Celebrate IVF’s 34th Anniversary With This Original 70s-tastic Tom Brokaw Video

Crack open a champagne bottle, IVF users! Today is a very special day in the expansion of your family as 34 years ago today, Lesley Brown, the first woman to give birth via IVF, welcomed her first baby. And we have the fantastic 1978 footage with Tom Brokaw to prove it.

The TODAY video segment contains many a gem including a 70s diagram of a uterus to explain to viewers how exactly Lesley was able to conceive. Some grainy stock footage of eggs in Petri dishes and the use of “test tube baby” make this segment definitely a mark of the times. But with the world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown, you’ll note that the Catholic Church had already reportedly “condemned” the scientific achievement. No talk yet of IVF being a “gravely evil act,” at least not in this specific segment. But Rev. Richard McCormick of Georgetown University expresses concern for how the prevalence of such a practice could chip away at something fundamentally human. No wagging fingers, but the ethics professor does urge parents to “proceed with caution” at the debut of this test tube phenomenon. My, it’s not only the diagrams of ovaries that have changed since 1978.

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