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Hobart apology
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ART lesbian overload claim ‘exaggerated’ |
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Written by Ron Hughes
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Monday, 11 January 2010 |
 Claims that Victoria’s assisted reproductive technologies (ART) clinics will be overloaded with would-be lesbian parents are “alarmist” and “inaccurate” according to a leading same-sex parenting advocacy group.
The Age on January 3 reported that doctors feared ART services would be stretched to the limit now that access to IVF for lesbian and single women has come into effect.
According to the report, the new requirement for police checks on all people accessing ART has already caused delays in the system and doctors fear any increase in clients would cause even further delays.
Dr John McBain of Melbourne IVF told The Age hundreds of patients had experienced delays of up to six weeks in their background checks and the backlog would worsen as lesbians and single women began accessing ART.
According to the Love Makes a Family campaign, however, a great rush for ART services was unlikely.
“A constant number of women have been accessing ART treatments for years, although they’ve had to travel interstate to do so,” Love Makes a Family spokesperson Felicity Marlowe told MCV. “It’s great that now they can access treatment in their own state. We’ll see an increase in women accessing ART in Victoria over the next year, but to say there’ll be a huge influx is just alarmist.”
According to Marlowe, the trend among lesbians wanting to become parents is to use known donor sperm for self-insemination, rather than accessing anonymous sperm.
“Those women using sperm from known donors will now be able to go to their doctors for insemination treatments, rather than using the old ‘do it at home with a flashlight and needle’ approach,” Marlowe said. “It will be much safer for the women involved and also they’ll have a much higher chance of getting pregnant because the treatment is being carried out by a doctor in a controlled environment. That’s a great improvement.”
“The other thing is that now these women will have access to counselling and other services they couldn’t access before,” Marlowe said.
“I believe that’s the area where you will see an increase, rather than women flooding to ART clinics to be treated with anonymous donor sperm.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Human Services told The Age the department was not aware of any delays in processing background checks and the system was ready to cope with any increase.
“Of course it takes time to go through ART treatment anyway,” Marlowe said. “You can’t just rock up at a clinic and receive instant treatment, there are whole processes you have to go through.”
According to Marlowe, the biggest ongoing problem with ART is that not enough men are willing to become donors.
“If there are altruistic men out there, gay or straight, it would be really helpful if they’d consider becoming donors at a clinic,” she said.
Marlowe added that reports gay and lesbian groups were “angry” that lesbians and single women couldn’t access Medicare rebates for fertility treatments were inaccurate.
“It’s always been the case that you can only access Medicare for IVF if you are medically infertile,” Marlowe said. “That’s always been the case, so nothing has changed.”
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