ABSTRACT
Over the past 16 years or so, there has been an acceleration of the amount of discussion in the UK of various medical and scientific techniques which have been called modern reproductive techniques or ‘reproductive technologies’. These generally refer to artificial reproductive methods or reproductive methods which intervene in human reproduction. These include artificial insemination using a husband’s sperm, that is, injecting a woman with the husband’s sperm (AIH); artificial insemination using semen from a donor (AID); ova and sperm mixed together in a drop of fluid and placed back in the fallopian tube (GIFT); in vitro fertilisation – fertilisation effected ‘in water’ outside the body, where, just before ovulation, an egg is collected from the ovary and placed in a laboratory glass (a petri-dish) and semen is added to it so that, if fertilisation occurs, it is returned to the uterus where it may implant and then develop as normal (IVF). Embryo donation and surrogacy also come within this umbrella of ‘reproductive technologies’. Surrogacy is a short form for ‘surrogate motherhood’ (defined and discussed below). Yet, although we tend to think of these kinds of practices as being of modern vintage, there is evidence to suggest that the first recorded AIH took place in 1866 (see Home, E, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1866, Vol 18, pp 157-78; and Hard, AD, ‘Artificial impregnation’ in Medical World, 1909, pp 163-65, cited by Cuisine in ‘Legal issues in human reproduction’, in McLean, S (ed), Legal Issues in Human Reproduction, 1990, Dartmouth) and the broad practice of surrogacy is frequently cited as dating from Biblical times. In more modern times, however, the origin of the growing modern public debate, awareness and discussion of these phenomena might be more readily traced to July 1978, when Louise Brown became the world’s first test-tube baby, sparking off a decade of intense speculation and anticipation about reproductive technologies. Louse Brown’s birth was seen as heralding a ‘new era in making babies’ (Singer and Wells (1984), Preface). Of course, other affluent societies, such as the USA, Australia and several Western European countries, have also been debating the legal, social, political and moral implications of these so called ‘new technologies’.
