Any threads on the embryo case?

[Quootiepie]

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

Playing devil's advocate here, I think whatever he'd decided to do would be 'wrong' in someone's eyes.

If he'd said "go ahead, but I'm not part of it", then he'd be villified for that.... and what he did say he was villified for.

There's no winners either way. Imagine the stress he must have had over the past six years. Imagine walking into work the day after it was reported in the papers... sitting in a pub.... getting on a bus.... going swimming.... I wouldn't like to have been him. And as someone else said, it's been going on for six years.

I'll give them this - they both must be cussed individuals if it had to go all the way to Europe and back before a decision was made!!

well...if he had just agreed for her to have the embryos, it wouldn't have reached the news, in teh first place...see...he would have saved himself a lot of hassle that way ;)

The whole thing goes to show that a girl always needs to hedge her bets when it comes to depending on men!

3andnoremore - true!

Or she could have pulled back long before all this.

100k seems a high price for the taxpayer to settle what should have been a private squabble. I guess that the legal powers that be had to have a definitive answer either way to use as precedent in subsequent cases.

well people don't have to just agree to things which are fundamentally not right just to get someone off the case

he didn't want her to go ahead with the procedure

I would imagine that she would get legal aid (but who is paying her XP's costs as he 'won' the case?) - very few people could afford to personally fund a case to Europe. It is establishing a legal principle so the legal aid people probably thought it worth spending money on.

yeah cotedazur, had she just had them embryos created without this guys sperm, but wiht donor sperm, she wouldn't have been in this debacle...she wouldn't have had to rely on him...but the sad thing is, at the time thye probably were going strong and nver saw this coming...

"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".

Maybe he was thinking about the child. He might not have wanted to have a child that would grow up never knowing him, didn't want a child that he wasn't able to support. Maybe he didn't want his child one day coming to find him - no matter how good their step-father was - because they just needed to know who their father was and then having to explain to them (or lie) about what had happened and why he hadn't wanted them born.

I think Aloha covered this point before, so sorry if I'm covering old ground, but if I helped create another human being - which is what he will have done - there is no way on earth that I would be able to walk away and carry on with my life knowing that my child was growing up and I'd never know them. Not all men are bad guys who act as sperm donors and then walk away without giving their child a second thought.

Still, could he not have said "Ok, have the child, I will just pretend it never happened." It's not as if they will be in eachother's lives.

He doesn't have to be a sperm donor, contributing to the DNAs of hundreds of children he doesn't know about. Just this one. To help this woman he once loved out of her misery.

I am not a thief but I could steal once if it meant someone I once loved could have the only child he will ever have.

Is it so bizarre to ask this of him? Just his consent for this woman to have a child, a child whose 50% DNA has come from him?

Would YOU be happy to have a biological child of yours out there that was being born to and brought up by an ex who hates you and hasn't spoken to you for years and a total stranger? Would you be content to have nothing to do with that child and never see it?
I wouldn't, and neither would he.

A couple of people (women as it happens) actually said to me about my dh when he was having a legal problems with his ex over their daughter, 'Well, he has a new family now. Can't he just concentrate on that and forget about her?' - I thought that was an absolutely disgusting, immoral thing to say. Makes me shudder.

well i had ivf and we all have to sign the same forms and you are read all about the form and every different scenario even when you are sitting there with your partner so its not as if these were all new things. I wqas lucky to have a child but if the ivf had not worked my yearning to be a 'mum' again was so strong that i would adopt as to me you do not have to conceive a child to become a parent you can be a mum to any child. That said you cant help but to feel sorry for her

Aloha, would you be happy? Would I be happy? No probably not. But get real. This happens all the time. We are all talking as if all children are created in ideal circumstances, with two consenting adults. I reallly wonder, what the actual % is, of children that are concieved / born into that ideal.

I bet, unfortunatlet, that it is REALLY low.

How many people here are single mums when given the choice, they wouldn't be ? How many people here are divorced. Bringing up someone elses biological child ?
Would we have wanted these situations in an ideal world. Get real. Its the way life is.

I could get divorced tomorrow. So could you. Someone else could be bringing up your child. Will that stop us having children?

NO.

I think that the wrong decision was made, personally.

How unfortunate for the poor woman to have been involved with someone who would change his mind in this way.

I just spoke to dp about it and asked him to put himself in his shoes - he said he would never want to deny a woman her rights to have a child - even if he was no longer in the relationship. She's been through enough with the IVF (let alone the cancer) and the creation of the embryo was done through love. It should stand.

Makes me proud to be with this man

Not only am I 'real', the judges were 'real' too. And so are men's feelings, thank goodness. I am horrified that so many people think men are no more than sperm donors. Such a shallow understanding of half the human race.

I also think it is morally wrong for a woman to try to trap an unwilling man into fatherhood, especially when he has good principled and sensible reasons why he doesn't want to have a child with her.

Whilst there are many circumstances where people raise children who are not biologically their own, the law really should uphold some sort of an ideal. I believe that is what has happened in this case. Alan Johnston does not want to father a child with Natalie Evans. If only all the 'baby-fathers' out there had such priniciples!! I do feel immense sympathy for Natalie Evans, but she does not have a RIGHT to force the person whose DNA makes up 50% of the embryo to father a child when he does not want to be a father. I don't see why it's OK to force someone to become a father. We'd be outraged if the roles were reversed and he was trying to force her to have the embryo implanted because it was his last chance at fatherhood.

I thought Alan Johnston was a politican .

I think the guy's first name is Howard. Guess some would think changing the H to a C would be more appropriate .

Good point about the babyfathers.

Sobernow I agree with Aloha's point, but it's not that I disapprove of egg/sperm donation - far from it, but it needs to be with the person's consent, and in this case it isn't.

This sad case has seen the man's rights (not to become a father) take precedence over the woman's rights (to implant the embryos and, hopefully, become a biological mother).

Yes, I know that this is what they both agreed to, and so legally, I accept it was the right decision.

I still think it was wrong, ethically.