Vic: Lesbians and single mothers to access IVF

AAP General News (Australia)
08-02-2004
Vic: Lesbians and single mothers to access IVF

MELBOURNE, Aug 2 AAP - Single women and lesbians will be able to inseminate themselves
with the help of Victorian IVF clinics under new arrangements.

The Bracks government had restricted IVF treatment to medically infertile women, excluding
the so-called "socially infertile".

But the Herald Sun newspaper today reported that the Infertility Treatment Authority
and Melbourne IVF had found a way to beat the ban by allowing women to take samples away
from the clinic for self-insemination.

If their do-it-yourself home insemination failed four times, single women and lesbians
can be deemed medically infertile and granted full access to IVF.

Until now, lesbians and single women who are not medically infertile have been banned
from all fertility treatment in Victoria.

Melbourne IVF chairman Dr John McBain said the practice did not breach the Victorian ban.

"It is not a reproductive service if we're not performing it," he said.

"I'm really proud that we've been able to circumvent the restrictive government and
ITA ruling in this, which has forced people who want to do the right thing to go interstate
rather than seek a safe remedy in Victoria."

Melbourne IVF, one of Victoria's biggest private fertility centres, told the Herald
Sun the service would mean lesbian couples could have access to the same safe donor sperm
as heterosexual couples.

Donors would be medically screened and would fill out a genetic health questionnaire
and their sperm would be screened for disease.

AAP apw/rs

KEYWORD: IVF

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