Frozen embryo battles

This week's BioNews reports on news that two women are to make a human rights challenge to the law on assisted reproduction. Natallie Evans and Lorraine Hadley want to use their frozen embryos to try for their own babies even though their former partners - the men who provided the sperm - no longer want to have a child with them. The fact that these women have no other way of having a biologically related child makes the situation seem all the more unfair. But can the law help?

The lawyer acting for the two women says that their legal claim will be based upon the issue of discrimination. 'If they got pregnant naturally and the embryos were in their bodies then their respective partners would not have any say at all... The law needs to take into account why they should be effectively discriminated against because they're infertile,' said Muiris Lyons. He thinks that the Human Rights Act will be able to provide the women with a way of using the embryos without out the consent of the former partners.

Whatever the human rights issues, some have commented that this case is the latest in a long line which demonstrate a need to update the law governing assisted reproduction in the UK. Baroness Warnock told the BBC that she considers the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to be 'ambiguous' on the issue. She added that the Act should be reconsidered in the light of new technological advances which have taken place since the law reached the statute book.

However, this is one issue on which the 1990 law is very clear: the providers of the eggs and of the sperm must both give their written consent for the storage and use of their embryos. If one of them changes his or her mind, the consent is nullified and the embryos must be removed from storage and destroyed. Nothing has changed since the law came into being. Embryo freezing was available at the time and the potential for conflict between couples who separate in between the storage and the use of the embryos in treatment remains the same.

Contrary to the claims of the two women's lawyers, the law is not discriminatory in this instance. It is nature which discriminates between those who can have children naturally and those who cannot. Reproductive science and the laws which govern it can help to overcome an obstacle imposed by nature, but they cannot overcome rifts in personal relationships. The only solution to this seemingly intractable problem is an agreement between the women and their respective former partners. The women may find themselves in unlucky situations, but there's no legal remedy for that.