Actress slams artificial human ‘breeding’

Press, 10 February 1988, Page 15

Actress slams artificial human ‘breeding’

NZPA-PA London The British actress Felicity Kendall has attacked scientific developments such as those that produce test tube babies as "a Frankenstein thing .i.. creeping into human breeding.” Miss Kendall, who at 41 recently gave birth to her second child, called modern scientific developments “monstrous” and envisaged a future where women shopped for “frozen babies.”

Miss Kendall admitted she enjoyed a “model pregnancy,” painted her toenails scarlet before she went into a private hospital to have her son, Jacob, in October, and spent the early stages of labour in a spa pool. “I can’t actually understand the lengths to which people will go in order to have a baby,” she told “Woman’s Own” magazine.

"I know it’s easy for me to sit here with two gorgeous boys and say that, but I’ve never gone for the artificial methods.

“There is definitely a line to be drawn between what is natural, what you’re allowed to have, and the more sinister side of giving nature a helping hand,” said the star of television series such as "The Mistress” and “The Good Life.” “I think a Frankenstein

thing is creeping into human breeding and I find it all quite monstrous. “I appreciate that it’s a terrible thing to want a child desperately and not be able, for whatever reason, to have one. The tragedies of the individual are indeed awful, and there but for the Grace of God ...

“But I am equally horrified by the thought that, in 50 or 60 years time, this whole frozen embryo thing will have gone too far and women will be buying frozen babies at the shops. There will be no more to having a baby than that.” The actress, married to director Michael Rudman, confessed baby Jacob “wasn’t really planned,” but said she would like at least one more child and hoped for a girl next time. She also has a 15-year-old son, Charlie, from a previous marriage. Miss Jo Richardson, the British Labour Party’s spokesperson on women’s affairs, said; “Miss Kendall is wrong. To talk of ‘Frankenstein’ is frankly nonsense. I would agree with her if that is what I thought was going to happen, but Parliament will not allow it to happen. “Scientists’ developments will be subject to the statutory licensing authority which is about to be set up,” she said.