Letters | 5 April 2008

A child’s needs

Sir: I doubt the suggestion in your leading article (29 March) that clause 14(2)(b) of the government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is a moral disgrace.

The Bill breaks new ground in allowing two people of the same sex to be registered as the sole parents of a baby born through IVF. With female joint parents this raised the question of what was to be done about the provision in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 which requires that a woman shall not be provided with IVF treatment unless account is taken of the welfare of any resulting child. A parenthesis adds ‘(including the need of that child for a father)’. But this ‘need’ can scarcely be met when two women are the sole registered parents or a single IVF mother has no relationship with the child’s biological father.

The government’s first answer to this problem was simply to repeal the now inappropriate parenthesis, but a storm ensued.