Two pieces followed one-another on the radio this morning:
MPs voted last night to remove the clause that required IVF clinics to consider the need for a child to have a father and a mother – essentially opening the way for women to have the treatment without any father-figure being present in the prospective child’s life.
And a recent report has found that, despite record investment, youth crime has continued to rise. “The government’s record on youth crime and tackling the multiple needs of children caught up in the youth justice system is less impressive than many would have expected.”
And no one suggested there might be a connection.
I am depressed.
Comments
4 responses to ““Money Having No Impact on Youth Crime” | “MPs Reject Need For Father in IVF””
The prohibition would have restricted lesbian parents from pursuing IVF as a means of conception.
All social science research has shown that children raised by two same-sex parents are as well-adjusted as those raised by opposite-sex parents. Some studies have even suggested that those raised by two mothers are slightly more well-adjusted on average.
This is a very tricky one, but my personal feeling is that, while supporting lesbians’ rights to loving relationship, that relationship cannot naturally lead to conception. Our relational choices always bring an element of pain and restriction to them, and I think it’s right we live with that. Children are born when a man and woman conceive, and while it is possible for science to get round that, I don’t think science should do more than aid the natural biological process.
I haven’t read the material on same-sex parenting, though I’m sure we can all agree that some gay couples will be brilliant parents (adoptive or otherwise) and some straight parents will be awful. However, I do think that any child brought into the world deserves a proper and full relationship with their biological parents, and I feel that the removal of the need to even ‘consider’ the father in IVF – and the legislation was always about clinics making a considered judgement – is going to be detrimental.
Same poster as before.
The implication of your post was that children conceived by lesbians, without a father, are more likely to be involved in youth crime. That is simply false.
I have to be honest, as person who was adopted (by an opposite-gender couple, fwiw) I find this to be offensive. Biology is not destiny, and saying that all children need to be with their biological parents seems to me to be quite inconsistent with the Christian tradition (in Christ we’re adopted as full children of God, etc.) The implications of what you seem to be arguing for would exclude not only adoption but also IVF of any sort for infertile couples. That seems to be an extreme position, at least for a Protestant.
The implication was that if we continue to talk about rights to have children, rather than the careful responsibility of parenting, then we are going to pay the consequences. No offense was meant. I am quite sure that some gay couples make superb adoptive parents.
Biology may not be destiny, but it certainly begins whatever road we are on, and I strongly feel that denying a child relationship with the person who is half of their DNA is not right. The simple fact of biology is that lesbian / gay couples can’t have children. I am sure that in the future science will work out how it is done, but I don’t feel that is appropriate intervention. As for infertile couples having IVF – and by that I assume you mean using donor sperm/egg – then I’d have to think carefully about the same conclusions…. However, I still think there is an additional issue of fatherhood / motherhood being dual aspects that need to be in balance. Men and women are different, and the ideal is that they compliment one another in raising their children. That ideal is not always available: someone close to me got pregnant very young and her boyfriend was killed in an accident before the baby was born. 11 years later, that child is a wonderful person, but I don’t think as a single mum my friend would say that it’s been ideal. These are horribly complex issues, as they deal with our cores as people; I don’t think its the government’s place to legislate in every area, but rather to try to create the conditions in which people make the best judgements, and in this case I think they’ve stopped clinics being able to do that.