Don't let the law pretend that fathers don't exist

The Lords have been earnestly debating a Bill intended to give new rights to lesbian couples who have children through IVF.

Where the lesbian couple have entered into a civil partnership, they would both henceforth be registered as the legal parents. And the existing requirement for IVF clinics to consider the "need for a father" would be abolished.

Self-evidently, this Bill is another extension of the general denigration of fatherhood, confirming the assumption that men are strictly surplus to requirements, except as "sperm donors". However, happily, these fantasies of universal entitlement to father-free children are running into a few little problems out there in the real world.

In April 2005, perpetual anonymity for "sperm donors" was removed. Although "sperm donors" have no rights over or obligations towards their children, now the children themselves can, once they reach 18, seek out their biological parents. Although nothing like a full restitution of the links between biological parents and their offspring, this simple measure has had drastic effects. There is now a shortage of "sperm donors".

"Sperm donors" is an expression that should only ever be used in inverted commas because it is a lie in action. It is true that if no conception results, then all that has been donated is sperm. If a child is born, then the "sperm donor" is not that at all but a secret father and that is what recruitment campaigns for "sperm donors" should call them. Because the 2005 legislation has helped men realise that truth anyway.

The even more deceitfully named Government-funded charity The National Gamete Donation Trust admits: "We're in the middle of a sperm shortage crisis."

There were only 295 donors registered in 2006 in the entire country, the HFEA reports. Perhaps that is not, after all, too few but 295 too many.

To combat this understandable reluctance among men to become a secret father, the Trust has up on its website a really vile web recruiting campaign, www.giveatoss.com, which features a porny blonde wearing a T-shirt emblazoned: "We want your sperm" over her breasts.

As a way of treating parenthood, the most important of human decisions, it is grossly insulting to men.

As indeed is the proposal to remove even the formulaic obligation on IVF clinics to consider the need for a father. But then men, in comparison with women, have had little notion in the past of realising their rights in these matters. Perhaps now we'll wake up to an insult too far.