Westminster debate on the need for a father

Last night's Progress Educational Trust debate at Westminster on whether the "need for a father" should continue to be part of the considerations used by fertility doctors when deciding whether to treat patients proved to be an interesting evening.

The debate was chaired by Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford and a member of the HFEA, and the first speaker was Ruth Deech, who chaired the HFEA for many years and now sits in the House of Lords. She argued that the "need for a father" was an ethical principle of equality of the sexes, that removing it would send out a bad message and would not have public support.

She was followed by Fiona MacCallum, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Warwick University, who has researched the effects of being raised without a father on children of lesbian and single mothers. She explained that although research showed that losing a once-present father through divorce caused problems for children, all the evidence suggests that children of women who have chosen to have a child alone, or with a lesbian partner, suffer no ill-effects whatsoever, and that in fact the quality of parenting in such circumstances was often better than average.

Finally Natalie Gamble, a lawyer who specialises in fertility law, explained that the law as it stands is clearly discriminatory. She said fertility doctors refusing to treat lesbian couples could face legal action, as it is against the law for those offering any goods or services to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. She said the current law has been meaningless in practice for some years, and that not removing the line about the "need for a father" would be both confusing and contradictory.

There were many questions and much discussion after the speeches, and the issue is due to be debated by the Lords sometime next week. It is possible that some kind of compromise wording may be offered instead of the "need for a father", such as the "need for supportive parenting", but that could end up leaving everyone dissatisfied. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

The "need for a father"

There's been a lot of debate about the "need for a father", which fertility specialists have in the past had to take into account when they're considering whether to treat single women or lesbian couples. The latest legislation on IVF is being discussed in the House of Lords today, and there's controversy about removing the requirement to make sure a father is involved in the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The leader of the Roman Catholic church has said it would be "profoundly wrong" to change the rules about the need for a father, but the reality is that around a quarter of children in the UK are currently brought up in single parent families. These one-parent families are not the result of fertility treatment, but of the disintegration of the traditional family unit.

When I was writing my book, The Complete Guide to Female Fertility , I interviewed dozens of single women who'd decided to have fertility treatment. Their awareness of their biological clocks, and the fact that they hadn't met the right partner in time, meant a stark choice between having a child alone, or not having one at all. None of them had gone into this lightly, and they had spent far more time thinking through the consequences for their children and working out how they would cope financially and emotionally than most of those who get pregnant naturally. Having a child without a partner may not be ideal, but it is a reality of life we cannot ignore.