Note: I cannot link to this story where I found it because it is on a site you have to register at. I do encourage people to go there at http://www.newsroom.org/ and sign up.
[/quote]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand, 30 August 2000 (Newsroom) – Anglican and Catholic church leaders in Australia are
spearheading support for a proposed federal law that would deny single women and lesbians access to fertility treatment. The
churches want the availability of fertility treatment limited to married women.
[/quote]
So, what do we think of this morally? Would if fly in this country (USA)?
Edited for copyright infringement (Copyright 2000 Worldwide Newsroom Inc.). Hint: if a site requires you to register before they even let you see their articles, it should be a big blazing neon sign that they don’t want their content floating about freely. --Gaudere
Yer pal,
Satan
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This kind of thinking (reflected in a ban on lesbians receiving AI treatment) goes back to old, much discredited ideas about gays and lesbians; “They” are child molesters, psychologically disturbed, morally suspect, less than fully human and otherwise not the sort of person who should be raising a child. Certainly, some in this country (the Catholic and Mormon churches come to mind)would whole heartedly agree with the ban on unmarried and lesbian women’s AI treatments. Years ago, this was the policy of fertility clinics across this country as well.
Lesbian parents go through much difficulty, questioning and expense to become pregnant. All of their children are wanted and loved even before they are conceived. That love sustains lesbian families through the stigma and isolation they will face at times. Pychological research has repeatedly demonstrated that children of lesbian families are as healthy and well adjusted as other children, in large part I believe because of that love and committment
Another reason some might oppose lesbian AI is that it is a most basic and dramatic way that women say they do not need a man in their life for any reason. Men who are insecure in their self concept and masculinity are threatened by that independence.
What has bothered me over this whole brouhaha has been the conflation of artificial insemination with IVF. If you read the news reports, it seems like they are saying that every lesbian who opts for state funded fertility treatment is going to go the IVF path rather than low tech AI. In actual fact the number of lesbians needing IVF each year is tiny and a minute proportion of the budget.
Personally I am probably more comfortable with the idea of a lesbian couple having a child than I am with the idea of a single woman having a child alone deliberately. OTOH I think access to fertility treatment should be on basis of need, not on the basis of marital status.
I have a problem with AI or IVF being paid for by the government, period. This goes back to the argument over whether having a child is a right or a privilege/“luxury”, though. I’m in the luxury camp.
I think anyone - single heterosexual, married heterosexual, single homosexual, homosexual in a relationship - should not be disallowed to have a child. If you can figure out how to do it “naturally”, fine. If not, and you can afford it, go the AI or IVF way. Or, you could adopt. There should be no discrimination on who is allowed to have the procedure or who is allowed to adopt a child.
Why is the government paying for this for anyone, though? If you can’t afford to have it done, homosexual or heterosexual, maybe you shouldn’t have a child or you should adopt one. To me, it’s like having the government buy you a car if you can’t afford to buy one yourself. The Australian government should use the taxpayers’ money to pay for necessary medical procedures, not luxury ones. (Out of curiosity, would they pay for cosmetic surgery? I would disagree with that, too, if they did.)
This statement, though -
is just inflammatory. You can hardly compare an IVF child to a child who has been forcibly taken from their family & home. I wonder what the Aboriginal reaction was to that statement.
The PM John Howard is an “I wish it were the 1950s” conservative. He is a very skilled political operator and his response to the Victorian court decision - which was to give the states the power to ban lesbians and single women access to IVF - was made without consulting any state premiers and just happenned to be timed to coincide with the ALP’s (main opposition party) national policy conference. It is unlikely that this will become law given that the parties holding the balance of power in our Senate are opposed to it (although some parts of the ALP are uneasy).
George Pell is the newish Catholic archbishop of Melbourne. His appointment marked a substantial shift towards the conservative factions of the catholic church here and his interventions in this and other policy debates are widely seen as positioning the chuch towards a conservative successor to JPII.
The Sydney Archdiosis (sp?) of the Anglican church is involved in an emerging split with the rest of the church in Australia. This particular archbishop and those affiliated with him failed to attend the swearing-in (or wahtever they call it) of the nationwide head of the church due to the liberal theological line being taken by the rest of the church.
I have never heard of “The Australian Christian Democratic Party” although IIRC the former coalition MP Bradford left the government to join up with the Rev Fred Nile’s Festival of Light organisation, and they may have changed their name. They are/ were a conservative religious organisation with about 5% support in the state of New South Wales.
Actually, this whole thing has blown out of proportion. (and this is a bit of a hijack, I know, but I’d like to get the record straight)
What the issue really is (in the Australian context) is “who has the rights to legislate these issues?” The federal government decided that the states should have it because the Victorian Law (anti-lesbian and single) was challenged using a federal law (which overrides any conflicting state law). John Howard wanted to give Victoria (and every other state) the right to legislate against such treatment. For him (a Liberal - note, in Aust. this means ‘conservative’) this had the additional advantage of creating a split in the Labor Party opposition, which has a strong Catholic base.
Ironically, the new Victorian Premier has stated that he is all in favour of single women and lesbians having access to fertility treatment, so even if this law passes (which I doubt) chances are that Victoria will legislate in their favour anyway.
To me the issue is more one of consistancy. Either IVF is available for all women, or it’s available for no women. I’m in favour of the former, although I can appreciate that there are valid arguements each way - even if I disagree with some.
This technology is available, and to me that’s a good thing. I’d say that it should be available to everyone who wants it (subject to the normal ethics committee, of course). To decide that one set of people as a group should not be allowed access based purely on the fact that they are a member of that group is descrimination. Of course, if individual women are ruled unsuitable for treatment (due to age, health, history of child abuse, etc) then I’ve got no problems with that in principle.
The argument that public money should not be used to treat single women and lesbians but that it can be used for women in continuous heterosexual relationships is a pretty poor one.
Those excluded women are part of the public and make their contribution along with everybody else.
C3’s point that if you cannot afford the treatment you cannot afford to raise the offspring is interesting and there has much validity.
Potential parents are screened but if financial considerations were to be part of that then we would have a situation where the state (if it were state funded)was discriminating against some of its citizens on cost grounds when it should treat all equally. I can see the point that the state would end up picking up the tab if parents were too poor to raise the child but that happens anyway the only differance being that IVF is not involved.
The best way is for the state to stay out of it altogether.
Here in the UK we have regional health authorities who decides for themselves their budgetry priorities which means that some will fund IVF for a certain number of attempts some will not fund it at all.This is part of a larger issue wereby certain treatments, usually using new and very expensive drugs, are available in some area but denied in others - so called postcode prescription.
When you consider that over 60% of all children raised in state care end up in jail at some point and that they form around 25% of the jail population you would think that there would be some greater scope for improving the labyrinthine adoption prcedures in the the UK rather than arguing about access to IVF treatment.
I’m fairly dismissive of any attempts by the religious to control human fertility , it is the ultimate control and delves into the most intimate area of human relationships, they gave themselves the right to interfere. They should go and jump off a steeple, a very tall one.
What validity? If you can’t afford to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to conceive a child then you can’t afford a child? I don’t think so - I could not possibly dream of funding IVF but I can easily afford the kids I do have. If I had mortgaged the house to conceive, then my kids would certainly be suffering financially now.
After thinking about this all night I have a few questions.
Ya’ll have national health care, correct?
With a national health system money spent in one place is not available to be spent elsewhere, correct?
And the biggie, Are these women infertile with out IVF?
I get the impression that these women don’t have a fertility problem, but instead prefer to use IVF. If this is true I would have a big problem with this. It seems to me that you are spending $1000s of dollars to fix something that isn’t broken. If they don’t like men why don’t they use a Dixie cup and a turkey baster.
I’ve no idea how much IVF treatment costs in the US but in the UK I do not think is is in the order of tens of thousand of dollars(or the UK equivalent)
Even so, if thousands of £/$ have to be spent to maintain the right of one small group of people to have treatment for a non-life threatening condition when at the same time others are denied life saving drugs, especially in the cancer field, or will keep someone out of a wheelchair, as in MS, then it seems to me that IVF is not the greatest need.
Labdude
Maybe you are mistaking IVF with AI.The latter is a much simpler and cheaper procedure, indeed it should be quite possible to find the means from ones own pocket.
With IVF it is not necessarily the woman who has any problem, there is every liklihood that it is the man.
One question to which I have no answer is, do the children of low fertility couples go on to be low fertility themselves ? If that is so then we are only storing up future problems.Please do not go into Eugenics as this is an entirely separate issue.
Primaflora
Whatever you to spend on IVF would be your choice and your lifestyle, as a result of that choice, would be something you would have to take into account.
Why do you think I personally would be sanguine about paying for your treatment when the possibility exists that myself or my relatives might be denied other possibly life-saving treatment because the money has been spent to make a childless couple happy, especially when there is plenty of scope for adoption ?
Sure it would be nice if resources were limitless.
I don’t believe that they are infertile, just partnerless (or male-partnerless). I also think that the terms AI and IVF have become intertwined.
Maybe IVF has a better success rate and so women who want kids are willing to fork out more for it(? - anyone who knows the stats).
Besides, even if they are fertile, how does that necessarily help?? What do they do, walk into a pub and say “guys, it’s for free!” and not know what they’re getting? (not just in terms of genetics, there’s STDs and so forth to consider).
I suppose that they could ask a male friend, but if one of my female friends asked me to impregnate her, I would probably run a kilometre – OK, so in the short term I get a root. in the long term I get a kid. Even if she says ‘no committment’, what does that mean?? so maybe I don’t have to pay for it’s upkeep, but there comes a time in every childs life that they want to know their dad. If I’m in another partnership at that point, would I want some sprog of mine turning up to complicate things?? I think not.
And with lesbians… well, (for the hetrosexual men reading) if a man held hostage something you wanted badly, the ransom of which was that you had to let him have sex with you, would you agree?? Shit no.
Why should lesbians have to go against their sexuality for something that is pretty much their right?
I agree that it can be a problem when a child wants to know both his/her genetic parents (as they have a right to), however I would say that this is more of a social problem than a ‘natural’ one. There are some societies who don’t really have individual parents - the members of society as a whole look after all the children as their own. At the very least, we should abandon the convential notion of ‘parents’, or change the term to mean ‘guardians’ so that kids are able to accept their lot, without feeling inferior due to difference.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by big_yellow_kingswood *
**
Can’t give you stats but IVF has far lower success rates than AI. AI is used in circumstances where the man is infertile or the woman is partnerless. IVF is a hugely intrusive painful process than nobody in their right mind would opt for over AI. The take home baby rate is much lower. IVF is used where the woman’s fertility is compromised. No ethical practitioner would perform IVF on a woman unless she needed the procedure as it involves risks like super fecundation and ovary over stimulation which can kill. It also doesn’t work as well as AI even when the woman has normal fertility.
IMO the media have conflated AI and IVF in a way which is wrong. Most of the articles I have seen imply that there are hundreds of lesbians insisting on an expensive intrusive procedure. I think there are a few lesbian couples who need IVF who are fighting for it but the majority will opt for AI.
yeah, that’s what I meant. I know the difference between the procedures, but if you ask most people in the street, my guess is that heaps of them would have no idea. People quite often say ‘IVF’ when they really mean ‘AI’.