In 2012, a couple in Rizhao, east China's Shandong Province, faced a different awkward situation to Shen and Liu's parents. They had frozen embryos before getting a divorce. After their separation, the wife wanted to transfer an embryo to her womb but her ex-husband protested. This earlier case also ended in a dispute over the ownership of the frozen embryos.

"Whether a frozen embryo should be regarded as a person, property, or something else has been a matter of debate for a long time," said Ma Yinan, a professor of law at Peking University. "It carries the potential for life, which distinguishes it from other objects and as such it shouldn't be inherited like other objects."

"As for the case in Yixing, the wishes of the two families are understandable. But if the embryos were inherited, it might cause more problems in the future, leading to things like trading them," said Zhai Xiaomei, an expert from the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

In China, in line with the family-planning policy effective since the late 1970s, most urban families were only allowed to have one child for the following 30 or so years. With the concerns over possible misfortune befalling their only child in the future, some parents chose to have embryos frozen in hospitals in case of the worst.

A new policy released in late 2013 allows couples with one being the only child of his or her parents to have a second kid, leading many couples with embryos frozen in hospitals to unfreeze them for reproduction.

"Although the storage contract says that the frozen embryos can only be kept for one year and then the hospital has the right to discard them if the couple commissioning the embryos don't pay a fee to prolong their preservation, the hospital normally keeps the embryos for as long as it can," said Huang Qing, a doctor at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University.

Huang said that, with the new policy, a growing number of couples with frozen embryos kept in the hospital have showed up to pay for further preservation. "In April and May, about 500 couples came to pay, while in the past, only 20 to 30 couples came each month."

Yang Guiyan, a doctor at Zhuhai Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital in Guangdong Province, revealed that from 2011 to 2013, the hospital helped create more than 2,000 frozen embryos and the number has been increasing since the beginning of this year. "Storing all these frozen embryos has brought pressure on the hospital," Yang said. "Every embryo has the possibility of being turned into a baby. Discarding them is the last choice."

"The case in Yixing has exposed a legal vacuum in the regulations, which ambiguously fail to define a frozen embryo as either a human or an object," said Chen Zhihua, a lawyer from the Beijing Lawyer Association. "The Chinese mainland has no law defining ownership of frozen embryos and the case has generated appeals for the law to keep pace with developing fertility technology."

The four parents in Yixing said that they would appeal to a higher court together. "We won't give up the fight as it is our only hope," said Shen's parents.

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