Europe, and with it Britain, has every right – the duty indeed – to say to the Israelis that it cannot progress trade relations with Israel, let alone EU membership, so long as it exists. But women cannot claim all the rights, just because they are the ones who physically bear the children.It is easy to say that this case should never have come to court at all But that would be wrong. Women have traditionally been accorded custody of the children and the men have been required to pay – but without a corresponding right of access This situation is slowly changing – as it must. The likelihood that a child conceived without the agreement of both parents could become the object of endless dispute and emotional blackmail is too great for any court to allow.There are parallels to be drawn here with the plight of children in divorce cases.

In whose interests and for whose satisfaction are these children being conceived? The HFEA of 1990 was quite right to stipulate that embryos should be destroyed unless both parties agree to their storage and subsequent use. One side ends up with the choice – the men can refuse permission for the frozen embryos to be used – while the other side, the women who are left childless, has none.This is true, but it reckons without the resulting children. When the two couples broke up, so did the agreement.Where the women have a better point is in arguing that their defeat amounts to victory for the men. If, for instance, the women had become pregnant naturally, there would have been no obligation to inform the fathers and the fathers would have had no veto on the pregnancy Superficially fair, such a point is actually ludicrous. It neglects the fact that the women had undergone fertility treatment with their partners This was a joint enterprise.

It would be hard to deny the resulting children the right to know the identity of their fathers. It would be equally hard, if not impossible, to deny them the right to trace their biological fathers in later life.Lawyers for Ms Evans and Ms Hadley argued that the law as it stands draws a false distinction between natural and scientifically assisted conception. But so is the position of the men: why should they agree to father children by women with whom they now have nothing in common, with all the risks that this could entail?Even if the women were to relinquish any claim to financial support or maintenance payments as a condition of proceeding, this would still not alter the fact that the women would have been given the right to exercise a choice – and the men would have been denied an equivalent choice. The motives of the women in this case – to exploit their last chance of having a child rather than to perpetuate an extinct relationship – are understandable. But the specific case presented by Ms Evans and Ms Hadley is different as it pits the rights and interests of women directly against those of men.Victory for the two women yesterday would have amounted to a defeat for the men – not just the two ex-partners in this case, but potentially very many more. The arguments about a woman’s right – or not – to have a child have been rehearsed recently in connection with proposals that fertility treatment should be available free on the National Health Service. Such a ruling would have skewed legal judgments on relations between the sexes in a wholly untenable way.That the women and their lawyers decided to go to court in the first place is an unfortunate reflection on some interpretations of women’s rights.

If this argument had prevailed, however, the effect would have been to give their desire to become mothers precedence over the desire of their ex-partners not to become fathers – at least not fathers of these children. The women argued that the frozen embryos offered them the last chance of having a child and that refusal would violate their rights. They had applied to the court for permission to continue their fertility treatment, even though their former partners objected. Ms Evans has since undergone cancer treatment which has left her infertile; Ms Hadley, at 37, is approaching the end of her child-bearing years. More surprising than the ruling, perhaps, is that the two women allowed themselves to hope that any other outcome might be either possible or desirable.Ms Evans and Ms Hadley both had embryos in storage, produced as a result of fertility treatment undertaken with their then partners.