Artificial Insemination Artificial insemination, test-tube fertilization, frozen storage of embryos and surrogate parenting. For many people, these new and often controversial procedures of artificial reproduction hold out a last hope for starting a family. What happens during the insemination process is your physician uses a syringe to inject sperm into the cervical canal right before or right on the day of ovulation. Since half of the sperm get lost in the cervix, the physician sometimes injects them directly into the uterus through a procedure known as intrauterine insemination or IUI. Another method is the mixing of a sp