A same-sex couple, one surrogate mother and a set of twins with different fathers.
That's the cast of an unusual legal appeal by a Cape Town same-sex couple who went to court to allow them to share biological fatherhood of twins born from a surrogate.
The couple - who have asked not to be named - last week asked Judge Siraj Desai of the high court in Cape Town to authorise the Cape Fertility Clinic to perform artificial fertilisation including the simultaneous transfer of one embryo that had been fertilised with sperm from the one father and another that had been fertilised by his husband.
If the in vitro fertilisation is successful, the couple's children would be twins with different DNA - one would share DNA with the first father while his husband would be the biological father of the other child. The children would share the same mother.
In terms of chapter 19 of the Children's Act, every surrogate motherhood agreement must go to the high court for approval before artificial fertilisation of the surrogate can proceed.
However, in this case the clinic refused to go ahead without a court order specifically authorising the transfer of two embryos with two different fathers.
Cape Town fertility law specialist Andrew Martin, who brought the application before Desai, told the Sunday Times that the couple - who married last year after many years of dating - wanted to have a chance at sharing biological fatherhood of twins born of surrogate.
"It also allows for either of them to stand a chance of having a child, instead of doing one-partner transfers at a time. Embryo transfer is expensive and the surrogacy journey itself is often prohibitively expensive and often not repeated due to the costs," said Martin.
"If one father were to be the only male genetic part of an embryo, then the couple would have to go through the entire surrogacy journey again in order to have a half-sibling born from the other father."
Martin said the clinic was reluctant to perform the double embryo transfer without a court order because it had received conflicting legal advice about the "ambiguous and unclear wording" of the regulations relating to artificial fertilisation of persons.
Desai authorised the double transfer, but it cannot be seen as a blanket approval for similar cases.
"It does, however, provide a precedent, persuasive that such an order has previously been granted and can again be granted," Martin said.
The transfer is expected to take place next month.
The Cape Town Fertility Clinic referred queries from the Sunday Times to the Southern African Society of Reproductive Medicine and Gynaecological Endoscopy.
The society represents gynaecologists with a special interest in gynaecological endoscopy, sub-specialists, embryologists and scientists working in the field of reproductive medicine.
The society's president, Sulaiman Heylen, said transferring two embryos with different fathers was not a common practice.
"If two top quality embryos are transferred, the chance of having a twin pregnancy is around 25%. In this case when two embryos from a different father are transferred successfully, the twins would indeed have different DNA," he said.
In July 2016, a Pretoria same-sex couple, Christo and Theo Menelaou, made history by becoming fathers to triplets, two of whom share DNA with one of the men while the other with his husband. One embryo fertilised with Christo's sperm had been implanted in the surrogate's womb, along with another embryo fertilised with Theo's sperm.
A scan at 10 weeks into the pregnancy revealed that one of the embryos had split, resulting in a third child.
The couple's triplets were born in July 2016. Twin girls Zoe and Kate have Theo's DNA, and their son Joshua has Christo's DNA...