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Along with thousands of babies, one of the undoubted benefits of assisted reproductive technology, or ART, has been the acknowledgement of procreative rights, along with their long overdue extension to families not conforming to the standard Ladybird-book model. It also, obviously, represents overwhelming baby joy for the global ART industry.
What one country, or clinic, will not provide – donor eggs for a broody sixtysomething mother of grown-up children, say, or a paid (practically nothing) bunk in a surrogate – someone, somewhere, is happy to sell. For once, big business finds itself on the same side as high-minded scholarship, in fact working with it, and with would-be parents invariably described as “desperate”, to defy religious moralists and to mute secular anxieties about the rights or wellbeing of the resulting children.
For example, why shouldn’t a Mr Arshid Hussain, the multiple rapist and leader of the Rotherham sex-grooming gang, have been granted his reported wish – according to the Times, to which we owe his exposure – to undergo IVF? With a rumoured 18 or so children already, and his history of sex abuse, Hussain might not be the ideal dad, but consider his procreational rights.
Perhaps the 19th little Hussain would be very happy with its gift of life. And since we can’t measure desperation, we can’t be sure the rapist and his unfortunate wife are not, in their way, fully as desperate as required to argue their rights under European Convention on Human Rights Article 8, respect for private and family life.
Read full, original post: Fertility, grief and big business are not a good combination
