HL Deb 26 February 1958 vol 207 cc926-1016

2.43 p.m.

LORD BLACKFORD rose to move to resolve, That in the opinion of this House, artificial insemination of a married woman by a donor other than her husband is tantamount to adultery, that it should be sufficient ground for divorce, and that all children so conceived are illegitimate. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Resolution which stands in my name on the Order Paper. There are at least three methods of artificial insemination. There is A.I.H., where the husband is the fertilising agent; there is C.A.I., known as confused artificial insemination, where the husband co-operates with the donor; and there is A.I.D., which is artificial insemination by an unknown donor. My remarks this afternoon will be confined to the last of these three methods. Your Lordships' House is rich in ecclesiastical dignitaries, legal luminaries, medical leaders and others who may have made a deep study of this subject, and it may well be thought that it would have been more suitable for this debate to be opened by one of them instead of myself. I am bound to say that since the impulsive moment about thirty days ago when I handed this Resolution to the learned Clerk, I have often thought the same thing. Still, it may not be a bad thing, perhaps, that an ordinary man in the street who a month ago knew nothing about artificial insemination should submit his opinions to your Lordships after a cursory study of one month, and then leave them to be torn in shreds by the experts afterwards.

I thought my first action should be to find out whether this matter had any Parliamentary history, and I was not at all surprised to find that your Lordships' House has been in the van in this matter. As long ago as July 23, 1943, a debate was initiated by my noble and ever-enterprising friend, Lord Brabazon of Tara, in a speech of great brilliance, full of wise saws and modern instances. many of them highly scientific. The subsequent half dozen speakers, including the Minister in charge, made scant reference to my noble friend's remarks, possibly because they did not rightly comprehend they confined themselves almost entirely to the question of the insemination of livestock. Then in 1945, the most reverend Primate set up a Commission of representative men of science and the law, and so on, and they reported in 1948 in a comprehensive document which is well worth reading by anybody interested in this subject. In 1949 a debate took place on two Motions moved by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, and again by my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara, and only three speakers followed the two movers—a total of five. This afternoon fifteen peers have put down their names to speak, which shows the measure of increased interest in the subject.

I thought my next job would be to try to find out something about the historical antecedents of A.I.D. and something about its numerical scale. This is not an easy matter because of the "cloak and dagger" secrecy in which the whole transaction is wrapped. No doubt there have been isolated, unknown instances of the operation down through the years, ever since the celebrated surgeon, John Hunter, produced a baby for the benefit of a linen's draper's wife by A.I.D. in the year 1790, but as a regular, recognised branch of medical practice this method is certainly hardly twenty years old in this country. In the year 1938 a small group of scientists and doctors was formed under the ægis of Sir William Gilliatt and Sir Charles Reid, two eminent gynecologists, to experiment in this field. I have interviewed a practitioner belonging to this group. The group practised for ten years and then broke up, because they came to the conclusion that their experiments were bad from the point of view of the child and because they said that so many of the couples who approached them were unsuited to become parents at all.

In answer to the question, how many babies had they produced during those ten years, the doctor was extremely sensitive to secrecy, and all I could achieve was that they had at any rate reached three figures. Of course, that could mean anything from 100 to 999, but for the sake of argument I have taken the figure of 200. Doctor Mary Barton, who is a leading exponent in this field, in a speech in 1947 said that she had started the practice in 1942 and up to that date had produced 300 A.I.D. babies. What has happened since 1947? The News Chronicle, in an article on February 4, estimated that there are now 10,000 A.I.D. children in this country. I wrote to the editor and asked him for his basis of information, and I received a most polite letter from the writer of the article saying how difficult it was to arrived at any accurate estimate, owing to the secrecy, but saying that he had consulted eight doctors and had come to the conclusion of the 10,000 figure.

At this point I ought to say that I have had the great advantage of a long interview with Dr. Mary Barton. She is a most co-operative individual, who answered all questions with frank directness, or with vigorous rebuttal if she did not agree with me (which was often the case); she is devoted to her practice and utterly convinced that she confers a great benefit and happiness on all her patients. At the end of our interview, which lasted an hour and a half and was conducted in the presence of two other doctors, I asked her to what extent, if at all, I might quote her. After a moment's consultation with the doctors as to whether to allow her name to be used might be unethical, she looked at me directly and said, "You can repeat as much as you like; I have nothing to hide,"—altogether a most engaging personality.

Now let us get back to the figures. Dr. Mary Barton will not admit to a higher figure than 5,000 A.I.D. children. She herself has produced about 900; she speaks of another practitioner who has produced about the same number, if not rather more. She mentioned also five other practitioners, and agreed with the News Chronicle man and with me that it is very difficult indeed to arrive at any accurate estimate. So I have chosen a figure mid-way between that of the News Chronicle and that of Dr. Barton; I take a figure of 7,500 as being the number of A.I.D. babies hitherto produced, of whom only about 500 were produced prior to 1947. That is a significant thought, because if 7,000 have been produced since then, their average age can be only about 5 to 5½ years. That will be a point to remember when, later on, we come to consider the effect of A.I.D. upon the children.

May I now turn to the case which aroused my interest in this subject, the case of Maclennan v. Maclennan, recently heard in the Court of Session at Edinburgh before Lord Wheatley. In this case the husband petitioned for divorce from his wife, on the ground that she had left him and gone to America, and had produced a child which she alleged had been produced by artificial insemination in that country; and the appellant's counsel argued that that constituted adultery. Lord Wheatley has delivered an opinion on that argument. I obtained a copy of it which I have here—it runs to thirty-one pages of closely typed foolscap. The Scots are a very thorough race. Your Lordships would not wish me to read it all to you. At page 2 Lord Wheatley says that this case is unique in the annals of our law"— by which no doubt he means the annals of the Scottish courts, but I think the statement is equally true of the English courts. Then, at page 7 he says: It is almost trite to say that a married woman who, without the consent of her husband has the seed of a male donor injected into her person by mechanical means in order to procreate a child who would not be a child of the marriage has committed a grave and heinous breach of the contract of marriage. The question for my determination, however, is not the moral culpability of such an act, but is whether such an act constitutes adultery in its legal meaning.

Then he goes on, for twenty-seven pages, to say why it does not constitute adultery in its legal meaning; and in support of that view he quotes a large number of cases and a large number of definitions of adultery by eminent bygone jurists, like Stair, Erskine and Sir George Mackenzie, who used such phrases as "violation of the marriage bed", "conjunctio corporum","carnal concupiscence" and other similar repugnant words. Of course, these jurists were quite right. But when they made their definitions they were not aware of this new scientific knowledge: they were concerned only with the age-old conception of sexual intercourse; so it would be idle to try to argue that artificial insemination is adultery. That is why I say in my Resolution that it is "tantamount to adultery", and I will now proceed to try to enlist your Lordships' support for that argument.

To do so I will rely on only two points. The first is this: in normal sexual intercourse between a married couple, assuming that they want to beget a child, there are two ideas present, the love idea and the reproductive idea. At the crucial moment, of course, the reproductive idea is submerged in the love idea, but immediately afterwards the reproductive idea reasserts itself, and the wife may well turn to her husband and say. "Well, I hope we have started a baby this time", or words to that effect. If the wife surrenders herself to a lover, of course, only the love idea is present. She in a state of emotional rapture, wants to give him ecstasy to receive from him the same; and she positively prohibits the reproductive idea by the use of a contraceptive; and the last thing that the lovers wish to do is to produce an illegitimate child. But in artificial insemination by a donor the situation is quite different. There, there is no love idea present, only the reproductive idea; and the woman surrenders her reproductive organism to the seed of a total stranger with the cold-blooded, deliberate hope of begetting an illegitimate child. If she does that without her husband's consent has she not committed just as grave and heinous a breach of the contract of marriage as if she had given herself to an illicit lover? I believe that she has done worse, because she has foisted an illegitimate child on an unwilling husband, for him to bring up for the rest of its life, whereas in the first case no harm is done.

The second point that I wish to bring to your Lordships' notice is the condition known as fecundation ab extra. This is a very rare happening in normal sexual intercourse but one which is admitted both by medical science and the law. It was a crucial point in the case of Russell v. Russell and the late Lord Dunedin delivered himself of an opinion on that case when he said that if this condition occurs in an illicit intercourse then fecundation ab extra is, without doubt, adultery. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wheatley, will not accept that, nor will so great an authority as the Lord President of the Divorce Court, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Merriman—unless he has changed his mind since he spoke in 1949. On the other hand, I must say that the two eminent lawyers who drew up the legal section of the Archbishop's Report—Mr. Justice Vaisey and Mr. Henry Willink—do not agree. They take the opposite view, and those two learned gentlemen will be much fortified to know that I agree with them.

Of course, when Lord Dunedin was speaking in 1924 this new field of scientific knowledge had never been heard of, at least in this country. It was sixteen years before it began to be practised here and there is no question that when Lord Dunedin gave his dictum he was thinking of ordinary sexual intercourse, with the close juxtaposition of bodies, organs and so forth; but if he were here to-day l should like to ask him, as I would ask anybody else, if artificial insemination is not fecundation from outside, what is it? Those are the only two points that I bring forward in support of my argument that this behaviour is tantamount to adultery. I believe that if it is performed without the husband's consent the husband should be entitled to relief by divorce if he so wishes. I believe that the law ought to be amended to that effect, and I ask your Lordships' support for that part of my Resolution. Now we go on to the third phrase in the resolution which speaks of illegitimacy.

VISCOUNT ASTOR

My Lords, just before the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, leaves that point, will he make clear what is his attitude on artificial insemination by a donor with the husband's consent? Does he want that to be considered adultery, or not?

LORD BLACKFORD

I am only arguing that the actual act is tantamount to adultery. If the husband has consented then of course he has connived in the act, and there is nothing more to be said—

A NOBLE LORD: Oh, yes, there is!

LORD BLACKFORD

My Lords, I appreciate that there is, but I am only answering the point put by the noble Viscount.

There seems to be some confusion of thought about illegitimacy in this matter. I have had two or three letters, particularly from other practitioners, pointing out that a child born in wedlock is held to be legitimate in the eyes of the law until its legitimacy is challenged in a court. We all know that, of course; but surely it is equally true to say that the only legitimate child is the one who is the joint product of a husband and wife; and an A.I.D. child is not the joint product of a husband and wife and therefore basically is illegitimate. The fact that in the eyes of the world he may appear legitimate is due only to the fact that the husband and wife have conspired to conceal the truth about his birth and have committed the crime of perjury in putting down the husband as the father of the child when signing the birth certificate. Surely that is the correct view.

What makes husbands consent to artificial insemination in preference to adoption? There is one chief reason which, I suppose, applies in some 80 per cent. of cases: it is the wish to satisfy the cravings of the childless wife for maternity. That is a reason with which we can all sympathise. I suppose we men cannot possibly appreciate the feelings of a woman who has not produced a child from her own body and the cravings she may have to do so. We are not in a position to pass an opinion on that subject because as the male sex we cannot understand it. But it is a reason with which we can very deeply sympathise and it is a good reason. A second reason is the wish of both the husband and the wife to have a child which is at any rate 50 per cent. theirs and to have the interest of bringing up that child rather than a child which is adopted.

There is a third reason: the fear of the husband that unless he consents to a practice of this kind his wife may run away to another man. Doctor Mary Barton said that in her experience that was a very rare reason. Then there is a fourth reason, which is a bad one. It is to get a spurious heir to a title or the life tenancy of an entailed estate or a trust fund. That is obviously a bad reason because naturally one would thereby defraud the rightful heir. When I put that point to Doctor Barton she seemed rather surprised at it and said, "Surely people of that kind would never apply for artificial insemination by a donor." She went on to say that her patients were mostly what she described as moderate, middle-class people, that she has some patients from the wage-earning classes and has even had one application from a couple who were on public assistance. But is there not the possibility that the moderate, middleclass person may unexpectedly become the life tenant of a trust fund? That idea cannot be entirely ruled out.

I have given your Lordships four reasons for my view, and no doubt noble Lords can think of others, but your Lordships will notice that there is one characteristic which is common to all four reasons: that they are all completely selfish reasons. They gratify the longings and desires of the husband and the wife. But they take no account of what effect their action may have upon the religious aspect; upon the community; upon the family unit, and, above all, upon the end product: the child. In the presence of so many distinguished divines, of course, I should not dream of touching upon the religious aspect of this question, but I should like to say a word or two about the effect upon the community and the family unit.

I suppose it is true to say that the strength and integrity of the community is dependent upon the strength and integrity of the family unit, by which I mean not just the childless couples, but all the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and so on. I think this country believes very strongly in the family unit, and some of us feel that there is a tendency for the family unit to weaken in these days, through the enormous increase in divorce; through the rush and hurry of modern life; through the laxity of parental discipline, and so on, which gives rise to juvenile delinquency, and insulting hooliganism at Glasgow University, and hysterical dancing, unhealthy plays and so forth. Is A.I.D. likely to increase the weakening of the family unit? Of course, Dr. Barton and her co-practitioners would say, "No; on the contrary, we help to strengthen the family unit because we give a child, or children, to couples who would otherwise be childless, and we inject into the family healthy blood from a virile donor which would not otherwise be there." And I am bound to agree that it is a little difficult to argue against that view in the presence of the idealistic, highly selective, highly-trained practitioners with whom I have been in contact.

But there is one proviso about that thought, and that is the keeping of the secret. That is my most serious thought and doubt about this whole operation: will the secret be kept? Last Spring, my wife and I attended a tea party on Salisbury Plain, and there were three young girls there of about seventeen or eighteen years of age. The conversation turned to the subject of adoption, and suddenly the three young women, who up to that point, had been modestly listening to the wisdom of their elders, burst unanimously into song, with intense vehemence, to say how they would all have hated to think they were adopted children. I was very much struck by that attitude—but what would they have thought if at about that age they had been told they were A.I.D. children? I venture to think that the result would have been psychologically disastrous.

At this point, I would remind your Lordships that the average age of the 7,500 A.I.D. children I have mentioned is still only about five. It is a cardinal principle of adoption that one has to inculcate the adopted child with the truth, or, at any rate with the story that one is going to carry on through life with him, about his origin. One cannot possibly do that in the case of A.I.D. On the contrary, one is enjoined to keep the secret from him for the whole of his life. We all know how difficult it is to keep secrets; and we all know how precocious and inquisitive young people are. Boys of twelve or fourteen years of age—and girls, too, for that matter—know a tremendous lot in these days. They have access to newspapers and so on. Supposing your young boy, of, say, twelve to fourteen years of age, suddenly looks up from to-day's Daily Mail and says, "Look at this article on the middle page, Daddy. What does 'A.I.D.' mean?" What is your answer to that question? It is no use in these days telling him to turn over the page and to look at the football news. You have to give some answer to the question, or he will go and find it out from somebody else.

I remember, in the case of my own boys, when they came home for the holidays at about the age of twelve or fourteen, what a great deal they knew, and how it was quite obvious that their conversation at school was directed to all sorts of social questions, and how they quizzed and criticised other boys' parents and so forth. I find it extremely difficult, in face of that sort of knowledge, to believe that it will be possible to keep these secrets inviolate. I went and saw a psychiatrist about this matter, a well-known man in the Harley Street district. He said that most children pass through a phase in their youth of doubt about their parenthood. I am not conscious myself of ever having passed through any such period, but then imagination is not my long suit. I asked my son whether he had ever passed through such a period. He said "No; I have always given you the benefit of the doubt!"

Let us have a look at the question from another point of view. Not all marriages turn out to be happy—goodness knows! we are aware of that. Dr. Barton, will tell you of the parents who bring children to see her year after year, and of parents who send her photographs at Christmas time. Those, of course, are all the successful cases and the happy ones. I wonder what percentage (I forgot to ask her about it) of her children or parents act in that way. Let us put it at 10 per cent. What happens to the other 90 per cent., of whom it is not possible to keep a record in these days? They are not all happy, by any means. And what is going to happen in the case of unhappiness? For instance the mother may lavish her affection on the child to the neglect of the husband—that is quite a common occurrence in an ordinary marriage. The husband may one day say, in a fit of fury, something to the effect, "Thank God, you are no child of mine"—and the secret is out. A man may be impotent with one woman and potent with another. A man may run off and the wife may have to divorce him; and the A.I.D. child would be left in the custody of the wife. Then the wife, in her turn, may marry another man and have a child in the normal way by him. I think she would certainly tell her second husband the truth about the first; and I wonder whether that secret would be kept.

Two of the practitioners I interviewed admitted that they both had cases in which normal children were born to couples who had already had A.I.D. children. What is the position of the A.I.D. child there? Is he going to receive the same love and affection as the normal child? I could go on thinking up instances of this sort ad nauseam, but the long and short of it is that I do not believe that in a large number of cases the secret will be kept. I think that the effect of a child getting to know, at the age of fourteen, fifteen or sixteen, that he is what is known as a "test-tube baby" would be disastrous psychologically. Therefore, I come down definitely against A.I.D., and I think that it ought to be discouraged. I use the verb "discouraged" advisedly, because I agree with Dr. Soper, the Methodist leader, when he says that A.I.D. has come to stay and that we must adjust ourselves to its difficulties and perplexities. I may say that in all the conversations I have had with various people during the last month, besides the three practitioners and one other person I have not met a single soul who is in favour of A.I.D. I am authorised by the current President of the Royal College of Obstetricians, Professor Clay, whom I interviewed, to say that he is against A.I.D. and that, in his opinion, most gynæcologists are also.

Having reached this conclusion, I should be rather feeble if I did not offer some suggested solution. As a matter of fact, when I first handed the Resolution to the learned Clerk, I had a solution tacked on to the end, but on the next day I recanted it, for two reasons: first, because on reflection I thought that it was the wrong solution; and secondly, because I knew that any suggested solution was bound to be highly controversial and I did not want to introduce a note of controversy into the Resolution. I have not the least idea what line the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor will take, but I hope that the House will support me in this Resolution, which seems to me a necessary first step to remedy a lack of justice.

When we come to try to suggest any solution to the whole practice it then becomes a highly controversial matter. However, I will make four suggestions to your Lordships. The first is to do nothing, as we have done hitherto. In America, where they started this practice about fifteen years before we did, there are said to be 100,000 A.I.D. babies; and as the population of the United States is 150 million that means one A.I.D. baby to 1,500 normal babies. Here there are said to be 7,500, and if the population is 50 million, that works out at one A.I.D. baby to 6,666.6 normal babies. Your Lordships may well think that that proportion is so small as not to be worth bothering about.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, is the noble Lord not putting a total figure against the yearly figure and getting this result? If I understand him, that is what he is doing.

LORD BLACKFORD

No, my Lords, I do not think so; still, my arithmetic is not good. All I am seeking to show is that the proportion in this country is much smaller than it is in the United States. The second solution is to set up a Royal Commission to make a thorough investigation into the whole matter. That entails a delay of three years before any legislation can be forthcoming, and during that time I should expect to see A.I.D. increased, on the principle of getting the gallop over while the going is still good. I do not think that a Royal Commission would achieve very much more than the comprehensive Report produced by the Commission of the most reverend Primates. The third solution is to make A.I.D. a criminal offence. That is what the Church wants to do. I am dead against the Church on this.

LORD HADEN-GUEST

My Lords, has the Church said that?

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I do not think that the noble Lord has any justification for that statement. The Church has never pronounced on the matter.

LORD BLACKFORD

Of course, my Lords, I must take the most reverend Primate's reproof to heart; but that is what he said in his speech of 1949.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, I must tell the noble Lord two things. First, I am not the Church. Secondly, that was nine years ago and he has no means of knowing what I might think now.

LORD MORTON OF HENRYTON

My Lords, I wonder whether I may be allowed to say that a Royal Commission has investigated recently the question of whether A.I.D. without the consent of the husband should, or should not, be a ground for divorce. That Royal Commission, without expressing any view about whether it was adultery or not, because that was not within their field, said that in their opinion it should be a ground for divorce. That Commission was the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce.

LORD BLACKFORD

I thank the noble and learned Lord very much, but just now I am busy about the Church. If I am wrong, then, of course, I withdraw and apologise, but I thought that the whole tenor of the speeches and attitude of the right reverend Prelates and the most reverend Primate was along the line that they wished to make A.I.D. a criminal offence; and if, in their speeches to-day, they do not show they are completely opposed to A.I.D., I shall be very surprised. But let me assume that they still want to make it a criminal offence. If they do take that attitude, I am against it. I am against it for several reasons, but I will give only one: that is, that adultery is not a criminal offence and I am sure that Parliament will never make it a criminal offence. Adultery is a sin but not a crime. I argue that A.I.D. is "tantamount to adultery"; therefore it cannot be worse; and I say it is the same thing. It must not be made a criminal offence. Nor do I think that A.I.D. is a sin if it is performed with the consent of the husband. All I think is that it is an undesirable practice.

I come to the fourth solution, which is some form of registration. This idea was touched upon by the President of the Divorce Division when he spoke in 1949, but perhaps he has changed his mind, like the most reverend Primate. He only touched on it rather indefinitely, but there seems to me to be something to go for along this line. I believe that the most discouraging thing of all would be to insist upon the registration of donors. I think, for one thing, that donors would be very unwilling to register. There is one disadvantage. If they had to be registered they would be known, or it is highly likely that they would be known, to the woman; and practitioners say that if the woman knew who the donor was, there would be a great danger of her running away to him.

One could insist upon registration by parents. I think that that would be very difficult to do, because it is asking a lot of a man to register his own impotency. I think that a system of licensing a very limited number of practitioners who may carry out this operation would decrease the increase which is now going on. But, after all, it is not for me to argue all the afternoon on this matter. I am here only to initiate a debate, and I want to hear what the experts will have to say later. I see that I have already detained your Lordships for no less than forty minutes.

LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH

Forty-five minutes.

LORD BLACKFORD

My noble friend says forty-five minutes. Well, all I can say in mitigation is that it is about twice as long as I have ever spoken before. I thank your Lordships for your forbearance, and now, with you. I look forward to hearing the experts. I beg to move.

Moved to resolve, That in the opinion of this House, artificial insemination of a married woman by a donor other than her husband is tantamount to adultery, that it should be sufficient ground for divorce, and that all children so conceived are illegimate.—(Lord Blackford.)

3.31 p.m.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

My Lords, I think it is true that since the debate on this subject which took place in your Lordships' House in 1949 the volume of accessible testimony about the practice of A.I.D. has vastly increased. There has been a good deal of responsible testimony from parents about their approach to it when they have used it; from doctors about their attitude towards the type of people who approach them and towards the conditions which, in their view, justify the use of A.I.D.; and from families in which A.I.D. has been used. As one who holds that A.I.D. is thoroughly wrong. I want to say that, from the volume of available testimony, it seems to me that we are bound to acknowledge that high motives of doing good to unhappy people are often very conspicuous, and that amongst doctors who practice A.I.D. ethical distinctions are shown to be clearly present as to when it is right and when it is not right for A.I.D. to be given. I say this because I am anxious to give the fairest possible consideration to the plea that A.I.D. might be controlled by ethical standards and made to start a sort of new moral way of doing things.

We have had doctors, writing with a great sense of responsibility, setting out what they regard as the right and only right conditions for the giving of A.I.D. Doctors have said, in effect: "I do not do this for any married person who asks for it. I weigh the circumstances, according to clear principles, so that the thing is, and can be, ethically controlled." What seems to me to undermine this assurance is that when a fair-sized volume of testimony is looked at there is a vast discrepancy as to what the so-called principles of this ethical control are. To-day the Manchester Guardian, in a leading article, defines carefully grounds on which A.I.D. is set out as being right. It is worth attempting", says the writer. for the sake of the few instances—and they are few—in which the use of A.I.D. can be a real blessing to family life. Those instances come when it is psychologically improbable that the husband can father a natural child, when both husband and wife have studied A.I.D. and its implications, when both strongly want a child by this means, when their marriage is stable and secure, and when both hold the same religious beliefs. Each of these conditions must be satisfied. That is the plea that is made.

Behind that plea there was an interesting and responsible article in the same newspaper on February 8, entitled: "A.I.D., a physician's view." The writer was emphatic that a doctor should agree to give A.I.D. only when there was some organic defect in the husband and when the sexual life of husband and wife was harmonious and happy. In his view, it would be wrong, and dangerous for the potential child, if A.I.D. were given where husband and wife were strained or unhappy, or incompatible in their physical union. He goes so far as to say this: … to perform A.I.D. in order to hold together a marriage which is already strained is in my view unpardonable. A child obtained by A.I.D. is in my view the crowning happiness of a marriage which would go on reasonably well in any case. There is here some sort of a claim for carefully defined ethical conditions about the giving of A.I.D., but how far is there agreement about this? The view of this particular physician is but one of a veritable forest of medical and psychological opinions which have come across amongst the bulk of testimony. This same article refers us to a massive work by Dr. Schellen, Artificial Insemination in the Human—and your Lordships will note that, whereas we used to call them men, women and children, we move into a world where "the human" has become the phrase. In this massive work there is a review of information about the theory and practice of A.I.D. in America, in England and in other countries, disclosing the variety of conditions which are deemed, now this, now that, to make a sound plea for A.I.D. While the writer in the Manchester Guardian vetoes A.I.D. where a marriage is strained, I find amongst this body of testimony other writers commending it as a way of salvation for a marriage under strain. I am trying to be fair to those who have pleaded for A.I.D. on the ground of careful discrimination in the practice. But it is the tangle of inconsistencies which makes it impossible to believe that, with the spread of A.I.D. in the country, any one agreed theory as to what is the right occasion for the granting of it can come about or can control the practice.

But, my Lords, I do not believe that there ever can be a right occasion for the granting of A.I.D. Take the point of deception. When the matter is discussed, phrases are used like "the happiness of a family"; and it is often found that the phrase is used in sole regard to a husband and wife and a child. But has not a brother a right to know whether his brother's supposed children really are his brother's children? Has not a grandfather a right to know whether those who are described as his grandchildren are indeed his grandchildren? It was this point which was criticised with much force in the Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Committee of 1948. The Report said: It would change the whole basis of society if a man could not safely regard his brother's child as of the proper common stock of his and his brother's parents, and could not feel assured that it was not the product of an anonymous 'donor' We can imagine few suspicions more fatal to family confidence than that of infusion of suppositious offspring into a family. I now turn to what the Motion before your Lordships' House sets out to do. Let me say, first, that, for myself, I do not think it would be wise to legislate to make A.I.D. a criminal offence. If other right reverend Prelates or the most reverend Primate said something different it would not disturb me. There might be a hundred views amongst Churchmen as to by what legislation it is best to try to promote what is right to withstand a particular evil. That on which Churchmen are agreed, and many other people are not, is a matter of vastly more importance. What I am convinced about is the need to eliminate any shred of an idea that A.I.D. can somehow be made to lie within the marriage bond. The Motion of the noble Lord uses the word "tantamount". I should guess that noble and learned Lords will not recognise "tantamount" as a legal term, and I should not myself recognise it as a theological term. Perhaps "tantamount" is no more than a rhetorical term.

I do not want necessarily to plead that A.I.D. be defined as adultery, or that morally it has all the features of adultery, for obviously it has not. What I think is essential is that if there are divorce laws, A.I.D. should be a ground for divorce as adultery is a ground for divorce. A logical corollary seems to me to follow from this, and I mention it in passing: that if the law is to be framed so as to treat A.I.D. as akin to adultery, it ought also to be framed so as to treat A.I.H. as akin to marital intercourse in its own legal context. So far they are parallel. But only so far; for while A.I.H. is an attempt by married persons to fulfil one of the ends of marriage, A.I.D. is the intrusion of a third party in a way which is incompatible with the pledges of marriage.

I am sure it is the earnest hope of many of your Lordships that we shall have to-day from Her Majesty's Government the promise of legislation. We should gladly not have had legislation. We should gladly have avoided discussion of this unpleasant matter altogether. I think it was the hope of many that it might turn out that judicial decisions would of themselves provide something of a solution. If they have not, then it seems that the alteration of the law is requisite. The matter seems to me to be urgent because people—doctors, parents and young persons—want to be given the answer to a number of questions about which they are at present in doubt.

But there is another reason for the urgency of this matter, related, I think, to the trend of public opinion. There is an idea abroad—I do not say it is widespread, but certainly it is abroad—that A.I.D. can, so to speak, be brought within the terms of a decent fulfilment of the contract of husband and wife. It is this that needs to be resisted. If that idea were ever to grow in this country it would have its effect upon the interpretation which a man and a woman put upon the marriage contract when they make it. It would mean that a man and a woman could be making their promises at their marriage with this sort of interpretation put upon them. I will quote the words of the marriage ceremony most familiar to me, but the point can equally be made by quoting any lawful marriage ceremony, religious or civil. The bridegroom has this question put to him: Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep you only unto her, so long as you both shall live? Is the man to think this interpretation possible?: "I will—if need be, with the help of the seed of another man." That is a serious issue. The intrusion of the seed of a third is as contrary to the proper meaning of the marriage bond as is the intrusion of the illicit affection for body of a third. It is for the trend of public opinion that this fact urgently needs to have recognition in our law of divorce. Towards that public opinion and public sentiment your Lordships' debate to-day is able to give a lead. That is why I believe it would be lamentable for the country if we drift on and delay in getting the legislation for which the noble Lord's Motion calls.

3.47 p.m.

LORD DENNING

My Lords, this subject is of profound social significance, but I would consider its legal significance because it is more my line of country. Some doctors who carry out this practice by a donor to a married woman think that it is lawful for them to do so: that there is no law against it, and there is nothing wrong in it. If it is done openly and without concealment, truly there is no law against it. But if it is accompanied by secrecy and deception, I would say it is unlawful. It is a criminal conspiracy, as I will show.

First of all, let me make it clear that the child so produced is illegitimate. In order to prove a child to be legitimate you must show that it is the child, the offspring, of both husband and wife, a married couple in lawful wedlock. You must not only identify the mother; you must identify the husband as being the father. One of our most experienced judges laid that down only three years ago. If you cannot identify the husband to be the father, but someone else, then that child is illegitimate, and this has been the law of the country for centuries. So much so, that the only question in legitimacy cases is what evidence is admissible. Is it admissible for the husband himself to prove non-access? It was held that he could not, but that by his friends and relatives he could. Now, by Statute, a husband can prove non-access himself; and once it is established in the court that the husband is not the father, then the child is illegitimate. Therefore, with this artificial insemination by a donor, if you ask: "Who is the father?" and the answer is: "It is not the husband, but somebody else," the child is illegitimate. Let there be no doubt on that.

From that a whole train of consequences follow in law. Secrecy and deception are the badge of conspiracy. If the wife and the doctor agree together to keep secret the fact that a child is illegitimate and falsely to pretend that it is legitimate, they are guilty of a wicked conspiracy. If they do it without the knowledge or consent of the husband it is a gross fraud on the husband. He is made to maintain a child which is not his and which he is not liable by law to maintain. For centuries, in the old books you will find that when a woman, the mother of a bastard, agrees with others by fraud or concealment to saddle an innocent person with the maintenance of that child, it has been held to be an indictable conspiracy. Lord Holt so ruled in 1705, Mr. Justice Buller, a very learned Judge, in 1788, and Lord Denman in 1834. It is, I believe, if done without the knowledge or consent of the husband, a fraud and an unlawful, indictable conspiracy.

But even if the husband does know and consent, so that it is no longer a fraud on him, is it not a potential fraud on others? Suppose a grandfather leaves his money, as many do, to his son and his son's children; or suppose there is a trust for the couple and their children. As the law stands this child, being illegitimate, should not receive it; but by the fraud and deception, if successful, this illegitimate child will receive it. Or suppose a simple case. If the husband dies without a will, by law his property is to go to his wife for life and after that to his children. This child is not in law entitled to it; it is not the husband's child. But by this fraud and deception it would receive it.

What is the effect of this contingent fraud, this potential fraud? Again if you look into the old books you will find that the fraudulent foisting off of a child as legitimate when it is not, has been held to be a conspiracy, because, as Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, said, it impedes the due course of descent; and Lord Chief Justice Wiles at the same time so ruled. So I say that this action, when done in fraud or potential fraud, is an unlawful conspiracy by both the wife and the doctor with her. And I have not mentioned the Register of Births. The conspiracy goes back long before that. The conspiracy is when the plot is hatched. But when it comes to a false statement in the Register of Births, there is not only the overt act of the conspiracy; there is an additional crime, the crime of perjury, making a false statement in a Register of Births, when it is said that the husband is the father when he is not.

So much for the conspiracy between the doctor and the wife. What about the agreement between the doctor and the donor? What have they agreed? The whole essence of it is that it should be secret, not told to anyone, not told to the mother or the child, told to no one. And for what purpose? So that the donor should evade the responsibilities which by law attach to him. The natural and probable consequence of this is that he gets exemption from maintenance or responsibility for his own child. If he could be defected and found he could be made liable to maintain this child, not by the wife herself, because she is a married woman, but through the National Assist- ance Board. So I say that there is a double unlawful conspiracy, by the doctor with the wife and by the doctor with the donor. And not only is that so in the criminal law; it also gives rise to damages by any person injured by it.

Now, my Lords, let me turn to the question of adultery. A judge of the Supreme Court of Ontario, in 1921, applying our English law, ruled that it was adultery. The Court of Session in Scotland, which in many ways in its divorce law goes on divergent lines from ours in England, has ruled that it is not adultery. In view of this divergence, may I suggest a rather different line of approach: not whether artificial insemination is adultery but whether it is any defence to a charge of adultery. The way in which any petitioner proves adultery when there is an illegitimate child is that he proves the birth of the child to the wife and then proves that he is not the father. He has to prove no more; that is sufficient proof.

Let me give your Lordships as an illustration a case which arose a few years ago. A soldier went off to do his military service in Germany; 360 days later—nearly twelve months—his wife gave birth to a child. He brought a petition on the ground of adultery relying on that one fact: the birth of an illegitimate child. The wife swore she had not committed adultery. There was no evidence of any association with any other man, and much evidence of her good character. The judge at the trial refused to find adultery, but this House, sitting in its judicial capacity, inferred beyond reasonable doubt from that one fact that she had been guilty of adultery and a divorce was granted. No one knows whether the child was produced by artificial insemination or how it was produced, but on those two facts, the birth of the illegitimate child and the husband not the father, adultery was inferred.

If I may trouble your Lordships with an indelicate case, the Russell case, I would point out that it shows the same thing. There was a case where the wife was not penetrated by any man; she was fertilised from outside. Some man must have lain sufficiently close to her to emit seed which found its way into her and gave rise to the child. On that a divorce petition was brought. The husband gave evidence that it was not he. The jury accepted his evidence and found there was adultery with a man unknown. This House reversed that decision solely on this ground: that as the law then stood the evidence of the husband was inadmissible. Since that decision Parliament has enacted that the evidence of a husband like that is admissible, and if the case were reconsidered to-day there would be no ground for quashing the jury's verdict. Therefore in that case, although there was fecundation ab extra (fertilisation from outside), there would have been a finding of adultery. Is that not the right way in any of these cases? The husband can prove his case by showing that a child has been born and that he is not the father of it.

Then, I ask myself, is it a defence for a wife to say, "I was voluntarily fertilised by artificial insemination in fraud of you"? I should be surprised if the law held that to be a defence to such evidence of adultery. I know, of course, that the burden is on a woman to prove that she is raped. That is a defence because she has not voluntarily surrendered her reproductive organs to another man. But if she has voluntarily surrendered her reproductive organs to the seed of another man, not only is it no defence, but I, for myself—I am sure I should be following Lord Dunedin's opinion—would say, not only is it tantamount to adultery, it is adultery.

So much for the legal considerations. Just one word on its social significance. It seems to me that if this practice became widespread it would strike at the stability and security of family life; it would strike at the roots of our civilisation. I would say to the doctors "Where by your science are you leading us? Seek to relieve suffering by all means, but do not do it by secrecy and deception. 'For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'

4.3 p.m.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, we are all greatly indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, not only for initiating the debate on this curious subject but for the most interesting speech which he has made to us this afternoon. The noble Lord is, if I may say so, not only one of the most attractive but one of the most virile speakers in the House, and I am not at all surprised to hear that in a certain matter he was given the benefit of the doubt. We among your Lordships would, I know, always give it to him.

We have listened, since he spoke, to two weighty pronouncements. For my part, I do not rise this afternoon to give what might be called the point of view of the Opposition. My noble acting Leader, Lord Silkin, in the regretted absence of the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, wishes me to make it plain that, so far as the Labour Party is concerned, there is no Party line with regard to A.I.D.; and I should imagine that that applies also in regard to other Parties. We can speak or vote on it entirely as the spirit moves us. I am most grateful to my noble colleagues for what I might call a plenary indulgence in being allowed to offer views this afternoon which may inflict on some of them a short spell in purgatory, though I hope that will not be the case. I have no reason to think, of course, that it will be the case, in particular, with my noble friend Lord Stansgate—I am not associating my noble friend in the remotest degree with A.I.D.

I felt it right this afternoon, if the House will allow me, to offer some arguments from the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church, more particularly in view of the fact that leaders of the Church of England have been, and will be, making very weighty pronouncements. When I say that, I have the advantage, or disadvantage, of committing no one but myself, although I shall be surprised if my remarks are not regarded as fairly acceptable to Roman Catholics. Certainly this is not a matter upon which the Roman Catholic Church has been backward in making its position plain. In a broad sense artificial insemination was rejected sixty years ago, in 1897, by a Papal pronouncement by Pope Leo XIII following the interest which was aroused in A.I.H., where the husband was concerned, by the work of a well-known Roman Catholic gynæcologist, Mantegazza.

Anyone who is interested in studying Roman Catholic teaching on this subject might do worse than consult three documents, in particular. There was an Address which was delivered to Catholic doctors by the late Cardinal Griffin on April 8, 1945; there was an Address by the Pope (from which I will quote in a moment) to physicians on September 29, 1949; and recently there was a sermon preached by the present Archbishop of Westminster at Wembley on Tuesday, January 28 of this year. As the most reverend Primate has told us, there has recently been published a most impressive survey of the whole subject by a Dutch doctor, Dr. Schellen, and in it the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church, and of all the Churches and many of the main bodies concerned, is treated in a most comprehensive way. I should also mention a pamphlet called Artificial Human Fecundation, written by a Professor Davis, which appeared some years ago, and an article by Dr. Letitia Fairfield which appeared in the Tablet of January 25 of this year.

To-day we are concerned with two aspects of this most important question. There is the moral aspect and how far artificial insemination should be approved, tolerated or condemned. Then there is what might be called the public policy question of what steps should be taken to give effect to this moral verdict. On the question of practical policy there is plenty of room for argument among Catholics, as among others, in this country and abroad. I will return to that before I close. But on the moral issue the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church can be stated briefly without any distortion.

I realise that to-day the House is concerned with A.I.D.—that is the case where, as we have been told more than once to-day, artificial fecundation is brought about by a donor who is not the husband. Concerning the Roman Catholic attitude to A.I.H., I will confine myself to a few words which are taken from the Address of the Pope, which I mentioned just now and which was delivered in 1949. The Pope said: One does not necessarily proscribe the use of certain artificial means destined only to facilitate the natural act or to secure the accomplishment of the end of the natural act regularly performed. But he made it plain that there can never be a legitimate justification for obtaining the sperm by actions that run counter to nature, such as masturbation. In the words of Dr. Fairfield, who I think puts the matter clearly, … this leaves the practice of A.I.H. for Catholics licit in principle but greatly restricted in practice. As a matter of fact, as I think most of us are aware, the total number of people affected is in any case very small. But the procedure which is regarded as morally blameless for Roman Catholics is better perhaps described as assisted rather than artificial insemination, in view of the associations that A.I.H. has acquired in this country.

However, our topic this afternoon is A.I.D. where an outside donor is concerned. This, in the words of the Pope, is unequivocably condemned, whether it occurs outside of marriage or whether it occurs within a marriage, and irrespective of the husband's attitude. So I find myself. I am glad to think, entirely in line with the most reverend Primate who has addressed us. The House will perhaps forgive me (because there is no point in my paraphrasing words when the words are available), if I quote a few sentences from the short statement made by the Pope on September 29, 1949. He said: Artificial insemination outside of marriage must be condemned as essentially and strictly immoral. Natural law and Divine positive law establish, in fact, that the procreation of a new life cannot but be the fruit of marriage. Only marriage safeguards the dignity of the spouses, principally of the wife in the present case, and their personal good. It alone provides for the well-being and education of the child. The Pope went on to make plain that there can be no divergence of opinion among Catholics on the condemnation of artificial insemination outside of marriage and that the child conceived in those conditions would be by that very act illegitimate; but he also said that artificial insemination produced in a marriage by the active element of a third party is equally immoral and consequently to be condemned without appeal. For only spouses have a reciprocal right upon each other's body to generate a new life—an exclusive inalienable right which cannot be ceded and so it must be, even out of consideration for the child. I feel that there is no discrepancy there, between what I have read to the House and what the most reverend Primate told us earlier on behalf of the Church of England.

So far as I can make out from fairly careful study, basing myself on this recent work of Dr. Schellen, the Christian Churches of the world are united in the I strength of their condemnation of artificial insemination. The words of the right reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, who is to speak later this evening, have been quoted very often on this subject. I believe one may say that they have been quoted all over the world, and with great approval among my own co-religionists. Your Lordships will remember that in the last debate on this subject the most reverend Primate said, that since A.I.D. involves criminal perjury, since it is based on a gross deception, since it imperils the moral safety of the child, family and community, since it is contrary to Christian principles and teaching, it should not be permitted to spread or continue. Those words were used some time ago, but I hope and believe that he will reaffirm them this afternoon—I am glad to see him nodding assent.

The American Episcopal Church is described in Dr. Schellen's book as rejecting A.I.D. emphatically and stigmatising it as adultery. In Sweden, where I am sorry to say the practice appears to have made considerable strides, theologians of the Lutheran Established Church have denounced it violently. They say: There is no room in a marriage for a third person. And any process which breaks this exclusive union between marriage partners must go by the name of adultery. In Paris the Professor of Divinity states with emphasis that Protestantism utterly rejects A.I.D. as conflicting with the principle of monogamous marriage; and another interpreter of the French Protestant point of view sees in A.I.D. one of the strongest manifestations of man's revolt against God's creative power and defiance of the Scriptures which hold to him the close association of appropriation with the mystery of the one-ness of man and wife. A representative of the Protestant Committee in the Netherlands concluded that A.I.D. violates the validity of conjugal intercourse because it is, in essence, adultery. So much for a fairly wide selection from Christian teachers. I hestitate to dogmatise about the Jewish Church, in which possibly more than one trend could be detected. But it is worth observing that the present law in Israel puts A.I.D. on the same footing as adultery. A Mohammedan is allowed by law to have four wives, and there is therefore perhaps not the same temptation there towards A.I.D. In any case, it seems incompatible—and it is generally felt among Mohammedans to be incompatible—with the Mohammedan duty to see in a barren wife the will of Allah.

I have quoted the Jews and Mohammedans to show that it is not just the Christians who are concerned and that it is fair to say that there appears to be an absolute conflict between A.I.D. and the great Monotheistic religions. But this country is supposed to be a Christian country and in some respects, in spite of all our failings, it seems to me to be more Christian than it was when some of us were growing up a number of years ago. Whether Christians are wise or foolish, they must at least be supposed to know more about their own religion than non-Christians. And there appears to be overwhelming agreement among Christians, whatever the denomination of the sect, that A.I.D. is in sharp and flagrant contradiction to the God-given institution of the family and, indeed, with the whole Christian idea of the proper attitude of man towards his Maker.

I cannot believe that any practising Christian who knew what A.I.D. involves would have any hand, lot or part in it, or refrain from doing all in his power to discourage it. I hope that some of those who are present and who cannot accept the beliefs of the Christian (and this is a free country) will understand that if I do not stop to wrestle with them this afternoon over the whole plane of belief and disbelief, and the Christian versus the non-Christian concept of the family, it is not through any lack of regard for their earnestness and sincerity but simply through shortage of time and the fact that there are many other and better speakers. But I would venture to offer non-Christians one very striking quotation from an article which appeared in the Sunday Times of November 10 last year under the heading "Can Scientific Man Survive?" written by one whom we must all admire, whatever we may think of his views about religion—the noble Earl, Lord Russell, the most distinguished living rationalist.

In that article he argued with much feeling that world survival now: demands a morality which will be new only in the sense of being acted upon. As an ideal it is not new but very old. It has been preached for countless centuries by sages and religious leaders who have been highly honoured after being put to death. Surely he must there include the Founder of the Christian religion, for I do not know who else he has in mind. Bearing in mind that quotation from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, is it possible to hope that the new horrors of to-day—nuclear warfare and all the rest of it—may be bringing this compensation at least: that they may help even the most modern and sceptical of us to realise that we neglect traditional wisdom and traditional morality at our peril, and that if a procedure is contrary to nature and is inherently evil then no scientific magic or justification can make it natural or good?

So much for the moral assessment. But when we face the question of how to combat this growing evil we must expect, at any rate at this stage, a considerable divergence of opinion. It may well be true, and probably is, that by means of some kind of registration or other form of regulation some, at any rate, of the worst consequences of A.I.D. could be averted and the amount of perjury and disception involved diminished, although if people are going to perjure themselves and deceive the community I do not see how another law will stop them doing so. But some good consequences could follow—on paper—from registration.

Here, however, as in other cases, such as prostitution and certain aspects of gambling, it seems to me that we have the dilemma that while, on the one hand, we want to regulate the practice and possibly to reduce it, by statutory action, yet by doing so we may well appear to condone it. It is very difficult to recognise a practice of this kind, for purposes of regulation, without appearing to give it some kind of official recognition and what may even seem to be condonation. Perhaps I might quote here words used recently by the Archbishop of Westminster, who I imagine (though I am not certain) had this kind of point in mind: To pass any legislation which seems to condone even the worst sins against Nature would be so damaging to the morality of the nation as to militate grievously against that peace and well being of a people that is the object of all government. And so I find myself in great difficulty in supporting any kind of State registration.

Should A.I.D. be described as adultery? Of course, this is the actual crux of the debate this afternoon. Whether it is to be legally so described I leave to lawyers; but few who listened to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, would remain unimpressed after hearing that powerful address. I leave any statement about the position to the great lawyers, including the Lord Chancellor, who have addressed or will be addressing us. From the point of view of the Roman Catholic, certainly its heinousness (as was said, I believe, by the Scottish judge who decided a recent case, and this cannot be overstated), must surely be regarded as analogous to that of adultery.

I may therefore be asked whether in the Roman Catholic view it should be made, like adultery, a ground for divorce. There, of course, is a problem for Catholics which is familiar to many of the House. As noble Lords are aware, Roman Catholics do not accept adultery as a ground for divorce. Therefore we are somewhat inhibited as to whether grounds for divorce should be extended to cover A.I.D. But, speaking as a citizen, I can only say that it would seem to me, and I think probably to most Catholics, logical that in a community which recognises adultery as a ground for divorce, A.I.D. should be placed on the same footing; and in that I join with the most reverend Primate who spoke earlier. It is perhaps hardly for Roman Catholics to take the lead in extending the grounds for divorce, but if that proposal were brought forward I should certainly find myself in support of it.

Finally, should A.I.D. be treated as a criminal offence? I shall listen with great care to what the most reverend Primate, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, has to say on that point this afternoon. I do not want to cover once again the ground which some of us covered and which I covered at great length in the debate on the Wolfenden Report. We drew at that time a distinction; we drew it in various ways and applied it in various ways, but we all, in one way or another, drew a distinction between crime and sin. Here I would not apply the distinction in quite the same way, although the distinction can only, in my opinion, be drawn in the same way. I think you can contrast the two situations.

I am stating here not any kind of official view, but I think a fairly representative Roman Catholic opinion, when I say that the social consequences of A.I.D.—the long-term social consequences, quite apart from the immediate moral evil—could be so damaging to the welfare of our nation, particularly our children, that the Government can fairly be asked to consider how best to bring this practice within the orbit of the criminal law. I recognise the practical difficulties involved, but I put it to the Government as something they could reasonably be asked to consider.

I sit down now with this final thought. There are some in public life in this country, in the House, in various Parties and various churches or belonging to no Party or to no church, many of them more eminent than I and most of them more active, whose main interest in public questions derives from a desire to help the weak, the afflicted, the oppressed, the poor, the mentally sick, the delinquent, the old and the lonely. The sentiment which animates people of this kind—we are accustomed to being called sentimentalists—would place many of us naturally and easily on the side of the childless couple. Speaking personally, if I may, as one whose marriage has been greatly blessed, I should be callous indeed if I did not feel for childless people and did not recognise the great love of children shown by so many childless women, and the great services to children that so many of them render—a point to which I know the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury referred when he last spoke in this House. But however we like to describe our own ethical system—Aristotelian, Kantian,Utilitarian, Humanitarian or simply Christian—we must all be aware (and surely at this point the whole House is at one) that immediate happiness, as was brought out in those fine articles by Lord Radcliffe a day or two ago, while a laudable objective to be promoted by all legitimate scientific means is not the highest value here below. Grapes cannot be won from thorns, or figs from thistles.

It is literally impossible to help anyone, however humane our purpose, by means of evil, and A.I.D. defies the laws of God and the wisdom of Man. It has been brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Denning, that it involves for its so-called success, as even its advocates admit, deliberate and prolonged deception, and perjury at one point or another, and this may or may not be successful. A lie, indeed, is of its very essence, which is not surprising as it appears to come from the Father of Lies. It opens the door to possibilities still more loathsome than itself. We must, and I believe this country will, reject with horror this brain-wave of Beelzebub. We must redouble our efforts to relieve the distress of those who in their affliction turn towards this terrible remedy; and whether we ourselves be fortunate or unfortunate in the quantity of our descendants, we must reaffirm once more our Christian purpose and re-dedicate the quality of our family life to nobler ends.

4.26 p.m.

LORD AMULREE

My Lords, I want to say a few brief words to your Lordships from a rather different point of view from that which has been expressed before. It follows on from what the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has just said. What I want to do is to address your Lordships for a few moments on the ethical and social aspects of this particular problem. I should like to get one or two points which do not appear to be very clear in some of your Lordships' minds out of the way before I start, because I think it is obvious that the number of people who are going to resort to this form of begetting children is going to be extremely small. The vast majority of people can, and do, produce their children in quite normal ways, but you will find that there is a certain number of men and women who cannot—a fairly constant trickle, which does not increase a great deal, so far as I can judge. It is difficult to find out the exact figures. My informant, as in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, has been a doctor practising in this line for about twenty-five years. It is not the same doctor as the noble Lord mentioned but one who has been practising in the West Country for a long time, and it is from her that I have received a certain amount of my information which I propose to give to your Lordships.

The first thing I should like to do is to follow up what I have said before. So far as the general population figures are concerned, the number of children produced by this method of A.I.D. is going to be a very tiny drop in a very big ocean; but from the point of view of the sum of human contentment and human happiness I would suggest to your Lordships that the matter is much larger, and from that point of view the subject requires sincere consideration by your Lordships. I was rather puzzled to find out what was the total number of children involved, because I think the figure of 7,000 may be rather on the large side. My informant (I admit, only one), has seen about 2.500 sterile, barren couples in the course of the last twenty-five years. From those 2,500 there were only 200 considered suitable for trying A.I.D., and the number of successful cases was approximately half. So I do not think the figures involved will ever become very large or formidable.

The work, I consider, should certainly be kept in the hands of the medical practitioners, who should be able to exercise certain criteria before using A.I.D. The practitioner must know the would-be parents extremely well. He must be satisfied that their marriage is really stable and that they do want a child. One may think that that is going to be difficult to enforce; but I am not at all sure that if public opinion, or any other means of training people which exists, is put into force sufficiently firmly you cannot build up some kind of ethical code like that which will cover the majority of people who wish to carry out this work. Obviously, if we are dealing with human beings—and, like other people, doctors are merely human beings—there will be occasional rogues who will go wrong, but I think that we can build up a good standard of ethical behaviour and therefore would not get results by this method that are not justifiable and right.

There should be two indications for the use of this method. One is that the husband is incurably and irremediably impotent. Whether one can say, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, that a man might be impotent with one woman and not with another, it is difficult to judge, but I think it is possible for the family doctor to know that a man would be impotent generally and not merely with one particular woman. It must be that a woman desperately desires to have a child and her husband can convince the doctor that he would prefer a child by that means rather than by the more normal means of adopting one.

I am informed by my West Country informant that he made inquiries of the people who wished to be treated in this way and found that the general theme running through their wishes could be roughly summarised as follows. They wanted children very much and felt that marriage was only half fulfilled if a child was not going to be horn. The wife felt that she was barred from having a child by the person she had married but very much wished to have a child. The husband had chosen the woman for his wife not only because he loved her but because he wished to have a child by her. Therefore, he would rather have a child by her, given by some accredited donor, than a child from an adoption society. If that is the general feeling of the people who wish to have this operation performed on them, it seems to me that we have to give serious consideration to the great human factors which are involved.

In the case of my informant, the work of artificial insemination has been going on for only about twenty-five years, so it is difficult to judge what becomes of the children and what type of children they are; but so far as the records have been kept and the follow-up has gone, the children born in this way appear to be of perfectly sound stock and have turned out to be perfectly satisfactory children. Although I said at the beginning that this operation must not be done if the marriage is considered shaky, it is the case that marriages seem to be consolidated by this means rather than broken up, and certainly the parents are not found to be psychologically upset by the fact that children are born as a result of insemination by a donor. I think it gives some assistance towards a happier result if semen from the donor can be mixed with some semen from the husband, where the husband's semen is found to have a certain amount of sperms but not enough for fertilisation normally and yet enough to make him feel that he has contributed something towards the birth of the child. Perhaps that is not a happy form of reasoning, but it does appeal to people, and here we are dealing with people and not with theories and abstract ideas.

There is one matter which has not been mentioned so far. It has been said that people born in this way may get into great trouble through marrying someone born from the same donor. I think this bogy of inter-marriage is enormously exaggerated because it is doubtful whether the figure of A.I.D. children in this country will be big enough to cause any danger. There can be no more danger than we have now from illegitimate children happening to marry a brother or sister, or where several children of the same family are adopted, of them meeting a natural brother or sister in after life and marrying them. I do not think that the danger is one about which we need to worry. It is a possible but not a serious danger.

If I may, in the presence of so many noble and learned Lords and of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack, I should like to turn to two legal points, on which the noble and learned Viscount can probably enlighten me. I am worried about the fact that this act should be considered to be adultery. So far as I can judge, after looking up dictionaries and books of reference, one of the bases of adultery is what is called carnal concupiscence ".The term indicates some kind of subservience to lust or unlawful love, which is a bad thing for society as a whole because it tends to break up family life. I cannot see that the transferring of sperm from a little glass tube by means of a rubber syringe can afford, except in very strange people, any kind of sensory pleasure and the purpose of A.I.D. is to encourage family life, which is one thing which adultery definitely discourages. So I should have thought that from that point of view there was no real reason for putting A.I.D. under the heading of adultery.

From the purely legal point of view, the question I want to be assured about is this. Suppose a wife were to resort to artificial insemination unknown to her husband, which I think is something that we should all deplore, would it not be possible for the husband to obtain a divorce on the ground of cruelty, rather than on ground of adultery? Suppose husband and wife had concurred in wishing the operation to be done, and then, five or ten years later, the husband wanted to get rid of his wife, would that not be regarded as an offence (if it were one) connived at, and therefore preventing the husband from being able to get a divorce and abandon the artificially con- ceived child? I should deplore very much any recommendation for legislation to make artificial insemination a crime. It is an act which I am convinced will never become a large factor in the world. The one thing to make it safe and proper is for it to be carried out freely by responsible people. To do as the noble Lord suggests, to make it subject to regulations and rules, is to drive it underground and to have it done by charlatans and quacks, and the last state of affairs will be far worse than the state of affairs now.

4.39 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF READING

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, who so cogently and engagingly introduced this Motion remarked, it is now some nine years since I ventured to introduce for your Lordships' consideration a Motion upon this subject. I did so at that stage from a purely personal and objective angle, and to-day I approach it from the same position. In his opening speech the noble Lord said that among the possibilities of dealing with the present situation was one which, I confess rather to my regret, he discarded as of little account—that was, the suggestion that there should be some inquiry into all the facets of this extremely intricate and elusive question. It was my object, when I introduced the Motion in 1949, to obtain from the Government their consent to an inquiry of that kind—and it is perhaps not entirely germane to the present debate to say that I received in reply, as reason for the fact that no immediate action was taken, an excuse which was superb in its monumental irrelevance. I confess that I had somewhat hoped that the present Government might in the intervening years have taken some steps to arrange an inquiry of the kind I had in mind. But to-day we are again debating this subject, after an interval of nine years, and no progress has been made. All that has happened is that probably the wider-spread character of this particular practice has during those years increased.

What concerns me in this matter—and I am reinforced in this view by the weight which has been drawn this afternoon into almost exclusively one scale—is that if we are to take any action upon a matter of this immensely important kind we ought to know ourselves exactly what we are doing. We ought not to turn our eyes away from the subject because it is an unpleasant one; on the other hand, we ought not to be stampeded into premature action before we know exactly where we are going. It seems to me that that applies not only to Members of your Lordships' House, but also to the public at large. If legislative action is to be taken upon a matter of this kind, it would be right, and it would certainly be advantageous, for any Government to have behind them the feeling that the public support them in the direction in which they are going. It is my belief that in present conditions the public are mystified, uneasy and still groping in the dark in quest of authoritative information upon what is to many people a new and striking and equally, to many people, a repulsive subject. But it is a question which is before the public, just as it is before your Lordships' House, and I do not believe that, in present conditions, the public either have the information or the means of obtaining the information.

It seems to me essential that, if we are to have a public opinion on the matter, we should have an instructed public opinion, but that under present conditions what we are getting is, in many cases, a fragmentary and sensational presentation of a case, instead of a comprehensive and responsible one. That is, in my view, not the lead which should be given to the public in a matter of this profound social importance. I believe, therefore, that there should be—not a Royal Commission, because the wheels of a Royal Commission traditionally turn without marked rapidity, but perhaps a Departmental Committee, which is, in my experience, better equipped to get on readily with a particular task and to produce a Report. But I do not believe that we ought to commit ourselves to dealing with so intricate a matter until we and the public are better informed than most of us are at the present moment. It seems to me that the need for consideration of this subject by a Committee has only increased in the time which has passed since we had our discussion nine years ago.

I regret somewhat that the noble Lord who introduced this Motion confined its terms of application to the case of A.I.D. without the husband's consent. In my view, the whole question ought to be brought under the review of a Committee; the one particular aspect should not be isolated in this way. What I suggest we are a little forgetting if we try to deal with this matter piecemeal is this. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, called attention to a great number of extremely serious possible legal complications, many of which, if I may say so respectfully to him, were present to our minds, and indeed were mentioned, in the course of the debate nine years ago. But the objection in my mind to the limited character of the present Motion is that many of those difficulties to which the noble and learned Lord called attention arise just as much in the case of A.I.D. with the husband's consent as they do in the case of A.I.D. without the husband's consent. There are exactly the same questions about the inheritance of property and settled estates; exactly the same question in regard to this complex matter of registration, and the possible commission of perjury by one of the parties, and even the possible implication of the medical adviser in a conspiracy. Therefore I think it would be a great pity if your Lordships' House committed itself to a definite opinion on what is only a partial and limited approach to a whole question of this great importance.

How important this matter is, and how conflicting are the views held upon it, is well illustrated by the debate this afternoon. If I may say so, it is not often that both archiepiscopal barrels are discharged in the course of a single debate. I hope that it is neither sacrilegious nor, indeed, disrespectful to refer to an Archbishop as "a barrel"; but that is incidental. The most reverend Primate, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, who has just come in, has not, I think, realised the context in which I made the last remark. We could perhaps again have no sharper contrast than in the speeches to-day of the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, and the noble Lord, Lord Amulree—the one, if I may say so, advocating proscription and the other almost prescription on the subject. So it will no doubt go on in public discussion on the matter. The most reverend primate, the Lord Archbishop of York, referred to the leading article in this morning's Manchester Guardian, and there have, of course, been other articles of different trends and tendencies reproduced in other papers since the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, put down his Motion. In view of that strong diversity of opinion, and in view of the ignorance which I still feel, in spite of all I have read and the speeches I have listened to in your Lordships' House, I would urge that we should not commit ourselves to any final view this afternoon.

I am not going to argue this afternoon the question of whether this practice does or does not constitute adultery. There is, of course, always the remedy to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morton of Henryton, called attention, which was outlined in his Report. Moreover, there is also (if I may add this comment, somewhat at a tangent) in that extremely able and comprehensive Report a recommendation as to the means of getting rid of a trouble arising in nullity cases in regard to artificial insemination by the husband, which was one of the matters I raised in the earlier debate, but which I do not propose to go over again. The noble and learned Lord's report dealt largely on that aspect, with the legal question, and there are immense social, moral and, indeed, medical questions lying behind the whole matter which I feel ought to be further developed. I do not propose this afternoon to go at all into the actual merits of this much-disputed subject because, as I say, I think the first stage—and I hope the Government will come to the same opinion—is to have this matter thoroughly inquired into. It may be said that that would be only playing for delay. There has already been quite substantial delay in dealing with this matter, however, and I would rather see a little more delay and an opinion arrived at upon solid material, than I would see us hurry into action without a proper basis of knowledge and understanding behind it. Therefore I hope that, when the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack comes to reply, he will be prepared to say that some form of Departmental Committee should be set up to inquire into this matter, because I feel that, for the general interest of the country and for the instruction of the public, it is right that we should, in endeavouring to come to a final assess- ment of the situation, not struggle along through a morass of ignorance and uncertainty but along an open and properly surveyed path.

4.52 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Marquess who has just sat down would have been quite so emphatic in his demand for a large inquiry on this subject if he had had in mind the Report, Artificial Human Insemination, produced by the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission less than ten years ago.

THE MARQUESS OF READING

My Lords, may I say that certainly I had that Report in mind. We discussed it freely in the previous debate. But it is now thirteen years since that Commission started to operate, and ten years since the Report came out. It was a Commission appointed by the most reverend Primate. I want a Commission or Committee appointed by the Government.

THE LORD BISHOP OF NORWICH

My Lords, I accept entirely the noble Marquess's view. Quite obviously, this Motion must raise, and has raised, this afternoon, a large field of thought and discussion: the legal aspect, large and important; the social aspect, the religious aspect, the meaning of marriage, and so on. I want to speak only of something that lies right behind all those, for all those different sides of our reorganisation of our common life have grown out of, and are meant to maintain, the sanctity of family life. That is one foundation that this country has always considered to be essential, and our laws, for instance, have not been the product of judicial pundits. They have grown out of the necessity to preserve, maintain and extend the principles of family life. One might say the same of religious principles, for religious principles are not only given, they are also demanded by the creaturely nature of people in this world. The laws of marriage, for instance, are not merely the laws of the Church, but are Divine guidances by which the family life of the country can best be maintained. Therefore, I should like to direct our thoughts for a moment or two to the simple human factors that lie behind this question of A.I.D.

What is the source of the demand? The source of the demand is, in essence, the sentimental longing of a married woman for maternity which is apparently denied her. For that longing, for that unsatisfied desire, every one of us would, of course, have the deepest possible sympathy. But it is true that there are many great and deep desires of human minds and spirits which, for one or other reason, cannot be satisfied; and the happy individual is the one who adjusts himself Or herself to those limitations. Is, indeed, this longing for a child a sufficient foundation for accepting a new method of propagating family life? Does it not mean building a very large structure on a very flimsy foundation? However this may be, have we not all known many cases of childless couples who, just because of their inability to have children, facing all the frustration which that entails, have been brought far more closely together than they could have ever been before, and so have become, as the years pass, centres of shining love and influence to all around?

I am taking the human factors, one by one. What of the husband? It is said that no one advocates A.I.D. except where the husband is in agreement. But what is to happen in a case where the wife is insistent that she must, and will, have a child? Suppose her husband hates the idea, and tries to argue her out of it. He tries to point out to her the higher happiness that the two of them can develop without the child. He fails. She continues insistent, and she becomes more bitter. He loves her and cares for the stability of his own life. Is it not almost inevitable that he will agree and let her have her own way? And he, having agreed, perhaps reluctantly, it would be a small step for him to say to the doctor, or anybody else: "Yes, of course you have my full consent in this." But can we be certain that it will really build a family life when A.I.D. has been used?

I come now to the third human element in this situation, lying right behind this question of religion and of legality. Supposing all goes well and there is born a happy, healthy child, what of this child, this A.I.D, product. He or she is going to be brought up in a false position. Are they, the father and the mother, going to forget completely what the child's origin really was or his relationship to them? May it not happen that, at some moment, by some accident or otherwise, the truth will come out? Think of the shock to the child. It would be—and some of us have seen it—a pretty desperate tragedy for the young man or young woman to realise that he or she was illegitimate. At least they may gain some consolation from the thought that they were what is sometimes called a love child—what consolation, indeed, from the realisation that he or she is a test-tube child. Is it fair that anyone should be subjected to such a danger?

But supposing things do not go right—and one cannot guarantee they will. The donor may be most wisely chosen, but who can be certain what will be the character of the offspring of this strange man and this married woman? Suppose there is friction. Suppose the child grows up unsatisfactory. Is it not likely that, in some fit of forgetful anger, the man will say, "Well, he is your child. He is not mine. You can do what you like with him". Or, equally, "You forget that I have a right to decide what is to happen to this boy: he is mine, not yours". So the whole fabric of artificial secrecy topples to the ground. It may be said that that is an exaggerated and unreal picture, but is it ever possible to secure without doubt the complete secrecy, extending over years and years? Is it ridiculous to suggest that, some day, some Member of your Lordships' House who has inherited a title and estate might discover that he was not the son of his reputed father and has no real right to either?

That leads me to think that the whole case for A.I.D. rests on the assumption that it is the wishes of the spouses that must be regarded as paramount. Surely that is not true. It is not the welfare of individuals or of couples who are married but the welfare of the community that is paramount; and that cannot be overruled or strangled by clandestine arrangements that imply, and must imply, a measure of deliberate falsehood. There is not, we are told, a great deal of this practice now. Surely this is the moment when, by one means or another, it should be declared that this practice is illegal and must not be allowed to occupy a place in English national life.

5.5 p.m.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

My Lords, the noble Lord the mover of the Resolution was kind enough to remind your Lordships that I moved a Resolution about this particular, rather unpleasant, subject in 1943, and I see that I wound up with these remarks [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 128, col. 823]: I do not think we should live in a fool's paradise and ignore this subject on the ground that it is, as it is, unpleasant. I do not think that is the right attitude to adopt. It is our duty, as I see it, to know the problems that are about to face us, and in our wisdom to do the best that in us lies so to direct those new forces that they will result in bringing happiness and good into the world. That was in 1943. In 1945 the most reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, not prompted by the debate, so he tells us, set up a Commission. That Commission reported in 1948. We had the Reading debate in 1949, and now, fifteen years after the original Motion, we are having a debate on a very narrow issue of the whole subject. I want to say how much I agree with my noble friend Lord Reading that we should explore the subject a little further than the very narrow point that the mover brought forward to-day.

There is no doubt about it, as my noble friend Lord Denning said, that A.I.D. without the husband's consent or knowledge is nothing short of a conspiracy. With his consent, the law is in a very difficult situation, and it is interesting to note that in America (I quote from Nature) Since the publication of the Report"— that was the Church Report— there has…been a case in the Supreme Court of New York State which had a direct bearing on the problem. In it the judge, Mr. Justice Greenberg, was asked to declare that a child whose mother had been artificially inseminated without the husband's consent was illegitimate. This he refused to do, saying that it would be inhuman and inhumane and contrary to the highest concepts of sociology. Further, he declared that the child was legitimate and that the husband was the legal father. I do not say that that is binding on anybody, but obviously the judge gave what he thought was the best decision on a difficult case, and "that was that." So the lawyers are going to have a most enjoyable time among themselves settling some of these difficult points.

But when we come down to brass tacks the whole question really revolves on whether the child should be a bastard or not. It is quite true to say that the word "bastard" is still a term of abuse, but as time goes on bastards are viewed with much less horror than they were fifty years ago, and we cannot get away from the fact that all the marriage ties and the whole of marriage is slowly becoming discounted by many forces which act upon it. It always astonishes me that in an Established Church where things are regulated by law the Archbishop of Canterbury should advocate that divorced people should not be married. I am perfectly certain he is sincere in that sort of attitude.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, may I say that I do not advocate that divorced people should not be married. The whole of the civil ceremony of marriage exists so that they should be married, and I approve it.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

I thought the Lord Archbishop instructed his clergy that he did not like them to marry divorced people.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

In church: that makes the whole difference.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

That may be true, but most people think they are married only in church, and if they are not married in church it deprives them of a great deal of their satisfaction in marriage.

A second point is the agreement which the Roman Catholics endeavour to get that all the children born of the marriage should be of that religion. Whether that is binding in law, I do not know; but it is a deterrent to marriage in many cases. Then we have the State, with its arrangement of taxation by which both incomes are amalgamated for the purpose of surtax. I have always wondered what would happen if two people went to church and were married and, when they are asked to sign the register, said, "No, we will not sign the register." They would be married in the sight of God, so to speak, and of their friends; but legally, from the point of the State, they would not be married and each would be able to maintain his or her separate income. I should like two people to try that, and I hope that the Lord Chancellor will be able to give us his decision on that particular matter.

We also have the Welfare State coming along and looking after the bastard just as much as the legitimate child—quite rightly; I am not complaining about it. But it is this sort of thing which is diminishing the objection to bastardy in its broad sense. I do not believe that fifty years ago one could have heard what I understand is a true story of a lady who engaged a maid and asked her if she was married. The maid said that she was not. But after she had been employed for three months, three children turned up. Obviously, they were her children, and the lady said to her, "You said you were not married." She said, "No, ma'am, I'm not married, but I haven't been neglected." It shows what a situation we are coming to, when such an incident can happen, because it never occurred to this woman that she had done anything wrong at all. I think we must consider these other points as well as the very narrow ones.

Take the case of a couple who are unable to have a child because of the man's inability. People may say that certainly they can adopt one. But, surely, even from the father's point of view—the father who cannot be the father—it is better that they should have a child which, at any rate, is half his wife's than to adopt the child of a perfect stranger, having a different father and a different mother. These are subjects which must be considered in the general outlook and consideration of this particular problem. I end by saying that I sincerely hope that we shall not hurry in this matter, but that the Lord Chancellor, in his wisdom, will have some investigation conducted and some appreciation made of this tiresome subject in the many fields where it disturbs us.

5.14 p.m.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, I should like to add my tribute to those which have been paid to the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, for giving us the opportunity of debating this important subject, and for doing so in a speech which was full of information, most objectively argued and interesting from beginning to end. Before I heard him I felt that it might have been more useful if he had postponed his Motion until such time as we have Peeresses of Parlia- ment helping us in our discussion, because a woman's view on this particular matter would have been not only of great interest but of great importance. I should like also to say how much I agree with the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, in his plea that there should be an inquiry into this matter. Whichever side one takes, obviously there are a number of important matters which are difficult and which need to be cleared up on a factual basis. He referred to the reply which I had to give him on a previous occasion as "monumentally irrelevant." I think that was perhaps a little unkind; there was a certain amount of relevance in the view that until the Commission on Population had reported the situation was not altogether clear. But, of course, on these occasions a very junior Minister has to do what he is told; and secretly I quite sympathised with the noble Marquess's desire that there should be some investigation into this matter.

Your Lordships may be interested to know that the Eugenics Society, itself obviously most concerned with this matter, has quite recently set up an Artificial Insemination investigation Council on which there are a number of distinguished scientists, lawyers and sociologists. It will be a fact-finding body to look into this matter from its genetic, medical, legal and social aspects. Of course, we have already the most useful and, I think, very fairly argued Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission, which has been referred to more than once this afternoon. But it is a pity that one should have to rely on these outside organisations for the fact-finding into, and the discussion of, this problem, which is obviously one of considerable concern to the State and ought to be looked at by some Committee or Commission appointed by the State.

My Lords, I find myself rather in opposition to most of the conclusions and a good deal of the argument which has been addressed to your Lordships this afternoon. I must say that I think it is because this Chamber tends to be so much out of touch with public opinion in matters of this kind that this House has lost a great deal of the public support which at one time it certainly had. I believe that the march of events is against the views which have been expressed by most noble Lords this afternoon, and that the weight of what I, at any rate, regard as progressive opinion is against the proposal to try to put down A.I.D. in one way or another. I rather gathered that the most reverend Primate has altered the view which he expressed in 1949, that it should be made a criminal offence——

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

I do not know how the noble Lord knows that. All I said earlier was that the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, did not know whether I had altered my opinion or not. I have not.

LORD CHORLEY

I should like to deal with that aspect of the matter in a little time; but it seems