Doctors impregnated wife with another man's semen, lawsuit claims

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, January 01, 2026

A couple that turned to fertility treatments 44 years ago claims that doctors inseminated the woman with another man's semen sample instead of her husband’s, according to a recent lawsuit filed against Oregon Health and Science University and its affiliate, Providence Health.

The suit, filed on Dec. 26 in Multnomah County Circuit Court, claims that inadequate procedures and oversight led to the woman’s insemination with genetic materials that didn’t belong to her husband, KOIN reports. 

The couple is suing the hospital for $17 million, including $5 million sought for non-economic damages.

The couple — identified as C.W. and K.W. — sought to undergo fertility treatments at OHSU in March 1980 for help with pregnancy difficulties. After undergoing the insemination procedure in the spring of 1981, C.W. became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl, A.P., in December 1981. 

In September 1980, an individual identified as R.W. was referred to the family planning unit at OHSU. The defendants in the case wrongfully used R.W.’s semen during C.W.’s insemination procedure, according to the lawsuit.

Genetic testing later confirmed that K.W. was not the father of A.P., with the lawsuit arguing that the child is the product of "nonconsensual birth,” and will "endure doubt, frustration, confusion, and embarrassment for the remainder of her life.”

However, the complaint states that OHSU continues to conceal or otherwise deny that C.W. was wrongfully inseminated with a foreign donor’s semen.

"Further, OHSU has failed to properly investigate and notify its patients of medical errors after being placed on notice of Plaintiff’s claims," the lawsuit adds.

In response to an inquiry from The Christian Post, OHSU said that it could not provide a comment due to patient privacy laws and pending litigation. 

The lawsuit asserts that the plaintiffs “continue to suffer mental and emotional anguish, physical pain, emotional distress, physical manifestations of emotional distress including embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life that have prevented and will continue to prevent Plaintiffs from performing daily activities and obtaining the full enjoyment of life.”

Katy Faust, the founder and president of the children's advocacy group Them Before Us, who has been a vocal critic of in-vitro fertilization, believes that the case demonstrates how the fertility industry places the desires of adults above the needs of children. 

“The lawsuit takes place because the adults did not take home the product that they ordered, not because a child went home with an unrelated adults. The reality is that's often planned by the commissioning adults,” Faust told The Christian Post. 

The separation of a child from their biological parents is not “a bug,” Faust argues, but “a feature” of what she described as “#BigFertility.” 

“And it's usually celebrated because the adults are getting what they want. In this case, the adults didn't,” the Them Before Us founder told CP. “That's the only reason why they are suing OHSU.”

“If this were about the rights of the child to be raised by their own mother and father, something which seems to matter a great deal to the child in this lawsuit, then a huge percentage of IVF cycles would be deemed unethical,” Faust added. “Unfortunately, for the vast majority of children, the only thing that qualifies as ethics in the world of IVF is making the adults happy.”

Over the years, there have been reported cases of clients who similarly claimed to have experienced mistreatment or neglect when they turned to the fertility industry, including embryo mix-ups that led to a woman giving birth to a child that is biologically unrelated to her and cases involving fertility doctors using their own sperm to create embryos for their female patients.

In 2022, Netflix released a documentary on an Indianapolis-based fertility doctor who secretly impregnated dozens of women with his own sperm in the 1970s and 1980s.