LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky could become the next state to criminalize fertility fraud, making it a class D felony for physicians to inseminate patients with their own sperm.
Last fall, WHAS11 News exposed the need for a law when a FOCUS investigation found a Louisville doctor had used his own semen to impregnate a woman without her knowledge.
Susan Crowder found out decades later after her daughter took a genealogy test and found her biological father was not an anonymous donor but instead Susan’s doctor.
"This was never ethical, this wasn't right, no one ever expected doctors to inseminate their own patients," she told WHAS11 News last September.
Crowder said she tried to hold the doctor accountable by writing the medical board and the UofL School of Medicine where he was an instructor, but both the university and the Kentucky oversight board said their hands were tied because legally, the doctor didn't do anything wrong.
That's when Dr. Jody Medeira got involved. She's an IU School of Law professor and expert in fertility fraud.
For the last six months, she has been working with lawmakers to create a bill that would criminalize fertility fraud.
"This is a bipartisan issue. Everyone can agree that this is a terrible thing to have happened, that this is incredibly deceptive, and these laws have passed unanimously to date," Medeira said.
She’s expected to testify on behalf of Kentucky House Bill 402, which makes fertility fraud illegal.
Crowder will also be testifying.
If passed it would be the sixth law in the country of this kind.
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