An Idaho woman is suing her fertility doctor after finding out that he is the father of her now 34-year-old daughter, accusing him of using his own sperm to inseminate her.
Sharon Hayes, 67, sought fertility care from obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. David R. Claypool in 1989 after she and her then-husband learned they were unable to conceive, per a civil complaint filed in a Washington state Superior Court on Wednesday.
Claypool, now 81, allegedly charged her $100 for each of several artificial insemination sessions, telling the woman that the money was to compensate the donors. Those candidates, he said, were chosen from a pool based on genetic traits like eye and hair color Hayes had selected.
“Claypool… told Plaintiff Hayes that he would obtain donor genetic material from anonymous donors such as college and/or medical students who physically resembled… Hayes’ husband at the time,” read the suit filed in Spokane County and reviewed by Fox News Digital.
Hayes told The Seattle Times that she “felt uneasy” around the doctor at points, but pushed her feelings aside and continued to see him for treatments over a six-month period.
Hayes had accused Claypool of fraud, failure to obtain consent in violation of state medical malpractice law and violation of Washington’s consumer protection law for his “scheme to charge cash for his own sperm, while he was representing it was a donor’s sperm.”
Per the lawsuit, Claypool’s “physical characteristics were materially different than those of… Hayes’ husband.”
Hayes asked for damages not just for her physical and emotional injuries, but for the “loss of love and companionship of her daughters, loss of her daughters’ emotional support and for injury to the parent-child relationship.”
Last year, Hayes’ daughter Brianna told the Associated Press, her family learned that the donor process was less than anonymous after receiving a genetic profile from ancestry services 23andMe and MyHeritage.
Claypool was her father – and she had at least 16 half-siblings on his side living in the Spokane area, she told the AP.
It is not immediately clear whether the mothers of Claypools’ other alleged children are pursuing legal action; per the Spokane County Court case viewer, the doctor has faced nine other lawsuits since 1986, but documents from cases predating 2005 are not available online.
Brianna used the site to help explain health issues that “do not run on [her] mom’s side of the family,” including a childhood bout with leukemia that was diagnosed when she was 4 years old.
Hayes was unable to find contact information for Claypool to obtain medical information about her donor at the time, she told The Seattle Times.
Then, in college, Brianna was diagnosed with the Epstein-Barr virus, which can cause months of fatigue and fevers, telling the outlet she “almost didn’t graduate, [she] was so ill.”
Brianna has had five hip surgeries at just 34 years old, she told the outlet, and has been diagnosed with a serious sleep disorder that severely impacts her life.
“I was trying to see what my predispositions are for further issues,” Brianna told the outlet. “What could be in my genetics? I was just trying to be informed.
Although she has enjoyed meeting her half-siblings, Brianna said, she has not met with her birth father.
Claypool has not practiced medicine since 2005, The Seattle Times reported.
“It’s been an identity crisis, for sure,” Brianna told the AP of the unsettling discovery. “This was hidden from me my whole life. I felt traumatized for my mom, and the fact that I’m a product of his actions is off-putting.”
Likewise, Brianna said, her mother “feels an immense guilt for putting [her daughter] in this situation.”
“I told her ‘This wasn’t you at all – you went through all the appropriate channels to do what you needed to. You were just being a mom, wanting to be a loving mother,” Brianna said. “She’s a puddle this morning.”
Hayes told the outlet that she “felt like a science experiment” after her daughter told her the shocking news.
A representative of the Hayes family told Fox News Digital on Monday that “the mother and daughter are feeling some fatigue from last week’s activity,” and declined to speak in further interviews.
Fox News Digital was unable to reach Claypool or his attorney, Drew Dalton, for comment on the pending suit at press time. Claypool told The Seattle Times that he had no knowledge of the impending lawsuit and didn’t know Hayes.
“I know people are very happy, but this is the first I’ve heard of anything in 40 years,” Claypool told the outlet.
As online DNA services have become available, more than 50 U.S. fertility doctors have been accused of “fertility fraud,” per a study cited by ABC 7. A Colorado jury awarded almost $9 million to three families who requested an anonymous donor and got their doctor’s sperm.
Indiana fertility doctor Donald Cline, per the Netflix documentary “Our Father,” sired over 90 children with his patients without their knowledge. Cline served a one-year suspended sentence on two counts of obstruction of justice and lost his medical license.
Dr. Kara Rubinstein Deyerin told The Seattle Times that assisted reproduction is largely unregulated in Washington State and elsewhere in the country – sperm banks are not required to test donor material, and there are no limits on how many times one donor’s sample can be used.
“This is a huge issue,” Deyerin told the outlet. “It will continue to grow as more people use assisted reproduction techniques.”
Deyerin cofounded a nonprofit called Right to Know four years ago, which pushes for stronger federal and state legislation surrounding artificial insemination processes.
At least 11 states have enacted laws around instances in which doctors use their own sperm, per the outlet. But in Washington, a bill that would criminalize this type of fraud by doctors, classifying it as a class-C felony, has died in session over the past four years.
