Some states in Australia have laws making it illegal for women to get pregnant via in vitro procedures. One woman challenged Victoria’s anti-in vitro law as unconstitutional, and an Australian Court agreed with her saying the ban violated Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act. Australian Prime Minister John Howard reacted as any good statist would — he immediately vowed to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to specifically prohibit single women from using in vitro fertilization.
Howard told the Associated Press,
This issue involves overwhelmingly, in the opinion of the government, the right of children in our society to have the expectation, other things being equal, of the affection and the care of both a mother and a father.
While it may be true that, everything being equal, a child is better off in a two parent household, to then deduce from that a moral principle that it is always wrong for a single woman to have a child and raise it on her own is absurd. For some government officials, ethicists and others always feel the need to insert their own peculiar views about the family into personal, private reproductive decisions.
If a single woman can afford in vitro fertilization and wants to have a child on her own, more power to her.
Source:
Canberra moves to block single women’s access to in vitro fertilization from the Associated Press