IVF and the single woman
(cz) Last week a high-level parliamentary group urged sweeping changes to fertility laws which would result in children born from donated sperm or eggs having the information marked on their birth certificates. The losers from such legislation are likely to be single women who wish to have children without involving a biological father in the upbringing.
The very existence of such a group of women might send a shiver down the spines of politicians and moral guardians, but, for the sake of an argument, let us suppose that such women exist. Who might they be? They might, for example, be women who have just been unlucky in their relationships and have not met the right partner at the right time. Or they might have had a relationship which ended as their fertility was beginning to decline.
For such women, the idea of looking anxiously both for love and sex and for someone to father a child, more or less all at the same time, is understandably a daunting task. Having access to IVF gives this possibility to women who have the desire to be mothers and who feel themselves to possess all the skills to be excellent mothers and who also have carefully planned financial arrangements.
But the requirement that a child’s IVF origins be stated on a birth certificate will surely add a further level of difficulty for those who might embark on such a course. Such is the overwhelming approval for couples (homosexual as well as heterosexual) that lone parenthood is now considered the least desirable option. It is equated with family failure, and with damaging the possibilities of success in life for the child.
Any single woman who considers such an option risks been seen as almost insane or, at the very least, deeply selfish, and putting her own interests before that of the child. more…
From: »The Guardian« (comment)