Added to this attack on men as members of a family, we have Ms Harman and Margaret Hodge, ex Minister for Children and, according to her list of responsibilities on her UK Parliament biography, Human Right’s Champion, involved in the wrongful removal of hundreds of children from their families aided by the secretive processes of the family court system. Incidentally, as Labour Leader of Islington Council, Ms Hodge was also accused of turning a blind-eye to child sex abuse allegations of children in care in the borough, so I for one worried when Tony Blair put her in charge of even more children’s lives.
With such pedigrees from our Labour MP’s can we really feel certain that our government truly has the welfare of our children at its heart especially since the path has long been set towards the destruction of traditional family life?
That is just one of the questions I asked myself when I looked at the Human Embryo and Fertilisation Bill, a Bill which, in my view, clearly proposes to eliminate the need for a father. The Government does argue that research evidence shows that it is the quality of parenting that counts, rather than gender of the parents, unfortunately the study quoted as research for this Bill looked at only a small group of 70 children to support its view and even then the study only followed the children until they were two so showed no evidence on the long term outcomes for those children. They then totally ignored the evidence of numerous other pieces of research showing that the opposite was in fact true.
One facet of the Bill which enshrines in Law the fact that IVF can be used to create a child without the need for a father to be a part of the relationship may on the surface seem only fair to same sex couples who wish to parent a child, and I personally would not take issue with that, and indeed know many same sex couples who would make excellent parents should they have that opportunity, but my concerns centre on the fact that the next logical step in the process of the removal of the need for a father in IVF would be to remove the word ‘Father’ from birth certificates and then perhaps even ‘Mother’ and to replace them with terms such as “birthing parent” and “supporting parent”.
Similar moves are currently already being considered in Australia where a controversial new Bill is being debated that will in-fact remove the word ‘father’ from birth certificates. The Bill will basically give the lesbian partner of a woman who has a child after becoming pregnant by a fertilisation procedure, the legal position of a married woman's husband. The terms “birth mother" would replace "mother" and "both parents" would replace "the father and the mother" on birth certificates. Some MPs are apparently concerned that the role of fatherhood would be undermined by the bill and I would share that concern.
With the fact that the removal of the need for a father in IVF cases has now been enshrined in law, the term supporting parent, or something of its ilk will appear via the backdoor route of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill since the political correctness of the 21st century could not possibly discriminate against the minority of ‘supporting same sex partners’ by allowing the term father to remain on a birth certificate, it just wouldn’t be fair would it?
Well neither is the current family law system which allows a child to be denied the right to be parented by two parents. It could be argued, and probably will be, that the removal of the need for a father prior to conception from the IVF rules will aid the removal of the best interest of the child principle as being the standard in child custody and contact cases since, if a father is not necessary before birth why should it be necessary after separation?
As for the child and the damage that the loss of a father from their life does to them, well Ms Harman obviously doesn’t care about that, since she, and her feminist cronies and emasculated male colleagues want to put the rights of the woman far beyond the needs, rights and desires of the child with no consideration of the rights, duties or responsibility of both parents towards their children or society.
Strange thing for a woman to say perhaps, especially as I have already stated that I am a single parent, (and in my opinion I’m quite a good one), and I do not hold the view that people should remain in unhappy marriages just because society dictates it or they have no other choice, I have never even been married so it would be hypocritical of me to argue that way. However, I do hold the view that, unless there is a legally proven good reason why it should not be the case, a child should be parented by two parents, whether they live together or not, or get on or not. I know that is not always an easy course to take since I have done it myself without recourse to law, lawyers, residency or anything else of a legal ilk. Perhaps the fact that I was the child of divorced parents and experienced the unhappiness of that situation helped me to put my children’s needs ahead of my own in the shared parenting stakes, it certainly helped my resolve when the going got tough because I knew the alternative would be worse for my children.
