Posts filed under ‘Artificial Insemination (human)’
Sperm Banks (1985)
Barcode (ID): 06B0195882 
Main Search Term and Keywords: Sperm Banks, Sperm Donation, Artificial Insemination
Date of Broadcast: 2nd April 1985
Clip Duration: 2 min 7 seconds
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Description: A look at a “sperm bank” doctor and family, as the US government considers new laws to control the booming sperm bank business. (The banks sell sperm donated by men with top IQs to women hoping to conceive gifted children.) Dr Robert Graham is interviewed at the Repository for Germinal Choice. Dr Afton Blake (mother) said her son, Doron, is already showing signs of above average intelligence.
- Dr Robert Graham
- Storage of the sperm of 15 men – each with outstanding qualities including several Nobel Prize winners
- Follows Dr Afton Blake and her son – artificially inseminated herself
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Controversy Over Artificial Insemination (1991)
Barcode (ID): 03b0023757 
Main Search Term and Keywords: Artificial Insemination, Artificial Life
Date of Broadcast: 11th March 1991
Clip Duration: 4 min 10 seconds
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Description: A woman in the Midlands who has never had sexual intercourse could become the first heterosexual virgin in Britain to become a mother. The woman, in her 20s, is undergoing artificial insemination. MPs have demanded laws to ban doctors from promoting ‘virgin births’.
- Artificial Insemination by donor or AID
- Helps 15,000 childless couples a year
- 3 woman giving counselling at Birmingham Hospital
- 1 woman is to become ‘a virgin mother’ as she is in her 20s and has never had sexual intercourse
- Warnock Report of 1984 – first ever set of guidelines
- Says ‘Children should be born into a two parent family’ and ‘Clinics did not need to be licensed’
- August 1st 1991, Human Fertilisation Embryology Act says ‘A woman shall NOT be provided with treatment services unless account has been taken of the welfare of any child born as a result of the treatment…including the need of that child for a father’
- Code of Practice for clinics is currently being drawn up
- Still will leave enough ‘space’ for single woman to have a baby
- Interviews/opinions – for and against
- Instruction booklet on AI
- Interview with Lord Winston
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Artificial Insemination (1997)
Barcode (ID): 03B0238650 
Main Search Term and Keywords: Artificial Insemination, reproduction, in vitro fertilisation, IVF, infertility
Date of Broadcast: 3rd November 1997
Clip Duration: 8 mins 11 seconds
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A good overall for and against disclosing information to a child about their conception by artificial insemination
Description:
The latest research shows that more than three-quarters of parents that conceive babies by artificial insemination never tell their offspring, despite the possibility they may find out by chance. Report on the culture of secrecy surrounding these children which often looms over their adult lives.
- Consists of series of people talking about when they found out they were conceived by artificial insemination
- Survey of 45 families – 80% decided not to tell their children
- Why? Ashamed about infertility, do not want their natural parents to be found
- Same people explain how it destroyed their family
- Believe honesty is the best policy
- An area where it is difficult to be prescriptive
- Donor insemination children should have the right to how they came into the world
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