I am shocked at the attitude of Howard Johnston, and would like to give him some money so that he might buy a clue.
I am of course referring to the case of Natallie Evans who has been left infertile by cancer treatment, and whos frozen embryos (her last chance of having her own gentic children) are denied to her because of her ex-partner.
Does he not see that through no fault of her own she is now incapable of conceiving a child. This is not the insane act of a crazy ex-partner who wishes to enact her revenge or perhaps entangle him in her web never to let him be free again. Will he one day wake up and realise that under different circumstances she wouldn't be begging him to help her create a new life, infact I seriously doubt that she would stalk him begging on her hands and knees with a plastic cup so that she might impregnate herself with his child.
It is the last chance for a woman who has already been through so much, to have a child. She does not need Mr Johnstons financial help as she has a partner who is prepared to legally become the childs father. Mr Johnston therefore need have no input in the childs life and could disappear. He need not become a father yet, and indeed there are no complications for him, Natallie on the other hand is running out of time.
Cancer is not a nice disease at the best of times, but how can he not imagine how it must feel to have triumphed against a life threatening illness only to be told that (as most women perceive it) you are not a real woman anymore, to feel that you are no longer complete. That missing part of her, that final piece of the jigsaw as it were to make her feel complete and like a woman again, is obtainable - if only a man who at one point claimed to love her would let her reach out and embrace it.
Can anyone attempt to understand how she will feel for the rest of her life on each and every October if the law allows these frozen children to be destroyed. It might I presume be similar to the feelings of those unfortunate souls who lost loved ones in the July bombings in London, or the parents of James Bulger or even Damilola Taylor.
"How?" I hear you ask, "They haven't been born yet". The fact of the matter is that to her they have been born. They have names, their first day at school has been imagined, their first words, first girlfriends/boyfriends, weddings,grandchildren - they have all been imagined. And these ideas, no matter how whimsical they seem to some, may even have been what gave her the strength and courage to fight cancer.
Yes I realise alot of this post is made up on inference, but if people stopped empathising what would the world come to?
He says that he wouldn't like to think that his child was out there without him - so he'd rather they were destroyed?...
I can see his point of view too, but I'm also intrigued as to how he'd feel were he to become infertile and yet want his *own* children.
Labels: court, Embryos, infertility
