Frances Fitzgerald’s speech last night [1] introducing the Children and Family Relationships Bill to the Dail was a masterpiece of evasion, in particular when she commented on the aspects of the Bill dealing with Donor Assisted Human Reproduction (DAHR).
Here’s what she had to say:
“The Bill will not change the rights of most children in terms of parentage. A child who is the natural child of a heterosexual couple will have exactly the same parentage rights as at present. That child will continue to be the child of his or her birth mother and natural father. However, two categories of children will get the chance to GAIN a parent or parents as a result of this Bill. A donor-conceived child will get the right, under this legislation, to gain a second parent. As it stands, if the child is born to a female same-sex couple, that child has only one legally recognised parent if the donor is unknown.”
Where’s the evasion here? It should be patently obvious. She fails to point out that when a child, acquired via DAHR, is being raised by a female same-sex couple the father is missing. She refuses to see this as a loss of any kind and presents it instead a gain because she is making it possible for the partner of the biological mother to be recognised as the second legal parent.
In her view having two legally recognised mothers but no legally recognised father is a gain.
Our Justice Minister thinks it is enough that the child of a gamete or embryo donor gets to know the identity of their biological parent when they turn 18. This is an incredibly reductionist way to treat the rights of these children and a very minimalistic acknowledgement of the importance of the natural ties. The fact is, every child conceived through sperm or egg donation has a genetic mother or father, somewhere, who has signed away any “parental rights or duties” before the child is even born. They’ve been deliberately separated from that parent as the ‘acceptable price’ of fulfilling the wishes of their commissioning parents for a child.
This is why these aspects of the Bill, while pretending to be child-centred are in fact adult-centred.
Adult who can’t have children naturally are allowed to have children by every means technology makes available and Frances Fitzgerald thinks her only job is to facilitate this.
By pretending what she is doing is to the benefit of children, she is only adding insult to injury.