Die »Notwendigkeit eines Vaters für das Kind« und der Zugang lesbischer Frauen zur Reproduktionsmedizin (The child’s need for a father and access to assisted reproductive technologies by lesbians)

This chapter provides an overview of two broad areas relating to lesbians’ use of reproductive services for family building. First, it identifies strategies used in the building of ‘planned’ lesbian families – where a lesbian couple, the genetic mother and the social or ‘co’ mother, plan their family together - and in which children are raised from birth without the presence of a father. Second, it reviews policy and legislation regulating and restricting lesbians’ use of reproductive services in a number of countries both globally and specifically in Europe, before considering in more detail the ‘need for a father’ debate in the United Kingdom that resulted in legislative provisions effective from October 2009, formally ending discrimination against lesbians seeking to access fertility services in the United Kingdom