Lesbian babies
Nov. 19th, 2007 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleThere seem to be two issues being conflated in debates over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. One is to remove the requirement that for IVF clinics to consider "the need of that child for a father" before offering treatment, the other is to allow same-sex couples to both be named on the birth certificate of the child.
Now, I think the first change is more of a token move than one that will really affect anything. Clinics currently only have to 'consider' the need for a father and currently many lesbian couples and single women have IVF treatment. I suppose the big difference is that clinics that didn't like treating lesbians might now be caught under anti-discrimination legislation if they always decide not to treat lesbians because they don't think it would be in the interests of the children produced.
The quote that I keep hearing about the second issue is that it would be 'tantamount to the government perpetrating a deception'. The problem is, under the current law birth certificates do this all the time. For a start, there are many babies born each year whose paternity is different to that assumed by their mothers partner and possibly their mother herself. I think I remember hearing that this is so common that hospitals get a bit cagey about telling children's fathers the child's blood type in case it reveals this. Putting that to one side (I don't think many people would advocate mandatory paternity tests for the birth certificate) under the current law, a man whose partner conceives through donor insemination because he is infertile is allowed to be named as the father on a birth certificate, even if there is no chance that he could be a biological parent. The gender recognition act extended this to transmen. The issue isn't that this act is allowing the state to perpetrate a deception that it couldn't perpetrate before, it is that it's pushed the deception to a point when anyone with a primary school level of understanding of reproduction can instantly detect it.
I think to understand this issue we need to have a proper grown up discussion about what birth certificates are for. I can see two extremes:
1) the birth certificate contains purely factual biological information as best known at the time of the registration. The main point of the listing of parents is to prevent biological relatives from accidentally breeding and to help the child gain information about their genetic inheritance.
2) the birth certificate reflects the social position of the child. Under this understanding it may even be reasonable to amend who the parents on the birth certificate are if one parent moves out of a child's life early on and another person becomes the main social parent.
At the moment I think the law is steering somewhere between these extremes in a fudge. Maybe we should decide which model we would prefer things to be like and what the point of birth certificates are.
Now, I think the first change is more of a token move than one that will really affect anything. Clinics currently only have to 'consider' the need for a father and currently many lesbian couples and single women have IVF treatment. I suppose the big difference is that clinics that didn't like treating lesbians might now be caught under anti-discrimination legislation if they always decide not to treat lesbians because they don't think it would be in the interests of the children produced.
The quote that I keep hearing about the second issue is that it would be 'tantamount to the government perpetrating a deception'. The problem is, under the current law birth certificates do this all the time. For a start, there are many babies born each year whose paternity is different to that assumed by their mothers partner and possibly their mother herself. I think I remember hearing that this is so common that hospitals get a bit cagey about telling children's fathers the child's blood type in case it reveals this. Putting that to one side (I don't think many people would advocate mandatory paternity tests for the birth certificate) under the current law, a man whose partner conceives through donor insemination because he is infertile is allowed to be named as the father on a birth certificate, even if there is no chance that he could be a biological parent. The gender recognition act extended this to transmen. The issue isn't that this act is allowing the state to perpetrate a deception that it couldn't perpetrate before, it is that it's pushed the deception to a point when anyone with a primary school level of understanding of reproduction can instantly detect it.
I think to understand this issue we need to have a proper grown up discussion about what birth certificates are for. I can see two extremes:
1) the birth certificate contains purely factual biological information as best known at the time of the registration. The main point of the listing of parents is to prevent biological relatives from accidentally breeding and to help the child gain information about their genetic inheritance.
2) the birth certificate reflects the social position of the child. Under this understanding it may even be reasonable to amend who the parents on the birth certificate are if one parent moves out of a child's life early on and another person becomes the main social parent.
At the moment I think the law is steering somewhere between these extremes in a fudge. Maybe we should decide which model we would prefer things to be like and what the point of birth certificates are.