By MARTIN JOHNSTON
Infertile lesbians and single women nationwide will be entitled to state-paid fertility treatment under new rules about to be introduced.
The Health Funding Authority will this month implement national guidelines on fertility services, which have just received a $3.7 million boost to remove inequalities and reach more people.
Until now,
lesbians and single women have missed out in most areas owing to regionally inconsistent eligibility criteria and lack of money.
A director of Fertility Associates, Dr Richard Fisher, said his practice's Auckland-Northland funding contract with the Government had effectively prevented it from offering state-paid services to lesbians and single women, despite demand.
About 40 per cent of women who took part in the practice's donor-insemination programmes were single or in lesbian relationships. They had to pay the $900 per cycle fee themselves.
The new criteria have been welcomed by lesbians but criticised by the Act party.
Act social welfare spokeswoman Muriel Newman said last night that there were "huge questions" that must be answered before she could support the changes.
"I think there's public concern that people who have a baby by taxpayer-funded assistance, if you like, that the baby has a father and that there is a breadwinner there to help to raise that child.
"Children brought up without a father are much more predisposed to poor outcomes in life: educational failure, drugs and alcohol."
She said the domestic purposes benefit had been introduced as "bridging finance" for single parents, but the Government was now about to offer them "start-up finance."
Ann Charlotte, a spokeswoman for Lesbian Action for Visibility in Aotearoa, praised the move towards equal access to health services.
"I think there's no reason under the law to discriminate against lesbians or single women."
There was nothing to prove that heterosexuals were better parents than lesbians.
"I think the important thing is that children have parents - whether it's one or two or more - who love and care for them and who value the child and its needs as paramount."
A funding authority spokesman, Win Bennett, said some lesbians and single women had received treatment under the present arrangements, but he was unable to say how many.
Under the new criteria they would, like all candidates for the taxpayer-paid services, have to have tried for some time to conceive.
