Gynecologist sued for using his sperm to get patient pregnant in fertility procedure 34 years ago
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.
