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Greg Barns

"A Dilemma on Howard's Conscience"

Sydney Morning Herald

April 26, 2002

WHEN the Prime Minister announced his Government would seek to overturn the recent High Court decision in favour of Leesa Meldrum in her battle to have an IVF procedure in her home state, Victoria, he sounded positively liberal in his approach to the issue.

John Howard told 3AW's Neil Mitchell: "I'm always wary about sort of telling people, in fact I avoid where I possibly can, telling individual people how to behave. That's a matter for them. Nobody in this world is perfect and I certainly don't see the role of the prime minister is to run around waving his finger at people telling them how to behave. But I do think when it comes to such a fundamental thing as the rights of children the prime minister ought to put up his hand and say this is how I think it ought to be."

And when Howard made his decision to allow stem cell research on surplus embryos, he told Mitchell on April 5: "I am going to ensure that when this matter is debated in Federal Parliament, every single member of my party, our Liberal Party, has a conscience vote or a free vote. I'm not going to try and force my view down anybody else's throat."

Note that in relation to both these issues Howard says that, while he has a particular view about these ethical and moral dilemmas, others may come to a different conclusion. So why make stem cell research a matter of conscience but not a ban on single and lesbian women obtaining access to IVF?

The reaction of his parliamentary colleagues to the different treatment of both these issues has been surprisingly muted. Other than one unnamed backbencher being miffed that he or she wasn't asked for his or her opinion about whether there should be a conscience vote on the IVF ban legislation, there has been silence. So far, no Coalition MP has talked about crossing the floor to vote against the Government on IVF. Contrast this with Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett's continued opposition to Howard's stem cell research decision.

In fact, it could be argued that the decision by the Howard Government to forge ahead with its ban on IVF for lesbian and single women is a greater affront to liberal values than an attempt to ban the use of surplus live embryos for stem cell research. The opposition to the former is based on a prescriptive view of what type of parental arrangement any child should have. As Howard has said, he is standing up for the rights of children. In his view a child is entitled to be born to an identified mother and an identified father.

But what about the rights of a woman whose sexual orientation happens to be lesbian? Should that woman, who has the same reproductive system and maternal yearnings, be denied the right to a child? And should a heterosexual single woman similarly be discriminated against?

Surely for a liberal the issue here is choice and acknowledgement that the circumstances into which a child is born can vary in terms of parental identity and setting. As the AMA chief, Kerryn Phelps, noted this week, to argue that children of same-sex parents "are disadvantaged by not being brought up by both a biological mother and father" is contrary to international research and discriminates against one group in the community over another simply on the basis of prejudice.

Over the next decade our Parliament will be confronted with many more challenges in the area of life and science. Ahead of us lie debates about genetic modification and cloning, and further rapid advances in stem cell research. These are not matters that divide neatly down party lines - they are issues about human ingenuity and our insatiable thirst for knowledge and perfection. The debates will continue to be between the theological conservatives and the secular liberals - but above all they are matters of conscience and no government should seek to prevent an MP from deliberating and voting according to his or her conscience. That's why Howard should apply the liberal principle of primacy of conscience and allow his MPs a conscience vote on IVF.
 

- Greg Barns is a former Chair of the Australian Republican Movement and a member of the Advisory Board of OzProspect