's favor.
Fletcher and Dunston refused comment when leaving court.
