About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

8 Law. Guild Rev. 496 (1948)
Your Test Tube Baby May Be Illegitimate

handle is hein.journals/guild8 and id is 230 raw text is: YOUR TEST TUBE BABY MAY BE ILLEGITIMATE MoRRIs PLoscowE The people of. New York were recently treated to the unhappy spectacle of a woman seeking to have her child declared illegitmate in order to deprive her husband of the weekly visit he had been granted at the time of their legal separation. Her contention was that the child was the product of artificial insemina- tion. Her husband was not the father. Thus, even though he had consented to the proced- ure, even though the child was named for him, and even though he wished to be known as the father, the child was not his legitimate child and he had no rights- to it.' The case aroused widespread interest. It was one of the few public indications that arti- ficial insemination is something more than a scientific curiosity. In recent years, artificial insemination has been widely used as a method of inducing pregnancies. A survey in 1941 disclosed that at least 9489 women throughout the country had achieved at least one preg- nancy by this method. Dr. Marie P. Warner reported at a recent'symposium at the Acad- emy of Medicine in New York that she had attempted the arficial insemination of 102 women and had succeeded in about 75% of her cases. Occasionally, a second and some- times even a third pregnancy is induced by this means. There are men and women who feel that children are necessary to a normal family life. They are perfectly willing to have these children by artificial insemination if that is the only means available to them. The popularity of artificial insemination is likely to increase as knowledge of its possibili- ties spreads. There are in the United States at the present time about two million child- less couples. Approximately 10% to 15% of all marriages are sterile. Since biblical times it has been customary to place the responsi- bility for childlessness upon the wife, unless the husband was clearly impotent. But mod- ern research on sterility has dispelled the 1. Strnad v. Strnad, 190 Misc. 786, 78 N. Y. Supp. 2nd 390 (1948). notion that the wife is exclusively responsible for the failure of a couple to have children. Male responsibility for the barrenness of a marriage has been estimated by physicians to account for 40% to 50% of the cases. It should be noted, however, that it is extremely diffi- cult to give exact percentages on male and female responsibility for sterility. In the normal situation both the husband and the wife contribute in some degree to the child- lessness of the marriage. Artificial insemination may be used to give the wife a baby where she is not sterile and it is difficult or impossible for her to have a baby by natural means. Two different types of sit- uations must, however, be distinguished. First, the husband may be fertile, but impreg- nation by' natural means may be difficult or impossible because of his impotency. In this situation the wife may be impregnated arti- ficially with the semen of her husband and the child will be truly that of the husband and the wife. A major portion of artificial insemina- tions are of this character. Secondly, the hus- band may be sterile. In this event the doctor must use the semen of a person other than the husband, if the wife is to have a baby. An honorable physician normally uses the great- est care in the selection of a donor. He tries to obtain one whose mental, physical and psychological characteristics most closely ap- proximate those of the husband and the wife. Thus no ethical practitioner obtains semen from a semen bank. Only the doctor knows the donor. The latter does not know the hus- band or the wife and they do not know him. Many women chose the method of artificial insemination rather than adoption in order to obtain, a child. Adoption is neither quick nor easy, except for the woman who has money for a black market baby and who is willing to take a chance on a child that has not been thoroughly investigated. Moreover, adoption does not satisfy the woman's maternal in-

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most