WHAT A BASTARD

I guess the stigma has never really gone away. The stigma of being a single mother. It was ever thus for both the Mum and the bastard child born out of wedlock. And it seemed to get worse when Single Mother benefits started to flow and everybody knew somebody whose sluttish daughter had four kids by four different fathers in a baby making game that paid them a fortune in taxpayer funds.

The TV current affairs programs could always drag out an example even though some of it was an urban myth.

In 2009 things haven’t got much better even though a lot of sole parents are there because of increased divorce rates –with two out of three marriages going asunder. And a lot of independent women are now deciding, as their biological clocks click towards 40, that they want a child but not necessarily a partner for life.

There are now nearly half a million sole parent, or lone parent, families in Australia and they are in the news for two reasons today. The State Government has released a booklet called Single Mothers: A Resource Guide for Parenting Solo.

And Minister for Children, Maxine Morand says ‘People in the community make certain assumptions about single mothers’. She doesn’t spell out what they are.

But the new President of the Australian Medical Association makes some very personal assumptions.  At the weekend Dr. Andrew Pesce made headlines when he said that single women and gay couples should not have access to IVF.

He talks about such fertility treatments as going against the ‘natural order’. His words. He says getting pregnant should not be a ‘lifestyle choice’.

‘For example, single women (who choose IVF) don’t have a disease, they just don’t have a partner… They are using an option that gets around the natural order of things’.

Now, hang on a flash. If you take the good doctor at his word surely any infertile couple that uses IVF is ‘going against the natural order of things’.

You could argue that all IVF goes against the ‘natural order’. So does a Caesarian section. So does an epidural.

And this guy was elected President of the AMA in 2009 not 1609.  His predecessor Dr. Kerryn  Phelps  who is both a woman and a lesbian say, fairly tactfully, that Dr. Pesce’s comments are ‘not rational’.

At least he’s living up to his name: Pesce. His arguments smell fishy.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009