Victoria Hill speaks about the need for Connecticut to adopt legislation that would allow victims of fertility fraud to sue doctors who impregnate patients with their own sperm without patient consent. (Screengrab via WVIT).

Lawmakers in Connecticut are considering a bill that would outlaw so-called “fertility fraud” and allow victims to bring civil lawsuits against doctors who used their own sperm to impregnate patients without their consent.

The proposal would prohibit any physician from knowingly using the physician’s own sperm to inseminate a patient without the patient’s consent, and would authorize civil lawsuits and complaints against any doctor that violated the law.

The bill stops short of making fertility fraud a crime, however.

Victoria Hill, a woman who said she was conceived via fertility fraud, submitted a letter in support of the bill. Hill, 39, explained that she discovered through DNA testing that her mother’s fertility doctor, Burton Caldwell, had switched sperm from the donor chosen by her mother to his own sperm without her mother’s consent.

“It is my assumption, that having no technology to freeze sperm at the time, that Dr. Caldwell, prepared my mother for insemination, went into another room, ejaculated into a cup and then while under a state of arousal, inserted specimen into my mother without her consent,” said Hill, who said she views the incident as a form of sexual assault.

Hill said she confronted Caldwell who, “very readily admitted to donating for many years and showed no remorse or concern for what he had done.”

She went on to explain that she has since discovered over 23 half-siblings, including one former high school boyfriend with whom she had been intimate.

“This news is devastating to our past and now our future,” Hill said of the revelation of the biological connection between the two.

“Victims are entitled to compensatory and punitive damages or liquidated damages in the amount of $50,000, in addition to attorneys fees,” Hill argued. “Children are entitled to the medical records and health history of the person who committed the fraud.”

Hill said that fertility fraud is unique in that “it is the gift that keeps on giving,” as people like herself continue to learn that they have unknown half-siblings.

Another advocate, Janine Pierson, submitted a similar letter in support of the bill. Like Hill, Pierson discovered that Caldwell treated her mother as a fertility patient in the 1980s, then used his own sperm without his patient’s consent. Pierson and her mother sued Caldwell in 2023 for a variety of torts — including assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress — and a trial is set to begin in October 2025.

More than 50 doctors in the United States have been accused of fertility fraud in recent years as commercially available DNA tests have soared in popularity. In 2022, a jury awarded $8.75 million to families who sued Colorado fertility doctor Paul Brennan Jones for artificially inseminating women with his own sperm without their knowledge or consent.

The Connecticut General Assembly has not yet voted on the bill.