Assisted Reproduction Technology: Trends and Suggestions for the Developing Law

Assisted reproduction is a relatively recent phenomenon. Aside from a few isolated examples, which apparently did not raise legal issues, assisted reproduction did not really come into its own until the practice of artificial insemination became common in the mid-twentieth century. Perhaps the earliest recorded example of a gestational agreement (surrogate mother) took place in biblical times.1 The first known example of artificial (non-coital) insemination was in 1785, by John Hunter, the famous Scottish surgeon.2 In 1866, the prominent American gynecologist, James Marion Sims recorded a successful artificial insemination (AI).3 A donor insemination (DI) took place in Philadelphia in 1884. Reportedly, a patient of Doctor William Pancoast, a young Quaker woman who sought treatment for infertility (it was later determined by Doctor Pancoast that her husband was sterile, i.e., had azoospermia) was inseminated by Doctor Pancoast with semen from the “best looking” medical student in the medical school class that he taught, without her knowledge or consent. Apparently neither the woman nor her husband were ever aware of the insemination, or of the fact that