THE GUARDIAN

COMMENT

Website entrepreneur to open centre for single and gay women as calls grow for changes to fertility act

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Monday March 8, 2004
The Guardian

A controversial fertility clinic, which will focus on helping lesbian couples and single women to become pregnant using donated sperm, is to set up in Britain.

In a direct challenge to moral conservatives and fertility regulators, the businessman behind two websites offering sperm and human eggs is taking over an existing clinic in Bristol, which will be renamed the Man Not Included New Life Centre.

John Gonzalez will target his services at lesbians and single women despite the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority Act 1990, which says clinics must take into account a child's need for a father.

"We quite openly push the fact that we help lesbians and single women [through the websites]," he told the Guardian. "I can see no reason why we shouldn't push that through our clinics." Suzi Leather, who chairs the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), recently said she thought the clause about fathers ought to go.

Mr Gonzalez said that his websites, through which sperm from anonymous donors can be delivered to the door, have been successful because only a handful of clinics treat lesbians or single women. The two websites, ManNotIncluded.com and WomanNotIncluded.com, have not fallen within the remit of the HFEA because Mr Gonzalez is not offering treatment - only a supply of sperm and eggs.

The HFEA has restricted itself to warning couples that sperm they get through any website has been tested for diseases. It points out that it is not possible to know whether the sperm carries the HIV/Aids virus unless it has been frozen for some time before testing.

But the HFEA oversees the clinics, whether they offer in vitro (test tube) fertilisation procedures or donor insemination. Only frozen sperm which has gone through a battery of tests can be used. Clinics are regularly inspected to make sure they are operating within the rules.

Mr Gonzalez said he fully expects the new clinic to undergo the most rigorous scrutiny from the HFEA, but "they will be caught because our procedures will be very tight".

The clinician in charge will be Barbara Skew, who has run a donor insemination clinic in Bristol for some years but only for heterosexual couples. She said she thought Mr Gonzalez's plans were exciting but that the wording of the act concerning the need for a father needed to be looked at again.

"Hitherto single girls and lesbians have been rather patchily served by the HFEA-licensed clinics because of the clause in the act," she said. "They have had a pretty raw deal. Some of them have told me that they have been badly treated."

"There are many women out there in this position who are able to support a child but have no bloke in their lives."

She accepted that the clinic would be controversial. "I'm sure there will be a backlash," she said. "But are they suggesting that all the ladies who get left to take care of children who would choose to have a man in their life but don't have one are not doing a good job? The children who are damaged are the ones whose parents break up. Children do have a much better life if their world is stable."

The HFEA has to inspect the new clinic premises before they sanction Dr Skew, who is the holder of the licence, moving to the renamed business. "I'm personally certain they will inspect us within an inch of our lives," she said. "But my last inspection - in July or September - was exemplary."

The HFEA declined to comment pending its decision on the licence.

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