Official: dads not needed for IVF babies

Fertility clinics are to be told to provide IVF treatment to all women, even when they do not have a male partner, under radical reforms backed by MPs.

A powerful coalition of MPs from all parties will call tomorrow for the scrapping of a legal requirement that clinics consider "the need for a father" when assessing whether to offer IVF.

MPs will publicly demand a change to the law which they say discriminates against single women and lesbians. Government sources indicated yesterday they will look again at the legal requirement, introduced under the last Tory government, which says a child's "need for a father" must be considered when women apply for IVF.

The change in the law, to be discussed on the floor of the House of Commons, is backed by expert bodies including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Association of Social Workers, which want the child's need for a father to be replaced by "the need for a family".

Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs will tomorrow argue that the requirement is archaic and contradicts changes in the law that allow gay couples to adopt. Dr Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, said the 1990 provision was intended to restrict provision of IVF to lesbians and single women. "There is no good reason for this requirement and it must go," he said. "It gives clinics the licence to discriminate and therefore it enables them to pick and choose who they want to treat. But it is also demeaning for patients. If you are a fertile women and don't have to go through IVF, then you don't have to go through this test. There is no reason to discriminate against lesbians and solo women."

He said there was no evidence children brought up by single women or lesbians fared worse than those raised by heterosexual couples.

Angela Eagle, a former Labour minister, said yesterday that the law was out of step with society's views on modern parenting.

"It's clear that in coming to any kind of decision about IVF, clinics have to look at many issues, but I don't think it is at all clear that should be based on the assumption of whether there is a man around," she said. "Plenty of children are brought up by women on their own."

The debate follows a report by the Commons science and technology committee, which said the clause requiring a father was "unjustifiably offensive to many".

The Tories, who introduced the law in 1990, have indicated they will not actively block a change. Frontbench MPs believe the climate has changed after laws were introduced allowing gay couples to adopt and "marry" in civil partnership ceremonies.

This paper revealed in March that some clinics were changing their policies to offer NHS-funded fertility treatment to single women in their 30s and 40s as well as to gay couples. This was partly in response to the huge demand from childless but financially secure would-be mothers as well as to warnings from legal experts that hospitals face potential court cases under rights laws if they deny single women their chance of motherhood.

However, hospitals are under no obligation to provide automatic free treatment to single women, who are not covered under the current guidelines set by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), although Nice does state that anyone who meets the clinical criteria should be eligible for treatment.

A study carried out by the Family and Child Psychology Research Centre at City University in London found that go-it-alone mothers coped just as well as women who are supported by a husband or boyfriend.

Dr Gillian Lockwood, a fertility expert and chair of the British Fertility Society's ethics sub-committee, said that babies may need fathers biologically, but she doubted whether there was always a sociological need for them.

"Half of all babies conceived naturally are born by accident anyway and one in four babies go home from the maternity ward without a father," said Dr Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility Services.

"Women who decide to have donor insemination have thought long and hard about how they will give their child the best possible care and love, and research shows their quality of parenting is superb."