SINGLE women’s access to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) hinged last week on whether political parties decide to give MPs a conscience vote on the issue.
The Federal Government was still considering a conscience vote on the issue early last week, although Prime Minister John Howard had left the door open to the possibility.
A flurry of political and medical activity has followed the High Court’s April 18 rejection of the Australian bishops’ challenge to the right of a single woman to have a child by IVF.
On September 6 last year the High Court reserved its decision in a challenge to a Federal Court decision, which had allowed single women to use IVF services.
Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference research officer Dr Warwick Neville said the bishops’ challenge, supported by the federal Attorney-General, had been dismissed on procedural grounds alone.
Leesa Meldrum, 40, the Melbourne Catholic woman whose application for IVF treatment sparked the long legal battle could now go ahead and seek IVF.
In Brisbane, Family Council of Queensland president Alan Baker said ‘the demands of single women and lesbians for access to IVF was a situation where a minority was using judge-made law to introduce even more fatherless children into society’.
