Would you let parents destroy ‘gay’ embryos?

Because I’d like to have a child, and I’m getting on a bit, my husband and I have spent time recently with consultants. They’re an odd breed with distinct and shared characteristics. Invariably, after we’ve all sat down, their first move is to tilt their chair back, or give it a little twirl (design permitting), just to signal how free and easy it is at the top of the medical tree. When they speak it’s with a sort of hurried condescension, as if giving career advice to a hopeless niece. And they scribble as they go, on some scrap of paper. Ovary, ovary, arrow, hieroglyph, arrow, ‘Got that? Hmmm?’ Follicle, scribble, circle, square.

It would be easy to sink into a happy torpor if it weren’t for the odd direct question, lobbed like an existential grenade into the room. ‘There is of course the risk of complications. Cretinism and so forth.