Firstly there's the equality issue. The women agreed at the start that the men would have the right to decide whether they wanted to use the embryos. The men shouldn't be able to force the women to bear a child, and the women shouldn't be able to use the embryos without the men agreeing either. This is not a "loophole in the law" as McGrath says, it's simply that you have to give consent at the time the embryos are used.

In real terms it has nothing at all to do with abortion. As far as "neither party having rights to the destruction of a fertilised embryo", well that's exactly what happens every day in assisted-fertility stuff. Many embryos are fertilised, the doctors select those which are developing properly, and the rest are destroyed.

Re artbrooks's question, AFAIK you *cannot* in UK law waive parental rights, so there is a financial aspect to consider as well. If these children were born, the women (with the full assistance of the Child Support Agency) could insist that they pay maintenance. There are numerous cases of fathers forced to pay maintenance long after they had agreed to waive contact rights with their child.

Logically, the CSA shouldn't assist in that. However the CSA institutionally supports the woman and doesn't consider the man's situation, which is the reason organisations such as Families Need Fathers have been set up. My sister-in-law's brother is one such case - he's been left basically homeless after his divorce, since his ex-wife took the family home (to which he had paid mortgage payments for 10 years) and requires maintenance payments such that he can't even afford to rent. He's been forced to move in with his girlfriend (who he hasn't known that long) from a simple lack of anywhere else to stay - if that fails, he'll be out on the streets. When the maintenance payments got raised just recently, he told the woman at the CSA that he simply couldn't afford this. Her reaction was "I don't care, give me your bank details if you want to see your child again." He's got no route of appeal that doesn't involve him losing contact with his children, and he doesn't want to scar the children with a lawsuit against their mother.

Sure, I sympathise with the women, but they are still able to have children from donated eggs, or adopt. Whilst it will not be their genetic inheritance, it will still be their child.

Graham.