In England, a family-counselling charity has received permission to run a lottery in which the prize is a test-tube baby.

Included, if considered necessary, is donor sperm and/or a surrogate female to carry the baby to term in her uterus.

How bizarre, you say . . . trust those poms . . . not something we in human-dignity-respecting Australia would tolerate.

Bad news.

The organisers have had so much feedback from Australia on their website that they intend starting up the same thing here.

* * *

There will be opposition.

The CEO of “Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment” describes the proposal as “ethically murky”.

A spokesman for Sydney IVF calls it “disgraceful”.

Sydney IVF?

Doesn’t that ring a bell?

Back in 2006, wasn’t it they who were offering a sex-selection service? Perhaps they still do.

You can’t get much more disgraceful than that – unborn babies culled/exterminated simply for being not the desired gender.

Makes you feel queasy to think about it

* * *

The fact is that all IVF is “ethically murky”.

In Australia there are, at any one time, about 100,000 fertilised eggs kept frozen in the fridges of our 50-odd fertility clinics.

With current success rates, these will result in about 10,000 babies.

The other 90,000?

They will end up dead – either from being used for medical research experiments or being discarded after their use-by date.

Yet is not each and every embryo a genetically-complete and unique human being?

A child of God?

Is not the death of such a human being — insofar as it results from the intention of those responsible — an act of MURDER?

Not a popular thought.

But is it wrong, logic-wise?