It’s worrying to read their backgrounds. Too many of the kids in my school share them, and are already desperately ill educated, ill disciplined and have no motivation or aspirations. There will be more of this.

It seems to me that both Atkins and Hamilton had a bone to chew in this argument, but I do think there is a valid issue to be raised as did one of the judges in this case when she opined that it seemed unfair that the mother had no say in implantation while the father had, de facto, the last word on the destruction of the embryos.  Without the subject being unduly freighted with moralising, I think there could have been a resolution to this sad affair, that would have satisfied both parties. 

You may well not understand bringing one’s own child into the world but clearly this was an imperative for this woman.  It would have cost Johnson nothing if, by signing away any responsibility he would have for the child, to allow implantation to proceed.  The law as it stands is unjust precisely because of the biological dynamic.  Though it would be outrageous  to force a woman to carry a child because the father would not agree to a termination (though I think the father should have right of consultation), that is not the case here.  For Johnson it was a question of principle; for his partner it was a greater compulsion that we do not understand but is no less valid for that.  Compounded as it was by this woman’s lack of biological choices, I think an example could have been made of the law acceding to compassion.