A seven-year-old Canadian girl may one day have the option of becoming impregnated with her mother's eggs -- a decision that could result in her giving birth to her own half-brother or sister.

The girl was born with a genetic condition known as Turner's Syndrome that will likely result in her becoming infertile.

Her mother, Melanie Boivin, a Montreal lawyer, has frozen her own eggs to be set aside for future use by her daughter, should she choose to use them.

The work was among developments announced Tuesday by Canadian doctors at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon, France.

The donation is being described as an act of love by the doctors from the McGill Reproductive Center in Montreal.

Critics say that the work raises ethical issues and is deeply concerning. But it will be years before the girl, Flavie Boivin, is in a position to accept the donation. And she and her future partner will have the choice of whether to use the donated eggs or not, say proponents of the research.

Still, the mother, 35, and her partner -- the girl's father -- thought long and hard about their decision, she said.

"We were concerned about the ethical questions -- would I look at the child as my grandchild or as my own? We were also concerned about the financial impact, the physical impact on me and the emotional impact on the family," Melanie said, as cited by the BBC.

But in an effort to help her daughter, she eventually sought out the help of a team at McGill University, led by Professor Seang Lin Tan.

She said she wouldn't hesitate to donate an organ to her child, if it was needed, and decided an egg donation was along the same lines.

The team freezes eggs for cancer patients and others who want to preserve the option of giving birth.

Because the work raises so many ethical concerns, Tan and his team sought the approval of an independent ethics commissioner before going ahead.

"The ethic committee agreed to it because the mother giving to a daughter is out of love and it is up to the daughter and partner in future years to decide whether to use the eggs or not," he said, according to the BBC.

"And ethical considerations change with time. Who knows what the ethics will be in 20 years from now."

Though there have been donations between sisters, this is the first known case of a mother donating eggs to a daughter.

The research was one of two key papers presented by the McGill team at the Lyon conference.

Successful birth

Another breakthrough previously announced by the team but presented as a paper at the conference, focused on a one-year-old Canadian child who was born from eggs that matured in a laboratory, were frozen, thawed out and then fertilized.

Three other women are pregnant after having been implanted with eggs that were removed from their own ovaries, matured in a lab using hormones, frozen, then thawed.

"We have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to do this,'' Dr. Hananel Holzer, the study's lead author and an assistant professor at McGill's department of obstetrics and gynecology, said in Lyon.

He said the method has the potential to become one of the main options for fertility preservation.

Twenty women took part in the study. They are all infertile and have an average age of about 30.

Previously, it was uncertain whether the eggs could be fertilized successfully. Eggs had been matured successfully, and egg freezing is a well-established procedure, but this is the first time all the steps had been put together to result in a successful birth.

With files from The Associated Press