Derek Morgan

Sterilisation and mental handicap: sapping the strength of the state?

Reproduction has come to occupy a central position in the theatre of the personal. It has moved upstage, from being seen as a minor bit part of personhood, to being cast as one of the essential characteristics of its successful production and realisation. This has been accompanied by an increasingly public presence and debate about its determinants and its control. The ground rules of fertility have been opened up for scrutiny and assessment, and the courts have been drawn more critically into a debate about the respective merits and claims of the producers and players in this contemporary morality play. Two recent scenes can be used to illustrate the confusing nature of the dynamics involved. Victoria Gillicks endeavour to pre-empt the provision of contraceptive advice and treatment to her daughters by medical practitioners sought two declarations from the courts:

Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill [HL]

Abstract This Bill of twenty-seven clauses and seven schedules will considerably improve and rationalize two related and important areas of family law which are long overdue for reform, namely the provision of protection for family members against domestic violence and the regulation of the right to occupy the family home. 1 Largely, but not entirely, it gives effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission in its report on Family Law, Domestic Violence and Occupation of the Family Home (Law Com. No. 207). The current plethora of legislation (i.e. the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976, the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates ‘Courts Act 1978, ss. 16–18 and the Matrimonial Homes Act 1983) dealing with these major social problems, will be repealed and replaced by a single set of consistent remedies. These remedies will be available in all courts having jurisdiction in family matters (clause 21), save that the magistrates’ court will not be able to hear an application involving any ...

Human fertilisation and embryology bill; the status provisions

Abstract The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill published in November makes further provision for regulating and supervising assisted conception, such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, embryo transfer and related techniques. It also contains, in Clause 11, the controversial proposals which will permit or restrict further research on live human embryos. In this note, however, I want to concentrate on three clauses, 26–28, which deal with the status of children born following such assisted reproduction. They may have an important and decisive effect on questions such as personal identity, inheritance and legitimacy. In their way, they raise questions of moral complexity equal to those which are likely to occupy the headlines during the Bills legislative passage.