It is a heartbreaking ruling. Natallie Evans can never now have a baby. Her children already exist, in embryo, but she cannot give birth to them without their father's consent, and has exhausted all legal appeal. Her progeny must be destroyed and her body can make no more. This raises numerous questions, the most obvious of which is what skin off his nose would it be for her ex, Howard Johnson, to be generous and relinquish his claims. The lawyers may not be able to give her her children, but he could; and he wouldn't need to lift a finger. Or indeed anything else. But this is a conundrum the rest of us can't solve. Our responsibility is to address other issues. Such as why we give a father no right whatsoever to protect the life of his unborn child (from abortion) but every right to end it (in vitro). Or why we demand more consent than Nature herself: he gave consent enough when the eggs were fertilised, which is all that is traditionally granted a man. Perhaps we should go further back. Something is seriously askew. Lone parenthood is up by three times, in as many decades. Both reformers and conservatives bemoan this. As Polly Toynbee said on this programme yesterday, Almost everybody thinks that the best possible thing is to have two loving parents. While her opponent, David Green, explained, If you take more or less any measure - turning to crime, how well children do in school, whether they commit suicide et cetera - it's better to have two parents. We have more evidence than ever before that children need both mother and father. We also know they're far better off, generally speaking, if those parents are married (for one thing, they're over five times more likely to stay together). And yet marriage has never been less fashionable, nor so many born outside it. Throughout history children have been treated as possessions not people, and this is as true today as ever. The government has just passed a bill which it knows will risk the closure of those adoption agencies that serve the most vulnerable children. Why? To make a political point. However worthy it may be to promote adults' equal rights, it is surely not worth paying for them with children's unequal needs. In May, that same government will propose dropping the requirement to meet the child's need for a father in the provision of IVF. Again, why? To give single women their right to have children too. Let us dream, for a moment, of a world where children were not a right but a privilege; where governments protected the vulnerable not the vote; where we dared insist, before offering aided conception, on the commitment of two parents, both to the child and to each other. We could even give that commitment legal status. And call it - what? - 'marriage'?
2 comments:
If life has been created and then destroyed for whatever reason then MURDER has been committed.
I cheered as I hear this. The embarrassed silence that followed tells you all you need to know about the sympathies of those who present the Today programme.
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