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Until now, infertility - the failure to achieve pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sex - was not considered a disability. But now in dramatic move the World Health Organisation will change the standard to suggest that a person who is unable to find a suitable sexual partner or is lacking a sexual relationship to have children - will now be equally classified as disabled. WHO says the change will give every individual “the right to reproduce”.

This absurd nonsense is not simply re-defining infertility but completely side-lining the biological process Josephine Quintavalle from Comment on Reproductive Ethics

Under the new rules, heterosexual single men and women and gay men and women who want to have children will now be given the same priority as a couple seeking IVF because of medical fertility problems. But critics branded the new laws as “absurd nonsense” arguing that the organisation has overstepped the mark by moving into social matters rather than health. Gareth Johnson MP, former chair of the All Parliamentary Group on Infertility, whose own children were born thanks to fertility treatment, said: “I’m in general a supporter of IVF. But I’ve never regarded infertility as a disability or a disease but rather a medical matter. “I’m the first to say you should have more availability of IVF to infertile couples but we need to ensure this whole subject retains credibility.

A person who cannot find a suitable partner will be classed as disabled

heterosexual single men and women and gay men and women who want to have children will now be given

IVF is classed as a disability

“This definition runs the risk of undermining the work Nice and others have done to ensure IVF treatment is made available for infertile couples when you get definitions off the mark like this. I think it’s trying to put IVF into a box that it doesn’t fit into frankly.” Josephine Quintavalle,from Comment on Reproductive Ethics added: “This absurd nonsense is not simply re-defining infertility but completely side-lining the biological process and significance of natural intercourse between a man and a woman. “How long before babies are created and grown on request completely in the lab?” But Dr David Adamson, an author of the new standards, argued it is a “big chance” for single and gay people.

Single women can now apply for IVF as a disability