Justice Minister Alan Shatter’s planned reform of family law is about as far-reaching and radical as it is possible to get. Out goes any notion that the natural ties are important. Out goes any notion that having a loving mother and a father has any special value. In comes the notion of the ‘intentional’ parent.

Having decided that the natural ties are of little or no account, being the natural parent of a child obviously has little or no importance in Shatter’s schema. What matters is your intent to be a parent. This allows him to reduce to nothing the woman who has sold an egg to a commissioning couple (or individual), and to do the same to a sperm donor.

The fact that these individuals will be the natural parents of any resultant child will be of no account. What will be of total account in the eyes of Shatter’s law is the intent of the commissioning couple (or individual) to be the parents.

To repeat, intent, not nature creates parents in Shatter’s Brave New World.

But what is Minister Shatter going to say in years to come to the children produced by gamete donation who will have a different view, the people who are already coming forward to say, ‘that sperm donor is my father’, or ‘that egg donor is my mother’?

They are likely to be very unimpressed if Minister Shatter tells them, ‘no they’re not, because they didn’t intend to be your parents’.

Those donor-offspring will insist, and are already insisting that no law can tell them their natural parents are not their parents.

The undeniable fact is that Shatter’s planned law will create a whole raft of new injustices in a country that often handled adoption very badly in the past by deliberately making it almost`impossible for children to find their natural parents and vice-versa.

It is appalling that we are even contemplating doing almost exactly the same thing again via this new law. Minister Shatter may not like the fact, but the natural ties do matter. This is the reality his law chooses to ignore.