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.
| 
