Should healthy Lesbian women be given IVF on the NHS?
The trouble is that the British Fertility Society (the body that made the recent recommendations) is basically a group of gynaecologists (almost all fertility experts in the country started out in gynaecology). Firstly: because they are gynaecologists, their principal focus is on the woman. That is the reason that although in 50% of couples with subfertility the problem is with the man, they tend to be very bad at diagnosing and treating men’s problems (such as varicoceles causing overheating and hindering sperm production). It also means that they tend to focus on treating the woman – and for that, it’s almost irrelevant to them what her sexuality is. Secondly: they are looking at it as a medical rather than an ethical issue. As doctors, their primary concern is whether the treatment they can provide is lilely to solve the primary problem (by giving the woman a child), not what the social consequences of that might be. You could be cynical and say that their success rates will be high
