IS the NHS so awash with cash that it can afford to offer free IVF treatment to same sex couples?
Louise Allonby
The government announced this week that new guidelines will give homosexual and lesbian couples the same rights as heterosexual couples when it comes to infertility treatment. At the same time, the upper age limit for fertility treatment is to be increased by three years to 42.
The latter suggestion seems reasonable – after all, many women conceive naturally after the age of 40, so why shouldn’t those who can’t do so have access to help? (Universal access as of right is another matter, of course).
But the guidance on homosexual IVF treatment from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) seems to be little more than a misguided exercise in social engineering.
It is hard to see how a stretched NHS should be expected to foot the bill for the lifestyle choices of thousands of gay and lesbian couples who decide they want to have children.
As a critic of the plans, Josephine Quintavalle of the Comment on Reproductive Ethics campaign group, pointed out this week, whilst infertility treatment is important, offering it to same-sex couples strays into the territory of trying to rewrite biology.
It is difficult to argue against that viewpoint. Two males or two females cannot biologically reproduce. Fact. Surely the lifestyle choice to be in a same sex relationship should involve acceptance of the fact that this will bring limitations: the main one being that no offspring will naturally result from the relationship.
For surrogacy service
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