Eggs from Foetuses (Prohibition of Use) (Hansard, 22 February 1994)

§ Dame Jill Knight (Birmingham, Edgbaston)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the use of eggs taken from aborted human foetuses for fertilisation procedures; and for connected purposes. This small Bill is of great importance—[Interruption.]

§ Madam Speaker
Order. May I hold the hon. Lady up for a moment? She is well accustomed to projecting her voice, but I ask for some order so that we may hear what she has to say from the start. Will the House please come to order?

§ Dame Jill Knight
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I shall begin by saying what the Bill is not about—it is not intended to stop research or to stop the use of human eggs donated by women. The Bill is intended to prohibit the use, for fertilisation purposes, of eggs from human aborted foetuses.
I am introducing the Bill for several reasons. First, it is totally repugnant that an unborn child—a child who was deliberately prevented from being born—should be plundered to facilitate the birth of another child. It must surely be against the most basic of human rights that an unwanted child should be destroyed and used to create a wanted child.
Secondly, we are told that there is a shortage of human eggs. Private hospitals apparently want them so badly that they are offering free treatment in return. We are assured that that is legal. Millions of women in this land are perfectly able to donate eggs willingly for that purpose.
I warn the House that if the use of foetal eggs is not made illegal, women will be offered money to get pregnant and to have the child aborted so that the eggs can be subtracted and used to meet the shortage. Women might be offered more money to leave the abortion until a later stage, when the eggs are "riper"—to use a medical term.
If the use of foetal eggs becomes common practice, what a thriving market might develop in other organs. If eggs are okay, why not livers, hearts, kidneys or corneas? Those are also in desperately short supply, and so, for many people, is money.
Thirdly, it does not take much imagination to envisage the effect on a sensitive child—or even an insensitive one —when he learns that his mother never lived, but was destroyed at the behest of his grandmother before he was even born. A woman who became pregnant after. the procedure, even though she had sought it and agreed to it, might well have nightmares during the later stages of her pregnancy, which is often a nervy time, as she pondered the fact that she was carrying a dead child's baby. It would indeed be a terrible thought.
152 Fourthly, the law says that a woman must give written consent before her eggs are used to create a baby. It is difficult to see how an unborn girl foetus could be prevailed upon to sign the form, and it will not do to say that the foetus's mother could do so instead. For good reasons, the law does not say that the grandmother of a baby created by in vitro fertilisation can sign—it must be the egg-donating mother, and that is impossible.
There is confusion about whether the law allows the use of eggs from aborted foetuses. It has been said that it is unlawful, but I have searched hard and cannot find any statute that says so. Certainly it is not covered by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. The chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority was questioned twice on the matter and was unable to say where in that or any other Act it was stated that using eggs from human foetuses for fertilisation was illegal.
Of course, the proposal is in its very early stages, but there is no doubt that it will become possible. It does not always follow that, if scientific practices are possible, they are desirable. The HFEA is currently asking the public to give their opinion on the matter, so that the authority can reach a decision about whether licences should be granted. Surely the authority would not be doing that if the practice were legal already?
I find it chilling that the authority is reported as saying, "Well, yes, the idea does sound rather repulsive at first, but think about it and you will get used to it pretty soon." That sounds as if it is trying to condition us to the idea and the probability that it will choose to legalise the practice, but how can it be right that a matter of life and death, which touches the deepest human feelings and is of extremely wide public interest, should be decided by a committee? Many of its members are erudite and some are even expert, but they do not represent or have to answer to the people of Britain. Let the House decide about the matter. Since the authority has asked for an opinion, let the House give one.