British Argue on Test Tube Babies

Title:

British Argue on Test Tube Babies

Date:

1947 April 3 Thursday

Description:

Newspaper clipping from page 10 of the 3 April 1947 edition of the Ellensburg Daily Record (Washington, USA). Via Google Books.

Transcription

BRITISH ARGUE ON TEST TUBE BABIES

Proactice Condemned As Adultery, But Draws Defenders

LONDON, April 2—(AP)—Having "test tube" babies was condemned as adultery and defended as a way to brighten childless homes in a series of lectures published today by the Public Morality Council.

The issue was important here because of the declining population, a high rate of childless marriages, and the number of unmarried women and young widows deprived of husbands and children by the war.

Most churchmen said artificial insemination is "degrading," and adulterous unless the donor is the woman's husband.

Doctors who treat couples unable to reproduce normally said artificial insemination, either by the husband or a stranger, was "oftend justifiable."

Lawyers said children born after artificial insemination by a stranger are ilegitimate.

A sociologist, Prof. E. O. James of London university, said artificial insemination by a third person jeopardized rather than safeguarded marital happiness.

One practitioner, Dr. Mary Barton, said there has been 300 "test tube" babies born in England in the last five years after articifical insemination by strangers and "thousands" born after artificial insemination by husbands.

Dr. Barton, a gynecologist who has arranged artificial inseminations, said ten percent of all British marriages were infertile and adoption, in 70 percent of cases, would not satisfy the woman's maternal instincts.