England's courts considered complex legal and ethical questions in 1987. These included the legality and moral propriety of the involuntary sterilization of a mentally handicapped person, surrogacy issues, the rights of a prospective father to stop his girlfriend from having an abortion, the extent to which account could be taken of harm suffered by the child of a heroin addict before birth, the freedom of an in vitro fertilization clinic to deny treatment to an ex-prostitute, and the admissibility and probative value of diagnostic interviews in cases of child sexual abuse. The year also saw a major inquiry into sexual abuse in Cleveland and the publication of two more significant reports on the deaths of children at the hands of step parents. The only major legislation on family matters, the Family Law Reform Act of 1987, which is designed to eliminate the legal disabilities of children born out of marriage, also raised moral controversy by providing that children born of artificial insemination by a donor may be treated as children of the marriage. There were also important court decisions on cohabitation, contraceptive counseling, and cultural conflict. Important changes in the institution of wardship were proposed, and there was much talk but little action regarding the establishment of the family court. A government white paper on embryo research was published. 187 footnotes.