The press review index from 06 June to 10 June 2005

Sweden: assisted reproduction authorised for lesbians

On Monday evening, the Pope reaffirmed the Catholic Church's inviolable standpoint on morals, the right to life and bioethics.

He reaffirmed the "intangibility of human life from conception to its natural end", reiterated his condemnation of "the manipulation of the unborn", spoke out against the relativism that leads to "anarchical freedom", "libertinism" and "trivialisation of the body", incarnated by abortion, amongst other things.

He also condemned as "contrary to human love, to the profound vocation of man and woman, to systematically close their union to the gift of life" through contraception.

A few days ahead of the Italian referendum on assisted reproduction, the Pope's words seemed to represent a fresh standpoint in the debate.

This is the fourth time in 8 days that the Pope has spoken on the theme of life, the family and the "threat of relativism". The Pope's main objective is to encourage the "witness and commitment of Christian families" to combat this relativism which "only allows individuals to think of their own ego and desires" and which "under the guise of freedom, becomes a prison".

Le Figaro (Hervé Yannou) 08/06/05 - La Croix 08/06/05

Stephanie Yarber was infertile as her ovaries had never functioned and she had never menstruated. However, she has just given birth to a little girl after her ovaries started working again.

This was enabled through a transplant of ovary tissue from her identical twin sister. Her sister, already a mother of three, had her ovary cut into three pieces. One was frozen and the other pieces were grafted onto Stephanie's non-functioning ovaries. She started menstruating three months later and two months after that, she fell pregnant.

Ovary transplants are not new but until now, this technique was used on women who had received treatment for cancer and whose ovaries had been frozen before the treatment began. The success rate is very low.

Karine Camby, director of the French Biomedicine Agency, stressed that this operation would not be authorised in France as it would be regarded as "egg donation between sisters".

Le Figaro (Jean-Michel Bader) 09/06/05- Le Matinternet 07/06/05 et 08/06/05 - Le Nouvel Observateur (Cécile Dumas) 09/06/05

On Friday, the Swedish parliament voted to allow lesbians to have artificial insemination and IVF in order to have children. The new law will come into effect as of 1 July 2005.

Until now, only married women or women living with men were allowed access to these techniques. The law specifies that a child conceived in this way will "have the right to find out" the identity of his/her father. "Lesbian couples who have recourse to assisted reproduction in a hospital will both be named as parents of the child who results from the treatment," the law stated.

Libération 04/06/05 -