Research On The Legal Protection Mode Of The Vitro Embryo

This thesis mainly takes Wuxi frozen embryos inheritance disputes in 2014 as the research object,and analyzes the results of original court judgment and appellate court judgment.It is concluded that there are mainly three legal issues that the two courts have made different decisions:1.the legal nature of the vitro embryo;2.the way and the legal subject to the exertion of the vitro embryo 's rights;3.the legal protection of the vitro embryo and the policy orientation of surrogacy.There are three theories about the legal nature of the vitro embryo called'subject-theory','object-theory' and 'mediation theory'.I am in favor of the'mediation theory',because the vitro embryo is neither 'subject' nor 'object'in law,and the' mediation theory' is born to balance the contradiction of'subject-theory' and 'object-theory' to solve the practical problems.We can regard'eight weeks'in the foetal development as the boundary to mark off two epochs when we should treat the vitro embryo as'subject'or 'object'in law.And on the basis of the legal nature of the vitro embryo and the experience from comparative law,we can confirm heirs have certain inheritance rights to the vitro embryo within eight weeks,and the exertion of the vitro embryo's rights should be applied to the regulations for minors by analogy.The original court tried to avoid the risk of surrogacy,while the appellate court expected the law to legalize surrogacy.As it is a key problem for the protection and exertion of the vitro embryo's rights whether the surrogacy can be legal,it is necessary to make a wise choice.I find it would be the most rational choice that the law legalizes surrogacy through a Calabresi&Melamed model analysis.