Sofia Vergara finally wins battle with ex over embryos

In what has been a battle drawn out over a period of years, it concerns two embryos the former couple froze together some years ago when they were considering starting a family in 2013. Loeb weirdly wanted to go ahead and find a surrogate to carry the embryos, despite his and Vergara’s split.

When Vergara underwent the procedure to prepare the fertilised embryos, she and Loeb signed legal documents that stated the embryos could only be brought to term with both parties consent and obviously, she did not consent to her ex doing this.

Now, thankfully – because it’s more than a little important that the woman who had eggs plucked from her body gets at least some sort of say on what happens to them – a judge has granted Vergara a permanent injunction, “[banning] Loeb from bringing the embryos to term,” without Vergara’s consent.

The former couple ended their engagement in May 2014 after having undergone in vitro fertilization together the year prior. The Modern Family actress, who has an adult son named Manolo, later married Joe Manganiello in November 2015.

In 2016, Loeb filed a lawsuit on behalf of the embryos claiming that the embryos, named in the suit as Emma and Isabella, had been cheated out of their trust inheritance by not being born. As it turns out, the trust, Page Six reports, is now being ruled a breach of contract between Vergara and Loeb.

Then, in 2017, Vergara filed legal documents in California to block Loeb from being able to use, without her written consent, the frozen pre-embryos they created via IVF when they were still together in 2013.

This week, a court agreed to grant the 48-year-old actress a permanent injunction that would stop her former partner from being able to use the fertilised eggs to “create a child without the explicit written permission of the other person.”

Loeb accused the judge of being “influenced by Hollywood” when making the ruling.

The judge also found there was no “material fact” supporting his previous claim that he and Vergara had an “oral agreement” that would allow him to implant the embryos in a surrogate to be born.

As well as the dispute in California, Loeb had also attempted to gain custody of the embryos in Louisiana, having created said trust in the state to give the embryos legal status.

However, in January, the court sided with Vergara and dismissed the lawsuit seeking to obtain custody of the pre-embryos.

“A woman is entitled to bring a pregnancy to term even if the man objects,” he wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times, saying he should be allowed to do the same.

Loeb’s argument is that these embryos should not be defined as property but as life. He also said that he isn’t looking for Sofia’s involvement in her biological children’s lives should a surrogate pregnancy prove a success, saying, “Shouldn’t a man who is willing to take on all parental responsibilities be similarly entitled to bring his embryos to term even if the woman objects?”

Short answer, in this case, is a literal no f**king way.