Angie Were, Social Responsibilities Committee, Diocese of Melbourne

During the last year the Social Responsibilities Committee of the Diocese has given extensive consideration to a range of reproductive technology matters and has on several occasions discussed ethical questions which arise for Christians regarding the availability, or refusal, of IVF to single women.

The following are some of the considerations which have arisen in the SRC's discussions regarding IVF and single women. Discussions on this matter will continue in the Committee and the comments and views of readers will be welcomed.

Discrimination against single women?

The drive to reproduce is a fundamental and powerful personal and societal force. It has been suggested that infertility can cause levels of depression equal to those associated with cancer (1). This may be as true for single women as for those who are married.

Australia has strong laws prohibiting discrimination, including that on the basis of marital status. While single women prepared to conceive children in the conventional manner may not be encouraged they are not prevented or penalised by law from doing so. However in Victoria both law and public policy have prevented single women (and men) from becoming parents through adoption or IVF. This has been seen by some as unjust and constituting discrimination under the law.

Interestingly it is only the relatively recent creation of legal adoption and the very recent development of reproductive technologies which have required the giving of permission to become a parent.

The current eligibility criteria for IVF treatment are several and stringent. Some married couples awaiting IVF treatment might be apprehensive that the gaining of access by single people could, by increasing demand substantially, exclude some of the married couple applicants from receiving service before reaching the age limit.

The best interests of the child

The Church is opposed to all forms of unfair discrimination. However we must be careful that valuing of adult rights and freedom from discrimination does not obstruct our view of children's needs. The freedom of one person is necessarily limited by the rights of others and major decisions in family matters, whether about reproduction, divorce, custody of children or inadequate parenting must make paramount reference to the best interests of the child. The concept of the best interests of children reflects the obligation of society to protect those who are most vulnerable and is specified as the key decision making factor in both family law and child welfare legislation.

What do children most need? Should a child have two parents? Should the parents have a long-term relationship? (How stable is stable?) Should the parents be of each gender? Is one gender more suited to single parenthood than the other? Although children are growing up in many kinds of care, should we intend single parenthood or single gender parenthood? Perhaps most importantly, whose role is it to decide who is fit to be a parent of the most vulnerable and impressionable members of society?

The Sacrament of Marriage

The Church places great importance on the marriage of a man and a woman so that a new family is established and children may be born and nurtured. However our society in recent decades appears to place less value on marriage and is accepting a much broader definition of the family which includes blended families, sole parent families, families where the parents are cohabiting and not married and families with same gender parents. 20% of all Australian families have only one parent. It can be argued that all happy families are not the same in structure. To what extent should the Church accommodate social trends and modify the basic Christian tenets?

To arrange for single female parenting to occur is possibly to diminish the importance of the role of father, even to suggest that males have become redundant. It can be argued that many other recent social changes have also marginalised the place of the male in the family. Perhaps the next debate will be about single men's rights to access IVF.

It would generally be agreed that strong love of children and the powerful desire to raise a child are of great value to society. The determination and bravery shown by many IVF recipients motivated by this desire for children is often observed and admired. Regardless of their personal relationship status, to what extent should people pursuing IVF treatment be valued simply for this level of commitment to children?

To put this slightly differently: regardless of family structure, should not value be placed on reproduction through careful choice and planning compared with the not uncommon occurrence of parenting by surprise?

Knowledge of Identity

We have learned from adults who were adopted and from Aboriginal people removed from family that people need to know who both parents are and generally suffer distress if this is unknown. If a child conceived through IVF lives with only one parent or lives with a single gender couple, it is important that accurate information be available regarding their biological origins.

The Common Good

It is essential for the health of society that the majority of members have a commitment to work together to promote the common good. Strong individualism - the determined pursuit of personal goals often encouraged in modern life - may at times not serve the common good.

It could be said that the pursuit of children through the sophisticated procedures of the IVF program, which can incur great financial cost to the community through taxation, may not be the best use of scarce medical resources. This intervention also usually incurs financial cost to participants in the form of fees or medical insurance - a factor which excludes many, perhaps the majority, of adults. The same concerns can be raised regarding other expensive reproductive technologies.

Such inequity of access could be regarded as of greater concern than the current exclusion of single women and not consistent with either the principle of the common good or Christ's preference to the poor.

Until recently the most common means for a person to acquire a child was adoption, in which it was not uncommon for the poor, unable to support their own, to relinquish children to those with greater financial means. An element of this distinction between rich and poor perhaps lives on in the acquisition of a child through modern reproductive technology.

The Child as a Commodity

Both the element of financial exchange in the case of IVF and the transfer of children from poor to rich through adoption raise the question: is it ever acceptable to treat a child as a commodity? It is possible that our habits of consuming are extending to other humans?: that parenting is little more than a "lifestyle choice" or a form of self-definition? The Catholic Bishops in a submission to the Federal Court on single women and IVF stated that the term "service" used to describe a process for bringing into existence a human person is an indication of commodification of human life. Katrina Roberts, on the other hand, suggests that allowing single women access to assisted reproduction would indicate a high valuing by society of children (2).

The dignity of the human person must have priority over any system for the benefit of other persons. The matter of treating children as commodities was also raised in an article by Denise Cooper-Clarke with regard to genetic screening and "engineering" in the Melbourne Anglican in August 2001.

Children: a gift or an entitlement?

The Church believes that children are a gift from God and that they should be surrounded by the love arising from a loving adult relationship.

We may be at a point in the history of the human race where the meaning for society of conception and reproduction is shifting from that of a gift or a matter of good fortune to an entitlement for all who have the power or resources required to make the necessary complex technological arrangements. What this means for human life would seem to be a more important issue than that of single women's access to the technology.

Some Christians argue that the scientific discovery and refinement of In Vitro Fertilisation, with its long range potential to provide fertility for all, is itself God given.

Notes:

(1) Hodder H.F., 1997, The New Fertility: www.harvardmagazine.com
(2) Roberts, K., "For a happy family all you need is love". The Age 16 Nov 2001.