New guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) suggest that IVF treatment on the NHS should be offered to same-sex couples as well as women over the age of 40.
The guidance, published this week, states that NHS-funded IVF should be available to same-sex couples who have already tried other fertility techniques.
It also recommends raising the age limit for IVF to 42 in cases where women have not received fertility treatment before.
Previous guidelines from NICE suggested that the taxpayer should stop funding IVF when a woman reaches the age of 39.
Criticism
Anthony Ozimic from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children criticised the proposals stating: "This decision ignores biology in the face of politically correct social engineering.
"Same sex couples do not have fertility problems, they have chosen a naturally non-fertile lifestyle, and we shouldn't be spending millions of pounds of taxpayers money on fertility procedures for people who do not have fertility problems."
It will be up to individual local NHS trusts to decide whether or not to follow the new recommendations.
But a spokesperson from the Department of Health said: "We believe that all PCTs - and in the future, Clinical Commissioning Groups - should take account of National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines for fertility treatment."
Comment
Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of Christian Concern, said:
“These proposals undermine the crucial role played by fathers in the lives of their children, and will lead to the whole scale restructuring of society with serious repercussions for everyone.
"IVF is an expensive procedure with a low success rate, and which results in millions of embryos being wasted.
"Embryos are not products, but human lives. Several human lives are lost for every child born as a result of IVF. It's time for the cost and ethics of this procedure to be seriously considered."
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