Sharon Murphy, mother of Cameron Duncan who died of cancer aged in 2003, hopes she'll finally be able to use his frozen sperm to have another child.

"The one thing that hurts the most is he'll never be a father. That's so heartbreaking."

That's what keeps Sharon Murphy awake. Her teenage son Cameron Duncan, a promising film-maker mentored by Hollywood power-couple Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, died from bone cancer at the age of 17. His illness inspired Walsh's Oscar-winning song 'Into the West'.

But before starting chemotherapy in 2002 he banked his sperm, knowing the treatment might destroy his fertility. And in his will, he gifted the sperm to his mother so she might have a grandchild. The sperm has remained frozen ever since.

Now, after years of campaigning for the right to use his sperm to impregnate a surrogate, Murphy has been extended a twinkling of hope.

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This week, the Ministry of Health has opened public consultation for feedback on the use of dead people's sperm or eggs – and it's about time, she said. "It felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall."

Until the consultation was announced, Murphy said, she felt that Ministry officials were taking away the one gift her son left when he died in 2003. "They have no right to do that."

Now, the Ministry has written a Cameron Clause into the proposed new guidelines: The Advisory Committee of Assisted Reproductive Technology is specifically considering the legal status of sperm banked by a minor.

SUPPLIED Cameron Duncan died of cancer at age 17.

The challenge for the widows and families of men who die before they have children is that the existing guidelines, dating back to 2000, say nobody has the right to use sperm stored by a minor aged under 16, except the person himself. Cameron banked his sperm shortly before his 16th birthday.

The consultation document also raises tough ethical questions about the wellbeing of any child born without its father: how to balance the memory of the deceased man and the rights of his grieving family, while also ensuring that the baby is conceived in a loving and supportive environment.

Sharon Murphy said the plans to change the guidelines were "wonderful" and she likened it to the public debate on euthanasia. The more you talked about it, she said, the more public awareness and understanding there was.

Cameron would be pleased at the movement towards new guidelines – but time was marching on, Murphy said, and she wanted to still be young enough to bring up her grandchild.

Murphy hasn't thought beyond what her original plan was 10 years ago.

"As much as I would like to say I have a plan, I first have to get past the post and if we get permission we'll from there."

When asked who would carry Cameron's baby, Sharon said she had a few people in mind but didn't want to put pressure on them.

"I have others who would help raise the child," she said.

Gillian Ferguson, the chair of the Advisory Committee, said the committee wasn't proposing specific changes and was seeking public feedback on some of the big ethical questions.

"We're raising issues around the types of situations where people think it would be acceptable to retrieve gametes after a person's dead, or to use gametes or embryos after a person's dead."

Ferguson said there was one main question: "Whether, under what circumstances, people think posthumous reproduction is acceptable – if ever."

At the moment, the sperm of a dead man can be used to fertilise an egg if he had consented to a specific use before he died. "There's important issues around who should be able to authorise retrieval and use for certain situations might require ethical review."

Another question asked was: "Who should be permitted to use a reproductive material from a deceased person?"

"The deceased's partner only? Family members of the deceased as well as the deceased's partner? or Anybody?"

The consultation stated posthumous reproduction might be thought beneficial in that it could honour the wishes of the person deceased to create a child who has some aspects of a loved one who had died.

"There is the potential for the wellbeing and dignity of a child born via such means to be negatively impacted."

However, research indicated that psychological outcomes for a child who was created from material retrieved posthumously were no different from a child produced by other assisted reproductive technologies.