Islington Tribune - NEws: MP: How my mum coped on her own

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Islington Tribune - by TOM FOOT
Published: 16 May 2008

MP: How my mum coped on her own

LABOUR MP Emily Thornberry has paid tribute to her late mother in an impassioned speech during a parliamentary debate on a human fertilisation.
The MP for Islington South and Finsbury urged the Commons on Tuesday to scrap legislation preventing lesbian couples and single parents from the right to breed. Current laws regarding artificial insemination say all children should have a father in their life.
But Ms Thornberry said this discriminated against thousands of perfectly good parents. She added: “My late mother brought up three children on her own, and she coped by making sure she had friends who supported not only her but us, and who provided male role models, where necessary, for my brothers and me.
“I speak as the representative of Islington, where there are 3,640 single parents. If there was a league table of single parents with dependent children – Islington would be in the top 20.
“In Islington, there are a great many gay marriages – there is at least one gay marriage a day – and a very large number of gay people in my constituency now live together in legally recognised, loving relationships.
“It is the experience of my constituents that heterosexual couples do not have a monopoly on good parenting. If gay people are appropriate adoptive parents, they cannot have children of their own.”
The draft legislation being debated has been criticised by fathers’ groups for replacing a clause in fertilisation contracts confirming “the need for a father” with the genderless term “need for supportive parenting”.
Ms Thornberry said: “If we maintain ‘the need for a father’ we continue to discriminate against single women and lesbians who want to be mothers. Hundreds of children of lesbian parents will be denied the opportunity to have a second loving parent at the heart of their family.”

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