Cry Me a River???

Thanks to the ritual humiliation that is reality TV, we’ve become a lot more used to seeing real people emoting. But even the shattering of the dreams of some deluded twat in stone-washed jeans singing ‘Angels’ off-key could not prepare us for the press conference of the woman who had just been told by the European Court of Human Rights that she couldn’t use the frozen embryos without the consent of her ex-fiancé, who had fertilized the embroyos but had since gone cold on the idea of parenthood.

I did wonder why she had called a press conference. She was obviously distressed - and by ‘distressed’ I mean hysterical with grief. In contrast, her ex-fiancé gave a press conference where he was calm, measured and, basically, came off like a psychopath.

Medical science is presenting us with all sorts of ethical dilemmas, many of them rather more complex than the people who created them are able to cope with. This is why it goes to wise judges, who toss a coin and break for lunch.

Parental disputes used to be simple. If the kid looked like the milkman, you gave the missus a thump but got on with it. Now things are more complex, but I’m not sure that people (men, basically), should be able to escape the consequences of their actions so easily. If the bloke in question had had a drunken knee-trembler up against a few crates of Newcastle Brown with the woman in question and she had caught pregnancy, what would he have done then?

Just how long after the act of ‘fertilization’ should one be allowed to call a halt to things? Popular milestones would probably be: when your kid comes last at some game on sports day, when he breaks your stereo, when he crashes the car or when he announces he’s gay and, worse, a ‘taker’!

Parenthood, I have observed, is all about gritting your teeth and getting through it. You might never stop being a parent but even I know when you start - and that includes being by yourself in a little room with a jizz mag and a cup.