Sex in the 1960s: Artificial Insemination

SEX IN THE 1960s: ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION

Proxy Parenthood

Artificial insemination involves placing sperm near a woman's cervix (the part of the uterus at the top of the vagina) by instrumental means. The physician injects the sperm of the husband into a proxy parent when he is not the cause of the couple's infertility or, in other cases, the sperm of a donor, or proxy parent. It was estimated in 1960 that one thousand to twelve hundred babies per year were artificially conceived by proxy, for a total of about fifty thousand children in the United States since the procedure was introduced.

Freezing Sperm

As reliable methods were developed to freeze sperm for storage, artificial insemination attracted more interest, and the issues related to the process posed more perplexing problems. A geneticist suggested that men freeze sperm samples before exposure to radio-activity (which can cause sterility), for example, which seemed a valid precautionary measure. More controversial were the possibilities that long-dead men whose sperm had been frozen could still father children or that genetically attractive men—chosen for their intelligence, athletic ability, or looks—could participate in sperm markets to sell their genetic qualities to women shopping for a means of mateless conception.

Legal Questions

Legal issues arose as well. One New York physician was arrested and charged with rape for performing artificial insemination. Children artificially conceived were declared illegitimate in some states, and the children's birth certificates marked them as products of proxy parenthood. Attorneys scrambled to find answers to a host of insemination-related questions: Can a sterile husband or donor's wife sue for adultery after artificial insemination? What are the responsibilities of a sterile husband to his wife's child by a proxy parent? Could the child sue to become the donor's heir?

Procedural Questions

Physicians and scientists dealt with a different set of issues. They had to defend the integrity of the procedure after an early report described three pregnancies using frozen sperm, falsely implying that a severely deformed child resulting from one of the pregnancies was caused by the freezing process. In fact, most of these questions and issues were easily resolved, medically or through legislation, but artificial insemination was one of several fields in which modern science introduced new possibilities that previous laws and social practice had not contemplated.

BIRTH CONTROL VACCINE?

In 1966 Dr. Gregory Pincus of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, reported the possibility of a new kind of birth control: a once-a-year pregnancy vaccination. Pincus, who had recently completed a study of the effects of oral contraceptives on women, claimed that animals could be successfully protected against conception by an annual injection, though researchers had not yet developed a vaccine that was effective on humans. Pincus explained that the vaccine would probably utilize a sex hormone, the same principle used in oral contraceptives.

Source:

"Pregnancy Vaccination?" Science News Letter, 89 (8 January 1966): 22.

Sources:

"Frozen Fatherhood," Time, 78 (8 September 1961): 68;

"The 'Proxy' Baby," Newsweek, 55 (30 May 1960): 80.