State lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee were asked to support legislation that would make it a crime for fertility doctors to knowingly use their own sperm to inseminate their patients without the patient’s consent.
The bill emerged from a pending lawsuit against a former Yale New Haven Hospital physician who is accused of promising his patients the samples used to inseminate them were from anonymous Yale medical students.
Maralee Hill and her daughter, Victoria, patients of the accused Dr. Burton Caldwell, testified to the committee and recounted the story of her pregnancy in the 1980’s.
“I trusted the doctor completely and never thought that he would betray his Hippocratic oath ‘to do no harm.’ And, harm is what he did,” Hill said.
Hill shared how she learned the truth when her daughter developed health problems as an adult and sought information on her donor father through DNA testing.
Hill said that she confronted Caldwell after receiving the results and he admitted to donating sperm he used to inseminate women for many years.
“Every year, my family grows larger as more siblings test,” Hill said. “There is even a Connecticut legislator who is in our pod. This is the gift that keeps on giving, as my children have 41 first cousins that I know of that are just in our close surrounding area with more to come.”
Last year, Hill discovered that her high school boyfriend is her half-brother. Hill said they parted ways after choosing to attend different colleges, but they could have potentially married.
Later in the hearing, Janine Pierson of Canton, whose mother was artificially inseminated by Caldwell in 1986, said that DNA research found Caldwell to be her biological father.
“But I have also matched with 23 half siblings to date through multiple DNA websites,” Pierson said. “I have siblings that I have dated. I have grown up in close contact with other siblings, all while completely unaware of any of this. I am in constant fear that anyone I know could be my half sibling.”
Supporters of the bill asked that there be no statute of limitations in the bill. If approved by the committee as well as the House and Senate by May 8, it will be signed into law by the Gov. Ned Lamont.
“It would be a crime, except that it is not usually discovered until after the statute of limitations have expired,” said Steve Errante of the CT Trials of Lawyers Association. “In most of these cases, because 20 or 30 years is going to go by before it is found out what the doctor did, the criminal statute, the statute is gone.”
Some who spoke, though, opposed the bill.
“Legislating today, sadly, will not address the harms of the past,” said Katherine Kraschel, a law professor at Northwestern University. “We should not target the whole field to address a few bad actors.”
Those in favor argue its narrow and specific language will not infringe on anyone’s rights to access fertility treatments.
Advocates for the bill want to replace “physician” to say “any person” as they say any employee in a fertility clinic or with access could be guilty of using their own sperm, not just doctors.
The Connecticut General Assembly has not yet voted on the bill.
