A woman who had her ovaries removed to head off cancer vowed today to fight on for the chance to use her frozen embryos despite losing a landmark ruling at the European Court of Human Rights.

Natallie Evans, 35, from Wiltshire, also made an emotional plea to her former fiancé to change his mind and let her use the embryos, which cannot be implanted without his consent.

Ms Evans was receiving fertility treatment in October 2001 when doctors discovered pre-cancerous cells on her ovaries. She immediately underwent a course of IVF, which produced six embryos fertilised by the sperm of her fiancé, Howard Johnston, before having her ovaries removed to head off the disease.

The next year, however, the couple split and Mr Johnston wrote to the fertility clinic asking it to destroy the stored embryos.

Ms Evans tried to win permission to go ahead anyway, but both the High Court and the Court of Appeal rejected her legal challenge, pointing out that the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act governing IVF treatment stipulates that consent from both man and woman is vital at every stage of the process.

The embryos were ordered to be destroyed, and the clinic holding them informed Ms Evans that the date had been set as February 23 last year. But, with less than 24 hours to go, the European Court of Human Rights stepped in and requested the British Government to halt the destruction while a last legal plea was heard.

In its ruling today, the Strasbourg court, which polices the European Convention on Human Rights, rejected all three grounds to Ms Evans's challenge - ruling that the embryos in question did not enjoy any right to life, that there had been no violation of her "right to family life" and that there had been no discrimination in her treatment.

But, crucially, two of the seven judges who heard the case last September, dissented from the judgment, arguing that the "bright line" nature of the UK Act, which spells out the need for consent from both partners right until the implantation of the ovaries, did not properly balance the rights of the individual with the need for clear public policy.

In their dissenting opinion appended to the ruling, the two also argued that UK authorities should have done more to safeguard the rights of Ms Evans to have a child.

Although that opinion carries no more than moral weight, the Court effectively invited Ms Evans to appeal to the Court's Grand Chamber, where her final appeal would be heard by 17 judges.

At a press conference in London today, Ms Evans said she had been buoyed by the dissenting judges and confirmed that would make one more appeal. She faces a race against time, however, because the embryos held at a clinic in Bath will be destroyed in October under a five-year storage limit. If the embryos are destroyed, it would end her chance of having a baby naturally.

Ms Evans also said she would prefer not to take the legal route and appealed one more time to Mr Johnston - who has consistently argued that he does not want the emotional and legal burden of a child with his former partner - to allow her to use the embryos.

She said: "I would still prefer not to have to use the courts. Howard may feel it is too late for him to change his mind but it is not. Howard, please think about it."

In a separate press conference at the offices of his solicitors in Cheltenham, Mr Johnston spoke publicly for the first time about the case.

"It seems that commonsense has prevailed," he said. "It was something that we embarked on together, to have a child, and unfortunately that can’t happen because we are no longer together. That really is where it ends."

Ms Evans’s lawyers had argued in the Strasbourg court that the 1990 Act governing IVF treatment was a breach of the European Convention which guarantees the "right to family life"

Her right to family life had been violated because the Act would not allow her to use the embryos without the consent of her partner at every stage of the process, the judges were told.

But in their majority ruling, the judges said that the Act included a "clear and principled" rule, which was explained to those embarking on IVF treatment and which was clearly set out on the forms they both signed.

Ms Evans said today that although she had signed the forms before the IVF treatment, she had not - after just hearing of the risk of cancer - "read the small print".

"Of course, I'm not saying that he hasn’t got rights but he knew what he was going into when we entered into this IVF," she said of her former partner. "I never will be able to accept that that he can choose when to become a father or not. He chose to become a father the day that he created the embryos."

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