To recap: Nick Loeb sued his ex-fiancee Sofia Vergara over the embryos they created while together. He wanted a baby and Sofia gave up some of her eggs, and they even implants some embryos into a 44-year-old gestational carrier a few times although the implantation didn’t “take.” There are still some girl-embryos left and Nick wants custody of them so that he can implant them in another woman and presumably raise those daughters himself. At first, all of the legal shenanigans and press coverage was done as John and Jane Doe, and with unnamed sources throwing massive amounts of shade. Then over the weekend, Sofia’s lawyer came out and confirmed what we already knew, that Nick was suing Sofia over her alleged desire to destroy the embryos. Sofia’s lawyer said Sofia does not want to destroy them… or implant them. She’s fine with just keeping them frozen indefinitely. Now Nick is speaking directly to the media.

Nick Loeb is speaking out about the lawsuit he filed over his frozen embryos created with then-fianceé Sofia Vergara in 2013. The businessman’s lawyer, Abram Moore, said in a statement to PEOPLE Monday that Loeb “has made every effort to arrive at a private resolution” with the Modern Family star, but was “forced” to file a lawsuit when they couldn’t come to an agreement.

Loeb claims that Vergara, 42, who is now engaged to Joe Manganiello, wants to destroy the two female embryos they created – a charge that Vergara has strenuously denied. In his statement, Loeb, 39 – who wants “to bring his daughters to term” – said that he wasn’t seeking to hold Vergara to “any parental or financial responsibilities or obligations” and would “give her the opportunity to be involved with the child in the future, should she change her mind.”

“I have always strongly believed that life begins at fertilization and that every embryo is a life on a journey towards birth,” Loeb said. “I created these two female embryos with the purpose of taking them to term and not destruction, because I have always dreamed of being a father. I take the responsibility and obligation of being a parent very seriously. Creating an embryo in the natural way can lead to parenthood obligations, even where a man doesn’t want to become a father. Where a man does want to become a father, and wants to impose no obligations on the other party, he should have that corresponding right. However life comes to be created, it should have no determination on either the rights of wanting to be or the requirements of having to be a parent.”

[From People]

Sigh…I think it’s tacky to fight this out in the press, and it feels like Nick has ulterior (political) motives, like he’s trying to get the anti-choice crowd to take up his cause. If this really is decided by a court somewhere, it will be interesting to see what case law is used and what case law is made for this kind of situation. I think Sofia is smart to take the position of “don’t destroy the embryos but don’t implant them either.” That way Nick can’t say the embryos are in any “danger.” And seriously, if he wants to be a father so badly, why doesn’t he move on, date a lady and get her knocked up the old-fashioned way?

Photos courtesy of WENN.