Right of Reply: Nuala Scarisbrook

A trustee of the LIFE pressure group argues against the freezing of fertilised human eggs

THE 32-YEAR-OLD city banker whose career appears to be more important to her than having a family now - at the optimum age - has been praised by feminists for her plan to have a child manufactured by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and then frozen for eight years until she is "ready" to raise him or her. We are told that this latest step in designer family planning is going to liberate women.

The facts are less rosy. Most embryonic children do not survive the freezing process. There are unanswered worries about the effect of freezing on the few survivors. IVF itself has a low success rate, at best 20 per cent. There are research studies showing that IVF can damage women's health. So the likelihood of a "take-home baby" - to use suitable marketing jargon - is slim. This woman could well end up with no family.

A true feminist would not risk her own and her child's health, but would have her family at this optimum age and revel in the joy of loving and caring for her children. She should campaign to be able to return to work when her children are at school.

Feminists should not accept the timetable of the macho market and banking world, as this woman is planning to do, where career-paths and financial rewards are rated more highly than the unique joy of caring for your children.

Above all, we must always remember that children are not products, to be manufactured and stored until busy adults can spare time for them. The human embryo is truly an embryonic person. This latest addition to the ugly catalogue of manipulating and trivialising human life which Warnock and then the IVF pioneers unleashed is not something of which a civilised society should be proud.