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Woman Says Doctor Inseminated Her With His Sperm in 1970s: Report

They only recently learned about what had allegedly happened after their adult daughter searched for information about her biological father.

A Florida woman alleges that a now-retired Vermont doctor inseminated her with his own sperm instead of donor sperm in the 1970s, the Associated Press reports. The woman, Cheryl Rousseau, and her husband filed a lawsuit in federal court against Dr. John Coates and a hospital formerly known as the Central Vermont Medical Center. Coates told Rousseau that he would inseminate her with sperm donated from an unnamed medical student, whom he claimed looked like her husband, as she had requested. The AP notes that Rousseau wanted a child but that her husband could not get a prior vasectomy reversed. Coates carried out the artificial insemination with his own sperm, Rousseau alleges in the suit. They only recently learned about what had allegedly happened after their adult daughter searched for information about her biological father, via DNA testing, per the AP. The daughter allegedly found out that Coates was her father in October. Rousseau argues that Coates’s decision to inseminate her with his sperm rather than a donor, as agreed upon, “was harmful, offensive and constituted a battery upon Plaintiff Cheryl Rousseau.” Coates reportedly has denied inseminating Rousseau with his sperm.