Group Wants Father Figure Requirement Removed from Fertility Treatment in UK
In Great Britain, clinics that perform in vitro fertilization are required by law to consider the “need of the child for a father” before allowing women to undergo the procedure. The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority recently argued that this requirement is “nonsense” and is proposing to have that provision removed from the law.
Suzi Leather, chairwoman of the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, said in a speech,
It is absolutely clear if you think about the changes in society and the different ways that families can be constituted that it is anachronistic for the law to include the statement about a child’s need for a father.
It seems to me a bit of nonsense to have that still in the legislation.
The requirement does not appear to prevent single women or lesbians from obtaining IVF. Clinics simply list an alternative father figure such as an uncle or grandfather to comply with the law.
Matthew Mudge, chairman of Families Need Fathers, took issue with the proposal, telling IC Wales,
The whole proposal is sick - there are enough fatherless children around, why should another generation not have fathers?
All the statistics show that tearaway youngsters, generally speaking, come from single parent homes which lack the guiding hand of a father figure, or what I like to call, a benign dictatorship.
The father is generally regarded as the disciplinarian in the nuclear family who teaches the children self-discipline and respect for others.
As a Christian and as a father I find the whole idea repugnant.
The BBC reports that the HFEA is planning a “major review” of this and other requirements that were included as part of Great Britain’s 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act.
Sources:
IVF ‘father figure’ law attacked. The BBC, January 21, 2004.
Fury over call to end IVF father ‘nonsense’. Madeleine Brindley, The Western Mail, January 22, 2004.
The Group Wants Father Figure Requirement Removed from Fertility Treatment in UK by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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