Delays For Prospective Parents

Local News, By Christian Taylor, 16th June, 2009

It looks like gay couples and single women in Victoria who are itching to access IVF treatment will have to wait a bit longer.

The Assisted Reproductive Treatment Bill was passed last December, and the change to legislation was all about giving single women and lesbians permission to access IVF services and donor sperm. The legislation stipulates that women and sperm donors have to undergo a mandatory police check to assess whether or not they will be suitable parents. The law was meant to come into effect July 1, however The Herald Sun report that the Government is not prepared for the increased workload that the police checks will place on current resources.

“The Government is telling us it doesn’t have the resources in place to cope with the police checks,” Melbourne IVF director Dr John McBain told The Herald Sun.

“The bureaucracy isn’t in place in the relevant department to screen the very large numbers of people who will be trying to get police checks.”

Dr McBain said that there may be delays of up to September or later.

Shadow health spokeswoman Helen Shardey told the Sun Herald that the “bungling could lead to Victoria’s IVF program being closed down, robbing couples of the opportunity to commence treatment to start a family… This failure could also put at risk the ability of women needing cancer treatment to have their eggs stored for future IVF treatment.”

A spokesman for the Department of Human Services said that the Government want to make sure they get it right, and that the delay is an unfortunate.

“The wait in the overall scheme of things between now and as long as the end of the year is not a huge amount of time. The focus has to be on getting it right,” he said.