My life, my child and the breakthrough for lesbians that put me in the headlines

Janis Hetherington was the first lesbian to conceive a child through artificial insemination. Forty years on, she talks to Sarah Freeman about what happened next.

Even if it weren’t for the tabloid scandal which enveloped her family during the 1970s, Janis Hetherington has led what can be politely described as a colourful life.

After being expelled from school at 16, she joined the left wing theatre group Unity and while touring in France ended up as a Parisian brothel-keeper. Later, she was involved in the Old Bailey case which saw cabaret singer Janie Jones imprisoned for seven years in 1973 for her part in what was described as “controlling prostitutes”.

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Janis admits that controversy has always been part of her life, never more so when she decided to go public about becoming the first lesbian to conceive a child through artificial insemination.

It was the winter of 1977 when a tabloid newspaper ran an exposé into a clinic offering treatment to lesbian couples. It sparked a media furore and as politicians and leading clergy condemned the practice, claiming children needed “normal” parents, Janis, whose own son, Nicky, was then five years old, decided to take a stand.

“The world is a very different place today. In the 1970s being gay was not something people admitted easily,” she says. “I knew that by going public with my story I was risking a lot, but I couldn’t have sat there and done nothing.

“Having a family is a wonderful thing and I wasn’t prepared to let a whole group of people be demonised.”

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In an attempt to avoid the tabloid circus, Janis’s story appeared first in the Yorkshire Post, but when she refused to name the doctor who had carried out the procedure she was told she risked jail. The threat of prosecution did little to sway her and in the weeks that followed, she talked openly not only about her son, but also about her partner Judy who died nine months after his birth following a heart attack.

Today at 66 and looking every inch the English eccentric, Janis’s connection with the county has come full circle with the Leeds-based company Mira publishing her memoirs, Love Lies Bleeding. The book has been 35 years in the writing, but – having finally secured a publishing deal – it has given Janis cause to look back over those few months of the late 70s and the change in attitude which they at least in part sparked. .

“Judy and I had never hidden our relationship,” she says. “We were living in a sleepy Oxfordshire village, but when we got back from the clinic we went to the pub and celebrated with our friends. I know rural communities have a reputation for not welcoming outsiders, but Judy and I were relatively well-off and the reality is money can buy you friendship.

“In fact, the only person to show any disdain for what we were doing was the hospital matron. When I went into labour, we were put in a side ward in case we upset the other mothers. We had been accepted, but I knew that wasn’t the case for lots of other people. Judy and I were privileged in 
many, many ways, but I have always believed that you have to fight for the rights of those less fortunate than you. That’s not to say I wasn’t apprehensive about going to the Press. I knew there was a lot riding on this story and I also knew that if I got it wrong, one of those who stood to lose most was my own son.

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“Before I did anything, I spoke to his headmistress. I wanted reassurance and I got it. She had always been very supportive of the family and she immediately turned to me and said, ‘Janis, you know you have to do this’. She was in her mid-50s, what you’d describe as a traditional, white, middle-class woman, but she understood that it was important.

“There was so much fear surrounding the gay community at that time and I hoped that being open about my life I could dispel a few of those myths. The fact was that I had been a rebellious teenager, I had gone to Paris, I had found myself working in a brothel, but when I met Judy I realised that what I wanted more than anything was to settle down and have a family. Funnily enough, it was while I was in Paris that I had first heard about artificial insemination. At the time it never occurred to me that it would be something I would want to do, but I suppose it was always there at the back of my mind. Judy, who had been married before we got together, had a daughter and it was she who made me realise that you didn’t need to have a man to be a mother.

“Artificial insemination was really just beginning, but I mixed in the right circles and was introduced to a doctor who worked in the field and who was excited by the idea of being part of what he clinically described as an ‘experiment’, so much so that he agreed to be the sperm donor.”

In an attempt to capitalise on her cause célèbre status, following her revelations in the newspaper, Janis agreed to take part in a BBC documentary and shortly afterwards, she and Nicky were being flown to America for a second film on gay parenting.

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Her son later moved to the US where he set up his own property business and last year married his partner Soo. He works as a volunteer with the charity Colage, run by and for those with lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender parents and has never expressed an interest in meeting his biological father or regret about his mother’s decision to go public.

“People often ask, wasn’t he bullied, wasn’t he picked on? It’s a fair question because back then even being a single mother or having parents who were divorced singled you out as different, but the answer is no. I have always been strong, I have never apologised for who I am and from an early age I was aware that family life can be quite unpredictable. I probably was a little overprotective of Nicky, but I also hope I passed some of that strength on to him.”

Janis had grown up in what was outwardly a middleclass family in Sevenoaks, but shortly after her son was born she discovered her father had been leading a double life and had fathered three children by another woman.

At the time looking after a baby, still grieving for Judy and fighting a legal battle to retain custody of her partner’s daughter, which she did successfully, there was she says no time for bitterness or recrimination. “In many ways, it helped explain who I was,” she says. “Sitting in judgment of others is not something I do and life is rarely simple.”

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Janis’s campaigning spirit remains undiminished. Over the years, she has fought for women’s equality in the Middle East, is a keen environmentalist and has been actively involved in halting the trade in sex-trafficking.

“If I hear about injustice I can’t just sit there and do nothing,” she says. “That’s was why I spoke out all those years ago about having a child and I think it’s probably too late to stop now.”

Love Lies Bleeding is published by Mira Publishi ng priced £9.99.

‘We are living proof this can work’

“We are a very happy family unit and the living proof that artificial insemination can work within a lesbian relationship.

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“I knew a lot of doctors and hunted around for one who was sympathetic. After four months of tests and seemingly endless examinations, two psychiatrists wrote to the doctor saying I was perfectly sane to bring up a child. Artificial insemination is a new science and I hope it is allowed to develop without an outcry.

“If the General Medical Council wants to investigate the doctor we saw, let them go ahead. He has not broken any laws, national or moral and they will not get any help from me.” Janis Hetherington in the Yorkshire Post in January 1978.

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