Ulster Unionist Party under fire for pledging fertility treatment for all 

The Ulster Unionist Party's (UUP) manifesto pledge to 'provide fertility services accessible to all without discrimination', has come under fire from a co-founder of LGB Alliance.

The Party's 2024 Westminster manifesto also promises to 'ensure equal access to adoption and fostering' as part of a pledge to ensure 'equality for the LGBTQ community', alongside promises to ban conversion therapy, and implement a zero tolerance approach to harassment and hate crime. Malcolm Clark, a gay rights activist and former head of research at LGB Alliance, a charity set up in opposition to LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall's policies on transgender issues, has criticised the election pledge for using wording 'exactly the same as that of Stonewall and other LGBTQ+ lobby groups'.

Clark told the Belfast News Letter: 'Too many gay men appear to think it's their birthright to expect a woman to give birth on their behalf.

'Babies aren't an accessory. Every baby deserves a mother involved in its life. If gay men can't face that they shouldn't be having a baby.'

The UUP's pledge is the only mention of fertility treatment across all of the major political parties' manifestos for the 2024 UK election due to take place on 4 July 2024. The UUP has worked with LGBT+ campaign group Stonewall in the past and made a similar commitment in its 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election manifesto. 

The Conservative Party's election manifesto has reiterated its commitment to its Women's Health Strategy, with a focus on additional funding for improving safety in maternity care. The Labour Party has also pledged in its election manifesto to improve maternal safety by providing 'thousands more midwives as part of the NHS Workforce Plan and set an explicit target to close the Black and Asian maternal mortality gap', though has not mentioned the disparities affecting fertility patients (see BioNews 1220).

Other major political parties have focused on pledges to improve the NHS, the research undertaken by it, and to promote the UK as a major centre for life sciences. 

The Labour Party's manifesto states: 'People should get the best that modern science can offer,' and that: 'The revolution taking place in data and life sciences has the potential to transform our nation's healthcare.'

These sentiments were echoed by the Green Party, which stated in its election manifesto: 'As a political party, we believe in offering hope. And we believe in following the science and speaking the truth, too.'

It also pledged to use 'the unique information the NHS has, as a public health system that cares for us from cradle to the grave, to deliver treatment through publicly funded research' as part of its National Cancer Control Plan.

Embryo research and genetics research are not mentioned in any of the major party's manifestos. Genetic Alliance UK published a Manifesto for rare diseases calling for candidates to pledge to support accurate diagnosis and specialists treatment for affected people (see BioNews 1244).