For this is a story about global capitalism, which bankrolled Saddam, and governments that turned a blind eye to crimes against humanity This is not a cynical view. It is a year since the British and American governments called off their four-day bombardment of Iraq, which was designed (and failed) to humble Saddam Hussein for his refusal to co-operate with the UN on arms inspections. The missile attacks were followed by a sporadic bombing campaign which has always looked more like a manifestation of frustration than a concerted attempt to put pressure on the Iraqi dictator. Ms Ellis’s eggs remain frozen in the clinic at a cost to her of pounds 2,800 per year.

Even if she does get her licence, there is much doubt that she will ever get her baby. Meanwhile, time is running out for her and for the 53,000 children in care. Wouldn’t it be humane to counsel this woman that there is only the slimmest of chances that she will ever have a baby of her own, and suggest to her that there are many thousands of other children in the world waiting for the chance to love and to be loved?. It is expensive as well, sometimes just as expensive as getting others to have babies for you in California. “If there was any doubt about the safety of the treatment they shouldn’t have given a licence for freezing them in the first place.”Or, to look at it from a quite different angle, what is the point of telling a young woman who has recently heard the news that she has cancer and that the chemotherapy may make her infertile, that this detail is no bar to her having children? What is the point of applying for a licence to freeze this woman’s eggs without at the same time applying for the licence you know you will need to unfreeze them? The great trouble with assisted reproduction technology is that it is risky and often disappoints. “What is the point in having your eggs frozen in the first place if you are then banned from using them?” asks Ms Neill.”The only purpose of freezing eggs is to use them for future treatment,” Dr Taranissi points out. However, the technology is new, and it has been impossible for any long- range studies on the possible complications of birth by this technique to take place.The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has therefore ruled that it cannot allow the next part of the process to be licensed at this time.

As Ruth Deech, of the HFEA, said: “We are really concerned that any child born from this treatment might exhibit signs of genetic abnormality in later life. We all remember Thalidomide and we must never allow something like that to happen again.” But neither Carolyn nor her medical adviser, Dr Mohammed Taranissi, are at all convinced by this, and will appeal against the decision. The 34-year-old took the precaution offered to her in the outer reaches of reproductive science of having her ova removed and frozen by the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre in London.Ready now to begin the complicated process of attempting to have a child by these pioneering techniques, she and her doctors have run into a problem. While the clinic has a licence to freeze the eggs, it does not yet have a licence to thaw them and fertilise them. It is legal in Italy and the US to do this and so far around 40 babies have been born in this way.

What net gain has been made from the decision of Essex County Council? None at all. Gay men will find ways to have children whatever council policy may be. Can’t we find a way of accepting this perhaps imperfect fact of life? Meanwhile a Belfast woman, Carolyn Neill, is determined to have a baby who is biologically her own, even though cancer treatment has rendered her infertile. Further, it might be argued that a child removed from care into the hairy but loving arms of two dads, would be better able to adjust to their circumstances than the twins whose conception is not an everyday story of parental failure but an exotic tale of high finance and possibly compromised altruism. The sad thing is that, thanks to the regulations surrounding adoption within the Essex health authority, some child is, as we speak, languishing in care instead of settling down to unorthodox family life with these committed parents and millionaires.Of course, two gay dads are not ideal, but they surely can offer a more stable and loving background than the care system, which has been shown again and again to produce adults who are susceptible to educational difficulties, drug problems, homelessness and the rest of the entire gamut of social ills that we so successfully promote in this country.

In the light of the very real privations that standard care visits on children, it seems daft to insist that they remain there unless they can join The Brady Bunch.Barrie Drewitt and Tony Barlow, the British gay couple who last week won the right to be named in California as the joint parents of twins, are a case in point. They hit the headlines a few months back when it emerged that with the help of egg-donor Tracie Matthews, surrogate womb Rosalind Bellamy and an overall expenditure of pounds 200,000, the two men were expecting twins. The twins, Saffron and Aspen Two-Dads Drewitt-Barlow, are doing well, although their dads say that they will leave Britain if they are not granted British citizenship. Of course, it is easy to slag off social services, but it does seem that some of the rules surrounding adoption strive so hard for perfect placements that all efforts are doomed to failure from the start.