Any threads on the embryo case?

[Quootiepie]

Just wondering, as I think the decision is today...

Can you comprehend her overwhelming desire ?
I would promise him ANYTHING, do anything he wanted, to get him to agree.If someone suggested that to you... if someone wanted it so badly, I could give it soem serious consideration. Couldn't you ?

Oblomov. I think it's very easy to understand overwhelming desire and to recognise pain and suffering. I also think it's easy to sympathise. What's difficult is making a moral/legal judgement that is goning to hurt or gravely disappoint someone. It's clear the European lawyers saw she would be upset by their decision. Their statement made that clear.

it is a very big thing to overturn a legal contract..it sets a precedent for others too and she signed the contract at the time it can't be retrospectively changed

That's my whole problem with this. It is what SHE WANTS so desperately - and I don't blame her for it. It is a biological need. But I do also wonder how much she has thought about whether it would be a good situation for her child to grow up in.

As far as Fio's post goes, I agree with you Fio. I am quite passionate about adoption and I do think if you really want to be a parent, then it is a wonderful thing to do.

What YOU desire when it is above the wellfare of a child (which I think it would be, in this case), is not a very good basis for being a good mother.

As long as she didn't want any money from him and he wasn't obligated to have any involvement in the child's life, I don't see what the guy's objections would be. It seems excessively cruel for him to be able to deny her use of the embryos. They may be half his, but they are half hers too.

but how would it make her a better mother if she is in the same situaion just adopted????
IN the end, wanting a child is the most selfish as well as selfless thing one can do...and I suppose no matter how you "fill" that need, that fact doesn't change...!
In the end, no matter how you have a child, it is mainly for your own benefit...of course hopefully teh chiuld will benefit, but that is neither here nor there, in this context!

I think it's worth remembering that we aren't talking about a real child here. Or children. We are talking about frozen embryos that could, after certain medical treatment, with permission from both donors and with good luck (IVF not always successful) become a baby.

half his half hers

that is exactly the kind of tussle that the law is there to avoid

this is a future life

I don't mean my last point to sound dismissive of the potential for life that has been created. But it is potential not a baby.

NK, I kow this isn't a real child. And is not something that could really add to the LEGAL debate, but I do think the child's life IF it was born is a consideration...after all, both sides of this debate relate to the outcome of a 'real child' (that's what she wants, that what he doesn't want).

The right decision was made because the needs of a potential child are greater than the needs/desires of the woman and man concerned. To bring a child into the world against a person's will is unfair to that person but also unfair to the child. All IVF clinics make routine assessments into future parents with welfare of the child being of paramount concern. To say they are just embryos and not babies, while this is true, is not really the way they are looked on by the hfea. They are looked on as potential lives, and ethical decisions have to be made accordingly.

But to imply that Natalie Evans is selfish for wanting to carry and give birth to her own child is ridiculous; it is nature, maternal instinct and you cannot just switch it off. Saying she can always adopt is a glib statement, and probably of little comfort to her right now. Maybe in the future once she has mourned the fact that she will never have her own biological children, or ever the hope of having them, then she might move on to a place where she will be ready to adopt. Right now, there is no way she would qualify.

At the risk of being unkind, I think her desperation to have the embryos at all costs may have gone against her with her XP. Desperation isn't pretty in any form. Maybe her XP thought that she was a tad unbalanced in her desire (as I expect we have been at one stage or another in our lives for one reason or another) to be a mum after they split up. I can remember some distinctly undignified behaviour on my part during my pg and afterwards .

It's not really a good starting point for creating a family where one party is so obviously disinterested in going ahead with it. I think for the sake of the potential children, this was the best decision all round, legally and ethically, as painful as it undoubtably is for both of them.

3andnomore - you have hit the nail on the head wrt the adoption issue - adoption is just selfish (and selfless as you point out)as giving birth. IN turth few people do it to be wonderful or to "save" a child they do it becuase they want a family.

I would have done (and did) a great deal to get pregnant, the biological urge is indeed very strong. At what point your need to nurture overwhelms your need to procreate I'm not sure but it does. However the adoption of DS has not "cured" my infertility and it remains as painful to me now as it ever was. He is my lovely boy and I would not be without him but I describe it to people as like going through a very painful divorce - if you subsequently fall in love again, it doesn't make you un-divorced, it doesn't take away the pain you went through.

There is also a fear of loving a child you have adopted in the same way as you would a birth child. Now I know how much I love him I would have given up on the nightmare of IVF so much sooner but I didn't know that in advance.

This poor woman is at the point I was three years ago, with a horrible sick, sinking feeling in her stomach and she probably has fewer options than I did too. However "right" I think the decision was I personally identify with her enormously and just hope she can come to terms the new reality of her life and move on.

Natalie Evans is getting a lot of sympathy though isn't she? Or is there some blokey forum somewhere with horrified men posting about what this woman has done to her ex?

exactly not everything is about money

and many people don't have the opportunity to have children because of the way life works out

nkf - she's bound to get a sympathetic hearing here though isn't she most women can identify with the pain that not being able to conceive can bring. Bein made to look like a selfish git is, I'm sure, painful for him but I would guess is easier to get over.

Actually, I wasn't thinking about looking like a selfish git so much as having to deal with sex years of legal fighting. Six years having to think about the actions of an ex, being worried about what might happen. He's 30 so split from her when he was only 24. That's a long time to have this sort of thing hanging over you. Grim, very grim.

Six years, not sex years. The warm weather is getting to me!

True - but I don;t suppose many of us can identify with that so we are more focussed on her inability to have bio children. No doubt as you say there will be a GQ site (or similar) somewhere bemoaning the actions of the selfish woman.

Didn't realise he was so young. He may not even want to be a father at all yet.

well...it's not that I can't see his point at all...however...having seen so many relationships breaking up, and sadly those dads often disappearing out of the childs life, dispite the mothers trying their hardest to enable a relationship...I find it hard to accept that he really is feeling this strongly about it...and before anyone jumps on me...I also know a few wonderful Dads that look fulltime after their Kids and where the woman has made the disappearing act and I also know a few Dads that are really still involved in their Kids life, dispite their relationship failing with the mum....but the other way round is somehow the more usual scenario!

And Suejonez...I am glad that came across right...my selfish/selfless ramblings...I was a bit worried I may have not put it well, and that I would upset people!
I said it lower down in the discussion...I do have a lot of admiration for people that do adopt...probably more so, because I personally don't think I could do it, iykwim!