First lesbian in Britain to conceive by artificial insemination talks about her pionerring family

Janis Hetherington was the first lesbian in Britain to conceive by artificial insemination. On the 40th anniversary of her son's conception, she talks about her pioneering family, sudden death and tabloid fury.
In a sleepy Oxfordshire village 40 years ago, Janis Hetherington and her partner Judy sat in their local pub with their farming neighbours and toasted the extraordinary thing they had just done. Earlier that day the couple had driven to a clinic in London. There, a doctor inseminated her with a syringe and told her to hold her feet up for while, before they sped back to Bicester for last orders.

Janis was the first lesbian in Britain to have a child by artificial insemination. The momentous event that four decades on continues to raise eyebrows, passed at the time without fanfare and headlines. "We had no reason to come forward," Janis says. Their GP was delighted and insisted she was treated like any other expectant mother and, in January 1972, aged 26, Janis gave birth to her son, Nick, with Judy at her side. The only sign of what might be to come was when the hospital matron put her in a side ward, saying the sight of two women having a child would upset other patients.

Those prejudices towards same-sex parents exploded on to the front pages in October 1977, after two tabloid reporters, posing as lesbians who wanted to conceive, "exposed" a clinic that offered female couples insemination. Several Tory MPs responded by calling for the practice to be banned, claiming children needed "normal" parents.

Janis decided to step into the limelight and take a stand. By then, the Hetheringtons were living a settled life in north London and the unusual circumstances of Nick's conception were known and accepted within their community. She rebuffed the critics, pointing out that her son was "perfectly normal, and very intelligent". For days, reporters camped outside their door. Nick and Janis then appeared in a BBC documentary followed by a US film by NBC.

The clouds of that media storm have circled the family, on and off, ever since. Janis is 65 now and looks the arch English eccentric as she sits on a sofa in the 18th-century house in Oxfordshire that she shares with her long-term partner. She says she was aware at the time of how momentous Nick's conception was. "Yes, I knew the responsibility I had – as his mother – and also if I blew it, I'd blow it for everyone else. Other women – gay friends – had said, 'Gosh, we didn't know that was possible. Perhaps we should think about it.'"

It was when Janis met Judy, aged 24, that she began to seriously want a child. Aware she was a lesbian since the age of four, she gallivanted through a sexually adventurous youth, but when she met Judy she was looking for a relationship and was surprised to find herself falling for a woman who was not only married but the mother of a five-year-old daughter, Lisa. Within a week, they decided to settle down. Judy had separated from her husband several years earlier. "It was because of Lisa – being a mother to her, more than anything, reminded me that I could have a child and I didn't have to have a man," she says.

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