Sperm Donation

 

This article first appeared in FNF's McKenzie newsletter #42 (August 1999)

 

The Birds and the Bees (and the Geraniums)

IT MAY COME as a surprise to many that the term 'test-tube baby' was coined long before Louise Brown hit the headlines in the 1970s.

In fact, the use of AID (artficial insemination by donor) started in Britain in the 1930s - though in conditions of strict secrecy.

On 12 July the Channel 4 series Witness featured a programme, 'Secret Fathers', which related the history of the subject and included interviews with children (now adults) born as a result.

The pioneers were Mary Barton and Margaret Jackson, two doctors acting independently of each other, who both believed that women had the 'right' to have children. Established animal husbandry practice meant that vets knew more about the technique than doctors, so Margaret Jackson visited a cattle farm to find out more, and what she learned there led to the first operation in 1939. Mary Barton went public in 1945, publishing a paper which brought an immediate storm of protest.

By this time the pair were dealing with 200 cases a year. They vetted 'suitable families' who paid a £5 consultation fee (two weeks wages in those days) and sought donors - professional, married men with children - at every opprtunity. No fee was paid for the sperm but anonymity was guaranteed - there were no records kept.

In Dr Barton's case the harvested seed was sent - by bus - to her unassuming surgery in an ordinary terraced house and stored in the conservatory - "behind the third geranium on the right" - until the time came for treatment. By the late 1950s the case-load had risen to several thousand each year and the industry had taken hold abroad. One Scottish woman was treated in the U.S.A. without the knowledge of her husband, who promptly filed for divorce on grounds of adultery (the case even led to the making of a film, A Question of Adultery).

Public disquiet gave rise to the setting up of a Royal Commission under Lord Faversham in 1958. The Church of England expressed strong disapproval of human AID but the Home Office took the pragmatic line that it could not be criminalised and the Government decided not to legislate.

And what of the children who were born as a result? Channel 4's interviewees were Chnstine (who did not find out until 1997 that she had been conceived by AID) and David (who was told by his 'father' when he was twelve).

Christine had understanding for her mother's dilemma but felt that the secrecy was always a problem. "My entire relationship with my mother was clouded", she said, and concluded unhappily that "I will probably never know who I am".

David said he was "angry" with the people who made it impossible for him to find out who his real father was - as he put it "an AID family is a three-parent family" - and resented the secrecy which he felt was "nearly always poisonous". His mother had also found it so difficult that she asked him to stop referring to her and her husband "mummy and daddy".

Meanwhile, the debate rages over whether AID children should given the right to know their parentage. Times have change and the attitudes of Mary Barton and Margaret Jackson seem as out of date as the racism and sexism of some of their contemporaries.

Certainly it seems unlikely in the modern age that a doctor would deliberately destroy all records (as Barton did). And Jackson's reported lack of concern for the child's need to know his or her natural father's identity - "It's none of their business" - seem particularly callous. As one interviewee put it, she had "absolutely no comprehension of why I should want to know who my father was".

But Professor Robert Snowden, who is very much of the modern age, had this to say: 'The child is just an idea in somebody's head. The rights of the non-existent child tend to take second place...".

And the child's need for a father is irrelevant, it would seem.

 

Richard Gregory
August 1999