1960's Medicine and Health | 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....