SYDNEY -- Sex and the single woman: This unlikely topic has suddenly become a political cause celebre in Australia. Even the Olympics are taking a temporary back seat to the debate on unmarried women's right to motherhood.
Violence erupts in the region -- Indonesians killing East Timorese, Fijian terrorists savaging Indo-Fijians, Solomon Islanders in revolt -- yet this placid country is looking inward, mesmerized by the after-effects of one woman's victorious legal battle to become pregnant.
It all started when Lisa Meldrum, a heterosexual woman in her 30s, won a constitutional battle in the southern state of Victoria. She successfully appealed against Victoria's Infertility Treatment Act. That five-year-old act restricts fertility procedures to married women and those in heterosexual de facto relationships.