Natallie Evans, who fought a five-year battle to become a mother using frozen embryos, said that she was “distraught” after losing her fight at the European Court of Human Rights yesterday.

Ms Evans’s hopes of conceiving rested on a final appeal after cancer treatment left her infertile. Now the six embryos will have to be destroyed.

She underwent IVF treatment with Howard Johnston in October 2001. But the couple separated before the embryos could be implanted in Ms Evans’s womb and her former partner later changed his mind about having children.

Ms Evans, 35, from Melksham, Wiltshire, broke down yesterday when asked what she would now say to Mr Johnston. She said: “I’ve pleaded with him before and it has not worked so there’s nothing I can say to him any more.”

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She added that she had asked him to rethink and he had not, “so nothing is going to change his mind”.

After Mr Johnston, 30, from Cheltenham, refused permission for the embryos to be used in summer 2002, Ms Evans applied to the Family Division of the High Court. She argued that her former partner had already consented to the creation, storage and use of the embryos and that it was unfair for him to be allowed to alter his decision.

After she lost at both the High Court and the Court of Appeal, the law lords refused her permission to take her case to the House of Lords.

In February 2005, Ms Evans lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights. In March last year a seven-judge panel at the court rejected her case in a 5-2 decision.

The Grand Chamber was her last resort.

Current IVF law in Britain — the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act — requires consent from both man and woman at every stage of the IVF process. There is no standard European approach to questions in the field of IVF.

Speaking after the court’s decision yesterday, Mr Johnston said that the couple had discussed the low success rate of IVF and had talked about other options, such as fostering or adoption.

“I hope she will be able to find happiness through one of those other means,” he said. “Being a mother is still an option to her that does not involve me.”

If yesterday’s verdict had gone against him, Mr Johnston said that he would have taken legal advice on the steps he needed to take. “I did not assume anything,” he said. “I had hoped that common sense and the legal framework would hold up. I’m grateful and relieved that it has done so.”

Mr Johnston, who ended the relationship in May 2002, denied that his action was selfish but said that he had “every sympathy” for Ms Evans. “I don’t think I have acted selfishly. If you turn this on its head and if I was infertile with a new partner I wouldn’t expect Natallie consenting to me using them.”

He said that he had not spoken to Ms Evans but accepted that she had been through an “emotional roller-coaster”. He added: “I’ve every sympathy with Natallie but from the first moment I knew I didn’t want to have children with her, and it’s the same I feel now.”

He said that he had never considered backing down during the five-year legal fight. “I don’t know how it has affected me. But it has been difficult having other people making such a big decision for you.”

Ms Evans said in a statement: “It’s very hard for me to accept that the embryos will now be destroyed and that I will never become a mother.

“I would ask Howard to consider whether he could ever permit me to have the children I so dearly long for.”

Speaking after the press conference, Ms Evans’s mother, Angela Elmes, 59, described the moment that her daughter had learnt that she had lost her fight. “I could not control her,” she said. “It was horrible. She was just so devastated. She did not believe it.”

The judgment declared: “The Grand Chamber . . . did not consider that the applicant’s right to respect for the decision to become a parent in the genetic sense should be accorded greater weight than [Mr Johnston’s] right to respect for his decision not to have a genetically related child with her.”

Anna Smajdor, researcher in medical ethics at Imperial College, London, said: “There is something deeply amiss here. Ms Evans is not allowed to have her embryos implanted without her ex’s consent, yet he — effectively — is allowed to have them destroyed without hers.”

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