F • CLINICAL ASPECTS OF SPINAL CORD INJURIES
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very devoted to him. In 1954, he informed me very happily of the birth of a daughter.
Unfortunately, the baby died a few months later of an intestinal obstruction.
Adoption of children.
A very important achievement is that today, having regard to the
great advances made in the rehabilitation of paraplegics and in restoring their working
capabilities, adoption societies take a different and more co-operative view towards the
adoption of children by paraplegics than they took previously. In this respect, it may be
mentioned that we have patients in our material who were married before their paraplegia
and had children. As the couples wanted more children and this could not be achieved
in the normal way, they adopted children, and in all cases this has proved most successful.
Even in these cases, the adoption societies have co-operated well.
In conclusion, if one accepts the three fundamentals for a happy marriage:
1
compatibility of personality and companionship
2
sexual satisfaction of the female partner
3
the production of children,
there is no doubt that the majority of paraplegics can fulfil the two first conditions. With
regard to the third, the ability of paraplegic and even tetraplegic women to produce
children is definitely greater than that of the paralysed man, although there is no doubt
that a minority can sire their own children. How far this ability of the male partner can
be improved by assisted insemination, with improved techniques of conservation of the
paraplegic's own semen, remains to be seen by future biological research. Their mar
riages are, of course, subject to all the problems in marriages of the able-bodied; however,
their divorce rate would not appear to be significantly higher.
