Background: Amanda Platell is a feminist British TV commentator who can be seen giving UK Fathers 4 Justice leader Matt O’Connor a hard time here. I criticized her for that, but she recently wrote a very prescient article on the controversial Natallie Evans IVF case. In that case Evans (pictured right), who had cancer, was denied the right to use the frozen embryos fertilized by ex-partner. Platell asks “A tragedy for Natalie Evans, but what about fathers?”
The court was right to stop Natallie becoming a mother
By Amanda Platell
Daily Mail, 4/11/07
The moment Natallie Evans broke down, having just heard that her embryos would be destroyed and would never become the beloved child she dreamed of, her pain was clear for all to see. But perhaps more clear for those of us who, like Natallie, have also struggled to have a child, who like her have battled through years of disappointment, only one ghastly day to have to accept the truth – that we will never be a mother.I too have known the depths of that darkness, and have some idea of the pain ahead for her: the loitering by Baby Gap, the lingering glances into baby buggies, the bitter-sweet smile at mums at the school gate.If anyone should be her champion, it should be me. But I know that the heartbreak verdict was the right one.The decision not to allow this young woman to use her frozen embryos was truly a terrible tragedy for Natallie. But it was the only decision the courts could come to.
Why? Because had the European Court of Human Rights supported Ms Evans’s claim to an inalienable right to motherhood, it would have legislated men out of fatherhood … and legislated fathers out of families.
In other words, it would have set in law the right of a woman to use a man as nothing more than a means of having a baby – irrespective of the father’s wishes or, indeed, the future needs of the child.
The case of Natallie Evans is a tragedy in three parts, starting five years ago when, at just 29, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
She and her partner Howard Johnston began IVF treatment in order that, after her ovaries were removed, she would still be able to have their child. Six of the couple’s fertilised embryos were frozen and stored.
Then a year later, tragedy struck again when she and her fiancé split up. Mr Johnston wrote to the clinic where the embryos were stored and asked for them to be destroyed.
He was within his rights to do so, since British law sensibly requires both partners to give consent before an IVF pregnancy can progress – up to the point at which the embryo is implanted. (more…)
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