A Texas mother who filed a court order to have her son's sperm collected while he lay in a coma and on life support will soon use her dead son's sperm to create her grandchild, according to a report in the U.K.'s Daily Mail Online.
According to the Daily Mail, 44-year-old Marissa Evans has found a surrogate in Mexico who is willing to carry her grandchild. She has also hand-selected an egg donor from a list of potential candidates and now must only secure the financing to bring it all together, according to a post in her online blog.
"I don’t know if it will happen tomorrow or next year, but I will keep on plugging along until I find a will and way to make all of your dreams come true," Evans wrote to her son in a blog entry posted July 3. "I feel like it is what you really wanted, I will get it done."
In 2009 Evans' son, 21-year-old Nikolas Evans, sustained a head injury while trying to break up a fight in Austin. In the melee, Nikolas fell, hit his head and lost consciousness. He never recovered.
Evans said Nikolas always wanted a son named Hunter, after Hunter S. Thompson. With her son dying and on life support, she petitioned an Austin court to allow his sperm to be harvested so that she could help fulfill his dream of having children.
She won, and 20 samples of sperm were taken from Nikolas' body.
"People say that it's not natural, that it's not right for a baby to be born not ever knowing its mother or its father. They say that I am trying to recreate him or replace him and that I'm not letting him go properly," Evans said in the Daily Mail.
Tom Mayo, director of Southern Methodist University's Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, agrees with that sentiment. Mayo told the Associated Press in 2009 that the desire to replace a deceased child is a classic scenario that, in this case, took a nontraditional turn.
"This is a tough way for a kid to come into the world. As the details emerge, and the child learns more about their origins, I just wonder what the impact will be on a replacement child," said Mayo. "The underlying desire would be very strong, even if she wouldn't describe it that way."
"There are so many people in this world that are born to parents who don't love them or treat them right. But this baby will have so much love and everything it needs. I definitely know I'm doing the right thing," said Evans.
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