McGrath, you did not say that it was technically abortion, but you DID say that it was "equivalent to a situation where a women [sic]was forced to have an abortion." It is NOT equivalent to that. The whole backbone of what is euphemistically called "a woman's right to choose" (which I support politically, by the way) is that she is choosing what to do with her body, and the fetus is in her body. These embryos are not in her body, and as such it requires a totally different argument to the abortion argument. (BTW, this is an American perspective. I actually do not know British law on how legal abortion is justified, but I suspect it is the same)

What the embryos are, it seems to me, is jointly-held property. If the man does not wish to relinquish his rights to it, why should the law force him to?

Another analogy might be this: suppose the man wanted to have a surrogate mother bear a child from one of these embryos, then force the biological mother to pay half of the child's upkeep for the rest of her life? Should he be allowed to do that? If not, then the biological mother should not be allowed to bear one of these children either, because the law already stipulates that if she does the biological father will have to pay for it for the rest of HIS life.

The fact that one of the women can no longer produce embryos is neither here nor there. It's sad, of course, and I sympathize, but legally the man should not be denied rights and left with a lifetime of child support because of the woman's biological misfortune.