Dr. Joanna Rose:

The primary responsibility of laws should be to the best interests of the child. I do not think one can intentionally separate a child from his or her genetic parents by design and say that is in a child's best interests because it is not. Having said that, I have to argue for damage limitation and raise awareness that, if someone is to proceed with this, it should be done in a way that avoids damage as much as possible. Things like sister clinics abroad and State funding to facilitate conception abroad, with anonymous donor conception, which does everything that is not in the realms of recognised human rights, must stop. That happens in England all the time and there are loopholes. Having committees that are dominated by the infertility service providers and those who receive those services just has to stop. Before we try even to think about appropriately protecting the best interests of the child and those people targeted to be donors, the practice needs to be re-framed and there must be a more appropriate representation of those stakeholders. I am desperately unhappy about the dominance of those other groups in this Bill. The wording of the Bill states that the welfare of the child is taken into consideration where practicable. That term applies to the prospective children to be conceived from reproductive technology but, on page 60 of the general scheme of the Bill, head 22(7) refers to a future child who might be found to be infertile and that it is in the best interests of the child to remove their gametes, without their will or consent necessarily, in order that they can be genetic parents. Genetic continuity for one group of children is seen as important, and their best interests is a term that is used and applied legally, but yet there is another group of children whose welfare is taken into consideration where practicable and their genetic discontinuity is not even a consideration. That is so clearly discriminatory that the emperor has no clothes. Can anybody see that? That is clear discrimination.