Fed: Howard s IVF stance sending wrong message to kids Elton

AAP General News (Australia)
08-16-2000
Fed: Howard s IVF stance sending wrong message to kids Elton

By Jo Dougherty

MELBOURNE, Aug 16 AAP - Prime Minister John Howard's stance on IVF was effectively
telling children of single-parent families they were second-class and not as good, British
comedian Ben Elton said today.

He has inadvertently fallen smack-bang into the middle of Australia's debate on who
should have access to in-vitro fertilisation as he tours the country promoting his movie
Maybe Baby.

Elton and his Australian wife Sophie are themselves successful recipients of IVF treatment,
with twins Charlotte and Albert born almost exactly a year ago.

And, coincidentally, the subjects of his first feature film - a romantic comedy - are
also a couple forced to turn to IVF in pursuit of a child.

"My story is in fact an incredibly Howard-friendly story in that it involves a heterosexual
married couple," Elton told AAP in Melbourne.

"This debate isn't about IVF, it's about our attitudes whether or not one can engineer
the shape that society takes and, frankly, you can't."

Mr Howard is seeking to amend the Sex Discrimination Act allowing states to restrict
access to IVF treatment for single women and lesbians.

Elton says the core issue is nostalgia for a nuclear family - that children should
have a reasonable expectation of having a mother and a father.

"There's no doubt a mother and father is a very nice thing, but so is a loving parent
of any sort," he said.

"My sadness about Howard's comments are that there must be an awful lot of children
of single-parent families thinking ... their lives are somehow second-class and not as
good.

"I think that's probably a very unfortunate message to be coming from the top because
the fact is the world has changed."

Elton said single-parent families, extended families and even "two-parents-but-not-living-in-the-same-household"

families are all massive realities.

"It's evidence of him (Mr Howard) being unaware of what is now a fundamental change
in the way a society is made up," he said.

Maybe Baby, starring Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson with cameos by Rowan Atkinson,
Dawn French, Joanna Lumley and Emma Thompson, opens in Australia tomorrow.

AAP jd/jlw/hu/de a

KEYWORD: IVF ELTON (WITH AUDIO)

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