Natallie Evans and Lorraine Hadley

helenquinn · 10-03-2003, 12:44 PM

Hi ladies,

what did you think about these women who lost their case in the High Court this week. I was disappointed for them, especially is it Lorraine whose ovaries have been removed.

Helen

LULU · 10-03-2003, 02:54 PM

Helen, it was also in the newspaper that the other woman had been diagnosed with PCOS. She did already have a 20 year old daughter from a previous relationship. I can see both sides and obviously I can empathize with the poor women but I can also see the legislation is very clear that either party can withdraw consent at any point. There needs to be a change in the HFEA legislation. I believe that spite would play a major part in the decision of those men if there had been acrimony in the breakups.

These kinds of situations were never envisaged when the Fertility Act was being drawn up. My heart does go out to the poor girl who had to have her ovaries removed. Unless she uses donor eggs, there is no hope of a biological child for her. I hope someone will come forward and offer to donate eggs for her as a result of this publicity.

Deeds2 · 10-03-2003, 07:41 PM

I think this is a tragic case, but I honestly don't know how the judges could have ruled otherwise. I cannot imagine how these women feel now, particularly the one whose ovaries have been removed, her chance to have her own natural child is gone now and I don't think I would ever be able to cope with that.

Very sad.

LULU · 10-04-2003, 03:06 PM

I think that the moral of the story (if there can be one!) is freeze your eggs, not embryos and then no one else can make any decisions other than the woman. I feel she should have been given that option. Maybe she was and opted straight for IVF-who knows?

JaneR · 10-04-2003, 03:19 PM

I agree with LULU - just goes to show that, in that particular situation, so long as you have been given the option, you should have your eggs stored. As much as we all want to believe that our love is "forever" statistics prove that reality can be very different and that, once the urgency of a situation has passed and the cancer or whatever is beaten, a relationship can go wrong. I would have thought that the hospital would give them the option and if the egg harvest was good enough, maybe even have been able to store both embryos and eggs.

I understand why the men involved didn't want the embryos implanted when the relationships had ended, but my heart does go out to the ladies, especially the one whose ovaries were removed.

I suppose all we can do now is wait to see if they do appeal.

helenquinn · 10-06-2003, 08:54 AM

LULU and JaneR

from what I could gather from the Channel 4 documentary the other night, Natallie was advised at the clinic to store the eggs as embryos and not as eggs as the eggs may not have survived freezing. Now I could have got it wrong, but as far as I can remenber this is what she was told.

I think the women should appeal, it brings to mind Diane Blood who wanted to conceive her children posthomously (Baroness Warnock said she herself was born 7 months after her father's death)

I just wonder if Natallie and Lorraine bring their case to Europe what will happen as part of their argument was their right to reproduce.

Helen