Yesterday Natallie Evans and Lorraine Hadley lost their case to implant frozen embryos created with their former partners. The women wished to use their embryos to try to have children, even though their former partners no longer want to have a child with them.

There was never going to be a happy outcome to this court case.

When prospective parents are pitched one against the other there is no way of winning unless one changes their mind.

To that end I would say that there are plenty of men who wish, at the time of a natural conception, that a child would not be born, but who later come to see that child as a blessing, even though there is no ongoing relationship with the mother.

Likewise, I suppose some may think it rather desperate that these women wish to raise the child of men they no longer love. Their feelings, however, are unquestionably very strong. The embryos exist. Presumably they were created with love and each one is a potential child.

I can understand why destroying their embryos must feel a little like the women are being forced to have an abortion against their wishes.

What concerns me about yesterday's judgment is that, having lost their case, the women were refused leave to appeal.

I too lost my first high court case. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, my opponents, challenged my right to appeal.

To paraphrase their reasons, they did so on the grounds that I would be better off abandoning a lost cause and not wasting more of my money. They also offered not to pursue their costs if I didn't appeal.

To me this seemed like a bribe. I'm sure they thought it generous. In the event the judge granted me leave to appeal and the HFEA were not awarded costs anyway. I later won my appeal.

I'm glad that I'm not the judge of this case. IVF shouldn't be embarked on lightly, but I can also sympathise with the men, if they created the embryos believing they could change their mind at any point before implantation.

The reason I offer my opinion is because for me the worst possible outcome for my court case would have been to have lost the leave to appeal. After one court case, with one judge, I felt my arguments had not been understood. The women can look to the appeal court itself to overrule the original judge's decision that there is no leave to appeal.

Not everyone can win, but everyone should at least come away from the judicial process feeling they've had their say.

· Diane Blood fought a long legal battle to win the right to have children using her dead husband's sperm. She now has two children: Liam, four, and Joel, one.