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Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

Indeed. I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman just said. I move to the need for a father. I was, again, disappointed by comments on this issue. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale said, at the beginning of her speech, that she had nothing against lesbian parents, but at the end of it she attacked them for what I believe she called the ““fantasy”” of their parenting. It is offensive and discriminatory to use such terms. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire made the assumption, in his otherwise very good speech, that we should start from that discriminatory hurdle, because it was not causing any trouble—[Interruption.] I hear ““Nonsense”” from those on the Conservative Front Bench, so let me put it in another way. In my view—I think that this is the Government's view as well, and it should be the view of Parliament—discrimination against lesbian couples, such as making them jump over extra hurdles, is not justified by the evidence that we have heard about. That evidence comes from research into how well children do when they are born to lesbian parents and solo parents—women who specifically seek to become single parents. If that is the research finding, the onus is on people who want to put a discriminatory hurdle in the way of such people to justify doing so by showing that there is evidence of harm. It is not enough to say, ““People can get treated if they go to enough clinics,”” or that because no one has been willing to go through the publicity of a legal case, instead of getting on with their life, there has been no harm. We should start from the position that unjustified discrimination, such as placing extra hurdles before certain people, should not be allowed. Finally, I want to deal with the question of the abortion time limit. It was asserted earlier that some babies are now surviving at 23 weeks, but a few also survived at 23 weeks in 1990. The point of viability is not the earliest point at which babies might survive when prematurely born, but the point at which a premature baby—a foetus—alive at the onset of labour would have a decent chance of surviving, without serious abnormality, independently of the woman's body. In 1990, that point was set, on medical advice, at 24 weeks. The same medical advice that we trusted in 1990—we can read the debates to show that we did—shows that that has not changed, and that is why the abortion time limit should stay at 24 weeks.