Opportunity for Spinsters?

Britain's most outspoken Methodist leader, Donald Soper, never a man to put aside the burning word, last week hotted up his country's current hassle over artificial insemination (TIME, Jan. 27). The Archbishop of Canterbury had condemned the use of extramarital donors as a sin; not necessarily so, said Nonconformist Soper. "It's no good the church wanting to make it a sin or a crime; it is another piece of mechanism science has put in our hands to use wisely. I do not consider it sinful to give certain spinsters . . . artificial insemination so that they do not lose the opportunity of motherhood."

Applause for Dr. Soper came from the chairman of the Equal Rights for Women Association and the secretary of the International Committee of Mothers, but Mrs. Juanita Frances, chairman of the Married Women's Association, was "quite shocked." Children, she maintained, should have fathers to help bring them up.

Veteran Soapboxer Soper made his rebuttal on TV. "I agree that the ideal condition is that a child should be born in wedlock, but wedlock is itself an omnibus word which covers a multitude of relationships that have very little love in them. Many people don't know the love of a father now. I would rather . . . that a little child knew the fervent love of a mother. [Is it] a better thing to impose loneliness and frustration on women who haven't the decorative values to attract a male, and therefore can't get married and have children?"

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