Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 338 - 339)

WEDNESDAY 30 JUNE 2004

MS LISA SAFFRON, MS MARIA HURLEY AND MS BARBARA SALTER

  Chairman: Maria, Barbara, Lisa, thank you very much for coming. I am sure you have struggled to get here through the transport system, but you have made it by the skin of your teeth. Thank you very much for coming. You missed the earlier sessions. What we are doing is looking at the whole business of human reproduction and we are trying to take as wide a sample of evidence as possible; frank, open, honest, recorded. We hope out of it all we are going to get better policies in this country, if not as an example across the world. Thank you for coming.

  Q338  Geraldine Smith: Does anybody have the right to have a child?

  Ms Saffron: We are not talking about the right to have a child, because that is up to biology. The issue is about the right to access to services. Lesbians are not second-class citizens. We have the same right as anyone else to come to a clinic and ask for the services which are available. We do not have a different right from anyone else because we are lesbian.

  Q339  Geraldine Smith: I am sorry, I am not just talking specifically about lesbians, I am talking about older women, perhaps various circumstances. I am asking generally whether you think anyone should have the right to that assistance to try to conceive a child regardless of the circumstances or whether the welfare of the child which may be conceived should be considered.

  Ms Saffron: Yes, I think the welfare of the child should be considered. That is a primary consideration. I do not see that as happening in any of the fertility services. They are not considering the welfare of the child; the welfare of the child is the last thing they consider. If they were going to consider that then they would assess every single applicant on their individual merits, whether they were fit to be parents. That is not what they do. My partner and I have been through the fostering assessment which took a year. We were thoroughly assessed for our capability to parent and at the end of that we were approved. We did not think we had the right to foster children, but that we had the right to be assessed like anyone else. At the end of that year, they did find that we were competent to be foster carers. That is not what fertility clinics do. They do not ask anything about people's capability to parent.


 
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