The Child of Artificial Insemination

In harmonious families, life runs relatively free of legal hazard for a child produced by A.I.D. (artificial insemination by a donor). But let a will be contested or a marriage break up, and suddenly his status becomes clouded. Is he legitimate or illegitimate? Is he entitled to support as other children are? What rights does he have to his "father's" estate?

Only last month a California court tried to answer such questions in the nation's first A.I.D. criminal case. At issue was the fate of Christopher Sorensen, 6, a product of artificial insemination to which his mother's sterile husband, Steelworker Folmer J. Sorensen, had agreed. After a 1964 divorce, the boy lived with his mother, who bitterly refused any financial aid from Sorensen. When Mrs. Sorensen became ill and applied for welfare funds last year, the

Sonoma County district attorney charged Sorensen with violating a state law that makes willful nonsupport of a legitimate child a misdemeanor. To convict Sorensen, Municipal Court Judge James E. Jones Jr. relied partly on the public policy that "all children born in wedlock are presumed the legitimate issue of the marital partners."

Blurring by Mixing. Whether such a conviction would stand up in a higher court is open to question. Although the practice of artificial insemination by donor is growing (perhaps 150,000 living Americans were so conceived), not a single state or federal law defines the rights of the offspring. Only one legal case, in New York in 1948 (Strnad v. Strnad), has held an artificially inseminated child to be legitimate. All other cases on record seem to rule in favor of illegitimacy, whether the husband gave his consent or not.

No court has yet tackled the problem of inheritance rights. In many states, illegitimate children of parents who die without a will can inherit property only from the mother, not the father. The best solution may be for parents to adopt the child and provide for him in a will. But many parents balk at adoption because it might become public knowledge; impotence and sterility are hardly matters that husbands care to reveal.

And even if the child is adopted, his inheritance rights may be less than those of ordinary children.

What blocks the legislation needed to clear all this up is indifference--plus opposition by religious groups that contend that artificial insemination by a donor constitutes adultery. Last month the Oklahoma house of representatives approved a bill (it has still to pass the senate) that would make that state the first in the U.S. to recognize children produced by artificial insemination as legitimate. Seven other states have tried and failed in the past to enact such basic legislation.

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