Donor 106

One night when Eve Wiley was 16, she started reading through her mother’s emails, and discovered a secret her mother had been keeping from Eve her whole life. “I always knew there was something. I just didn't know what it was.” Tickets for our brand new live show, Don't Worry with Phoebe Judge, are on sale now! Learn more and see all of our tour dates at ⁠⁠⁠thisiscriminal.com/live⁠⁠⁠. Say hello on ⁠Facebook⁠, ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠. Sign up for our ⁠occasional newsletter⁠. Follow the show and review us on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠. ⁠Sign up for Criminal Plus⁠ to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make ⁠This is Love⁠ and ⁠Phoebe Reads a Mystery⁠. Artwork by ⁠Julienne Alexander⁠. Check out ⁠our online shop⁠. Episode transcripts are posted on ⁠our website⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Phoebe Judge?

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• 0:45Phoebe Judge?

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• 1:15Speaker 01

  I grew up in a really small town in East Texas. It's about 5,000 people, so there's not really a whole lot out there.

• 1:24Phoebe Judge?

  Eve Wiley grew up in the early 90s with her mother, Margot, her father Doug, an older sister from her mother's previous marriage, and a sister who was 14 months younger than her. Were you close with your younger sister?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yes, I was really close with my sister, but we were just really different. She kind of liked more science-y stuff, and she liked math. And I wanted to have more imaginary play and be outside and build forts and play princesses. And so I think we tolerated each other, but we could not have been more different on all accounts. I was this blond hair, like bright blond hair, blue eyes, very fair skin. We would always joke that I was part vampire, because I would go in the sun and just immediately turn red. And my little sister had this gorgeous olive skin complexion.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  She had these big, dark brown eyes and then dark, dark brown hair.

• 2:28Phoebe Judge?

  Eve's sister looked more like their father.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  And that would come up quite often, really in any conversation. The joke kind of ended on that I was that way because I was the milkman's kid. But that did start things of, you know, oh my gosh, am I adopted? Those jokes would come up as well. And it wasn't just to our family. There were people in the community that would constantly be making comments as well, because I really was the black sheep.

• 3:00Phoebe Judge?

  When you were little, did you say, did you ask your mother, why do I, why do I look different?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  I did. And the response I would always get is that genetics are a funny thing over and over and over again. And so we also would talk about, maybe there were some throwback genetics from our Irish roots or something like that.

• 3:25Phoebe Judge?

  Eve remembers that when she was five, her father started to get really sick. He had a heart condition. He died when she was seven.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  We were very close growing up. I look back at pictures and I can see that I was always on his hip and his arms right next to him. It was really, really, it was difficult. I didn't know anybody else in my tiny town who had lost a parent before, so I didn't really have a good frame of reference of even what to expect. And I certainly didn't understand all of the medical reasons behind it. So there were a lot of fears, you know, thinking and assigning meaning to things of like, oh, if I eat this, then maybe that would make my heart go out. And so I remember a lot of those conversations of, you know, just double checking, is this going to hurt me?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Am I going to be, you know, am I going to get hurt like him? So it was, it was really hard.

• 4:25Phoebe Judge?

  Eve says that eventually, things got easier. Her grandparents had a farm about 30 minutes away that they would go visit. Eve played a lot of tennis, something she and her father had liked doing together. Tennis courts in the town were named after and dedicated to him, the Doug Andrews Tennis Courts. By the time Eve was in high school, she traveled all around Texas for tournaments. And she says one of her favorite things to do after school was to go into her mother's office, sit at her computer, and check her mother's emails.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So my mom, she was a school nurse. And so school nurse in a small town means that she had all of the juicy gossip on my cohort. And it also meant that I could get in there and maybe delete some emails if it came from a teacher about me not doing too well on a project or a test. And so there was this time where I would get out of school, and she would still have to be there for another hour and a half. And so I would be in her office, and I would get bored of playing paint on windows, and I would just start going through her emails, and I just kind of was in the know.

• 5:43Phoebe Judge?

  So you just sit at her desk and just go into her computer?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  I would. I would go through pretty much every email.

• 5:51Phoebe Judge?

  I mean, you must have learned some pretty good stuff.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I did. I learned all kinds of things, and I got out of all kinds of trouble, because I really did not enjoy math at the time. And so there were constant conversations about if I needed extra support in certain classes, and oh no, she didn't do well on this quiz, please make her complete blah, blah, blah, blah tonight. And so I would conveniently delete those, and I would avoid more homework.

• 6:21Phoebe Judge?

  One night, when Eve was 16, she decided to check her mother's email from home.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  And I saw all of these emails about artificial insemination. And I clicked on one, and remember, I grew up in the country. My grandparents have a farm. And so I wasn't, I was used to artificial insemination when it came to cattle. And so I'm scrolling through, and it's like California Cryobank, and I go all the way to the bottom, and it says, "My daughter still doesn't know. I am gathering more information." And her birth date is 7/28/1987.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  I always, I always knew there was a secret. I just didn't know that I was the secret. And that was the confirmation for me.

• 7:12Phoebe Judge?

  I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

• 7:20Phoebe Judge?

  Eve says that when she saw that email, she knew what it meant right away, that she'd been conceived with donor sperm, and that Doug wasn't her biological father.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Everything just kind of clicked. Everything made sense. It was kind of like that, that thought of, I always knew there was something, I just didn't know what it was. And I knew that this makes sense to me. This is why I don't look like anybody in my family. This is why I don't act like anyone in my family. There was a seed of truth to all of those jokes growing up.

• 8:02Phoebe Judge?

  Do you remember reading anything else on that email?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I just kept going through emails. And then I started clicking on the ones from the all-hum messenger boards. And they were things like "single mothers by choice," "donor conceived persons," you know, all of these words. It was like learning a new language. I just remember reading the same thing over and over and over again, that my mom, when she would tell her story to these people online, it was like, I don't know how to tell my daughter.

• 8:37Phoebe Judge?

  Did you tell your mother?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I did, but I had to wait. So I eventually did fall asleep that night, and I heard her getting up, and she's in the bathroom, and I just burst through the door. And I was like, Mom, I know Doug is not my father. And she just, she's putting her makeup, and she looks at me through the reflection of the mirror, and she was like, what? I was like, Mom, I know Doug's not my father. I know I'm from a donor. And she just burst into tears.

• 9:16Phoebe Judge?

  Eve's mother told her that when she and Doug were trying for their first child together, it was taking longer than they expected. They went to a fertility doctor in the closest big city, Nacogdoches, and discovered that Doug had a low sperm count. The doctor recommended they look into using an anonymous sperm donor, and Eve's mother decided to use a sperm bank called California Cryobank.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  And they gave her and my dad this one sheet of paper, and it had all these donors on it with one line that just gave physical characteristics and education and interest. Just one line. It's not like it is today, where you have like an a la carte menu, and you can pick from all these crazy things and get to know the donor. And so ultimately, they landed on donor 106. And it was really interesting, because when she showed me that paper, she had kept it folded up in this little bitty tiny, tiny square, and she kept it in her jewelry box under a false bottom. The same jewelry box I would play in, growing up, almost every single day.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I just, I didn't know it was there. And she unfolded it for me, and she gave it to me.

• 10:33Phoebe Judge?

  Eve's mother told her that she'd decided to use California Cryobank, because she didn't feel comfortable using a local sperm donor.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  My mom would constantly say that she didn't want to be grocery shopping and constantly looking for my face in all these strangers. And she was really concerned about accidental incest. And, you know, what if I started dating a sibling, and I was mistaking that familiarity that's because we're siblings for love?

• 11:07Phoebe Judge?

  Eve says she and her mother also talked about what Eve had gone through after her father Doug died.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  And she, she did carry a love of guilt, because she remembers the anxiety that I had about health at such a young age, but couldn't say, oh, no, honey, it's okay. Those aren't your genetics. Those are your sister's. So there was a lot packed in that conversation.

• 11:30Phoebe Judge?

  After Eve was born, Doug and Margot found out that they could have children together. And Eve's younger sister was Doug's biological child. Did you ask her why she hadn't told you?

• 11:45Speaker 01

  I did. And she had said that, one, is that the doctor was very adamant about not telling an offspring that their donor conceived, that genetics don't matter, and in order for there to be a good attachment, you know, the child needs to believe that this is their biological father. And so there was a ton of secrecy around the anonymity with it. And at the time, infertility was still very much stigmatized. People didn't talk about infertility like we do today.

• 12:18Phoebe Judge?

  Eve's mother said she'd planned to tell her when she was 18. What did your mother know about the donor that was used?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  All she knew was that it was donor 106 from California Cryobank. He has blond hair, blue eyes. He was interested in politics, and he was an editor. He went to a university in California, and that was it. The exact opposite of my dad. She also knew his height, 2s, 5'10", whereas my dad was 6'4", dark olive skin complexion, brown hair, brown eyes. And he was a math professor at a high school and a college.

• 13:09Phoebe Judge?

  What did you, how did you feel, knowing that your father wasn't your biological father?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  I think my 16-year-old self, I think I was, I was excited. I wanted to figure out who he was. And I just, I wanted to look in the mirror and see something familiar. And I remember vividly, you know, when we were guessing, you know, who my dad could be, and I remember saying, Mom, it could be Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's the only person I could think of that was from California. And a lot of people who are donor conceived can say, oh, I don't want to know, I don't want to know, because they're worried it's going to be a threat to their relationship with their father. And I didn't have that. So I could really explore all of my feelings and move forward very quickly without any

• 14:05Speaker 01

  barriers.

• 14:07Phoebe Judge?

  Eve's mother contacted California Cryobank to see if they could connect Eve with her donor. But they told her they couldn't reach out to Eve's donor on her behalf until she turned 18. But they could tell her that he had been a popular donor.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  And I was the oldest one that had been recorded and reported. And I had a bunch of siblings that were younger than me.

• 14:35Phoebe Judge?

  Eve says she spent the next two years writing what she hoped would be a perfect letter introducing herself. She mailed it on the day she turned 18. And what happened next?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Waited, and waited, and waited, and it was just silence.

• 14:58Phoebe Judge?

  About a year later, Eve was working at a summer camp in Maine, teaching tennis. She couldn't have her phone with her at the camp, but on her day off, once a week, she checked her voicemails.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  So I was listening to voicemails, listening to voicemails. And I had a voicemail from them, saying that they had heard back from him, and they had sent the letter that I had requested for them to forward on.

• 15:23Phoebe Judge?

  Eventually, donor 106 wrote back via email. Eve learned his name was Steve, and that he had raised children of his own. He told Eve he'd found a picture of her online, and she looked just like them. He and Eve started writing back and forth, and then started talking on the phone. At the end of the summer, Eve went back to Texas, and Steve flew to Austin to see her.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  And so we were going to go to dinner, and I had him over at my apartment before. And we ended up staying and talking on my couch for hours. We completely missed dinner, ordered pizza later. I mean, it was awesome. The next day, we were actually, we were walking down Sixth Street, and I was showing him Austin. And we ran into some of my friends, and I, I wasn't even thinking, but just for the sake of titles, I was like, hey, guys, this is my dad, Dad, these are my friends, so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and-so. And then that was it. I don't even know if I thought twice about it. And we kept walking.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And he said, hey, Eve, I'm okay with you introducing me as your dad, and call me your dad. And from that moment on, he was Dad.

• 16:43Phoebe Judge?

  Eve and Steve kept in touch and talked at least once a week. They realized they both loved reading and writing. Eve says it felt natural. When Eve got engaged, she asked him to officiate her wedding. Several months later, Eve got pregnant. Her son had a medical condition that made it hard for him to keep milk down when he was a baby. And when he got older, he kept having gastrointestinal issues. Eve eventually found a specialist she thought could help.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  And he says, all right, Eve, do 23andMe plus health. And I need you to do it, I need your husband to do it, and I need your son to do it. So that's just a cheek swab. So we did it. And he gets the results and the raw data back. And he calls me, and he says, Eve, I think your son has celiac disease. And I was like, what? I don't even know what that is. So then he had to teach me all about autoimmune disorders and what celiac disease meant. And at the end of the conversation, he said, Eve, this is coming from you. And I was like, but I don't have any issues.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And he said, it doesn't matter, because you have the genetic variant from it. I called mom, I was like, Mom, who, does anybody in our family have autoimmune disorders? Or, you know, anything that would make sense with this? And, I mean, she was just as baffled as I was. And she's like, no. And then I called Dad, Steve, and, and he also said no. And so I was like, well, maybe people have it, and they're just, I don't know, maybe it's not dominant or something. I had no clue. But no, no one on either side could tell me anything similar.

• 18:37Phoebe Judge?

  Eve noticed something else in the 23andMe test results. They included a few people who were listed as close family to first cousins.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  And I thought I had discovered some family secrets, because even though my mom has two brothers, neither one of them have any known biological children. And then even Dad, he has two siblings, but they don't have any biological children either. And so I remember joking with my mom, I'm like, ooh, one of these aunts and uncles, I found, I found their, their biological child they don't know about. And then it was my mom, actually, that was like, hey, Eve, you know those matches? I, I think that those could be your half siblings. And I was like, no, it says close family to first cousins.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  And she kind of explained to me, you know, the degree in which you're related, and how, you know, that number could mean four different things if it's halves. And, and that's when I started investigating it a little bit more.

• 19:46Phoebe Judge?

  And what did you find out?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I found out that I had several half siblings. So I look at the first one and, and his name, and I send him a message, and kind of like the 23andMe portal. And then, of course, it's like, all right, sleuthing time, Facebook, Instagram, you know, just trying to figure out like a picture, just wanted to see the familiarity, and, you know, I was excited. And so I find the first one, and he's from Nacogdoches, which is crazy. I grew up 30 minutes from one of my half siblings, and I had no idea.

• 20:25Phoebe Judge?

  They talked on the phone. And Eve remembers finding out that he was about a year older than she was.

• 20:33Phoebe Judge?

  But she had been told that she was the oldest of Steve's donor children.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  But I knew that there's no formalized reporting system here. So the ones that California Caribou Bank knew about are simply the ones that the parents called or the doctors called and said, hey, we had a live birth. And so I could justify it by being like, oh, well, maybe they called, you know, several, like a year later and reported it. And I was just kind of chalking it up to not great record keeping. But when I talked to my next brother, he was 13 years older than me.

• 21:13Phoebe Judge?

  Which raised questions.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Raised a lot of questions. But again, I think I was excited. And so I just went on to the next one.

• 21:24Phoebe Judge?

  Eve says that when she told him that they were half siblings and that his biological father was named Steve, he seemed very confused.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  And Adam was just so adamant. He was like, no, that I have a brother, I look like my parents. And I was trying to validate him. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we all think that, but like, it's not true. Like, go look, here's what it says. And, um, and so we go back and we pull up each other's profile on 23andMe. And I was like, all right, so I'll humor you here. If, if it says first or close family to first cousins, then we're either half siblings or first cousins. So in order for that to be true, Steve, my biological father, would have to be your uncle.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  So do you have an uncle named Steve? He said, no, I, I only have one uncle and his name is Kim McMorris. And my world stopped.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Kim McMorris was Dr. Kim McMorris.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  My parents' fertility doctor and the man who delivered me.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  And in that moment, I knew that he was my biological father.

• 22:57Phoebe Judge?

  We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

• 23:18Phoebe Judge?

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• 23:59Phoebe Judge?

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• 24:18Phoebe Judge?

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• 25:01Phoebe Judge?

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• 25:23Phoebe Judge?

  Eve Lyle says that after she realized her parents' fertility doctor was her biological father, she got off the phone with the man she had thought was her half-brother, closed her laptop, and drank a glass of wine. What were you thinking?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Honestly, what in the Jerry Springer hell is going on? That was my initial thought. And just like when I was 16 years old, I run upstairs and my mom is watching a movie with my in-laws. And I like go up next to her and I was like, Mom, Mom, Steve's not my dad. She's like, what? And I get up and I throw on the lights and I have everybody's attention and I'm just kind of pacing and I'm like, Mom, Steve is not my dad. It's Dr. Kim McMorris. And she was just, Eve, there is no way. We have the medical records, you look just like him. And then I had to go and tell her and I had to pull the computer out.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  And, and I've never seen someone go into shock before. But she was just asking the same question over and over again. And how, how, how could he do this? How could he do this? And this can't be true. This can't be true.

• 26:41Phoebe Judge?

  What did you, what did you do next?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  So that night, I emailed one of my attorneys and asked for them to give me a call the next day. And then I went to bed.

• 26:56Phoebe Judge?

  Eve says that when her attorney called the next day, she learned that there wasn't anything she could do because what Dr. Kim McMorris had done wasn't actually illegal. Even though Eve's mother thought she was using donor 106's sperm, there was nothing on the books that said her doctor had to.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  And so for something that just felt so wrong, I couldn't wrap my head around it. And I was furious. I wanted to go that next day and knock on his door. But my attorneys were really adamant about me doing everything and writing. And so I mailed him snail mail, certified mail, just saying, hi, my name is Eve. I did commercial DNA testing and it seems like you're my biological father.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  You know, my son has been sick and I just, we really need medical information. And so he responded, oh, it was so weird. He responded and was like, you know, hi, you know, it, it seems like you may have inherited some of my genetics. And then at the end of it, he was like, it was a pleasure to deliver your parents a healthy baby girl.

• 28:23Phoebe Judge?

  Eve and Dr. McMorris continued writing back and forth. Eve kept asking questions.

• 28:31Phoebe Judge?

  Dr. Kim McMorris explained that he had mixed his sperm with donor 106's sperm to improve her mother's chances of conception. He said, quote, "The thinking at that time was that if the patient got pregnant, there was no way to know which sperm affected the conception. No one ever considered the effect of genetic testing years later."

• 28:57Phoebe Judge?

  He also said he had talked with Eve's mother about mixing an anonymous local donor's sperm with donor 106's sperm as a way to improve her chances and that she had agreed to it. Eve's mother has said that conversation never happened and that she'd felt strongly about not using a local donor, so would never have agreed to it.

• 29:21Phoebe Judge?

  Dr. McMorris apologized to Eve for the grief this had caused her, but said, "I cannot go back today and change the standards, protocols we used 33 years ago. I can say they are wrong today, but 33 years ago, when this occurred, it was not wrong."

• 29:42Phoebe Judge?

  Did you talk to your mother about this?

• 29:44Speaker 01

  I did. She couldn't believe it either. And she just kept saying that there must have been a mistake because he was such a great person and he was a, you know, pillar in his church and everyone loved him. And, and I remember meeting him and he was such a nice guy. And I think it was really hard for her to accept, but it was really weird because in a sense, I think she, and a lot of moms feel this way. If I say I am so hurt by this, then I also mean that I wish it would have never happened, therefore implying you would not be here.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  And so I think that was really hard for her. She always felt like she was treading lightly around the conversation.

• 30:35Phoebe Judge?

  Around this time, Eve decided she needed to reach out to Steve, the man she had thought was her biological father.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  I remember it was hot outside. I go outside and I was already sweating, it was so hot. And I sat down and called him and couldn't even do small talk and just immediately was like, Dad, I just have some really bad news. And I just started bawling my eyes out. I was like, you're not my dad and this is what happened. And then there was just silence. And, and then he said to me, this changes some things, but it doesn't change the important things.

• 31:16Phoebe Judge?

  Eve says she struggled with what to do with all of this. And then, she says, she had an idea.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Because there was that moment where I was so rageful of this was not a crime, this was not illegal. And so that is when I decided, I'll make it a crime.

• 31:43Phoebe Judge?

  We'll be right back.

• 32:06Phoebe Judge?

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• 32:50Phoebe Judge?

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• 33:34Phoebe Judge?

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• 34:16Phoebe Judge?

  to try to get someone in the legislature to author a bill to make it a crime for other fertility doctors to do what her mother's doctor had done.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  The complication is that the only bill, because legislators really want to understand unintentional consequences, but the only reference was from a bill California passed in the 90s. That was it.

• 34:41Phoebe Judge?

  But Eve was able to find two legislators who were willing to write the bill.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  There was some media I did around this. I had a 2020 episode that came out, and I had local media that was reporting on my legislative efforts. And there was a family in San Antonio, and they figured out they had a similar story from a doctor in Colorado. And then it just, so many people started reaching out.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  The earliest reported case of fertility fraud took place in 1884.

• 35:21Phoebe Judge?

  This is Dove Fox. He teaches law and directs the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics at the University of San Diego.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  A couple, an older man and a younger woman, sought help from a doctor called William Pankost in conceiving. They had struggled to get pregnant. They went to him, he was well-known, his practice in Philadelphia, and asked for help. What could he do for them and help them have the child that they wanted? And so Dr. Pankost called in the wife under the guise of a routine follow-up appointment after meeting with the husband and wife previously. It turned out that it was the man who had an STD that made it difficult for his sperm to result in a pregnancy.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  But he said that the wife ought to just come in. And he sedated her with chloroform at that follow-up visit without her knowledge or consent. And this was in front of a half dozen medical students before, while she was unconscious, instructing one of them to step out and come back with a sperm sample that Dr. Pankost then proceeded to inject into the unconscious woman with a rubber syringe, a turkey baster. Nine months later, she gave birth. Apparently, Dr. Pankost told the husband, who was pleased.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  And neither he nor the doctor felt any need to tell the wife what they had done, or what had happened, or the genetic origins of their resulting child. It wasn't, in fact, until 25 years later, so the child's now a young adult, the older husband had since died, as had Dr. Pankost by that time, when the mother and child learned about what had happened from a story published in a journal called Medical World by one of those former students of Dr. Pankost, one of the half dozen men. The title of the article was "Artificial Impregnation."

• 37:40Speaker 02

  And the author, one of those students who had been in the room, he explained the procedure was so novel, so peculiar in its human ethics, that the six young men of the senior class who had witnessed the operation were pledged to absolute secrecy. And so this has been a shady business from jump.

• 38:07Phoebe Judge?

  One of the first big, modern cases of so-called fertility fraud came to light during investigations into a Virginia doctor named Cecil Jacobson, who'd been giving his patients hormone injections to make it appear that they were pregnant. And then, after showing them ultrasound images in which he pointed out what he said was a healthy, growing fetus, telling them that they had had a miscarriage. In 1991, it came out that he had used his own sperm to impregnate patients who had elected to use anonymous sperm donors. His lawyer said, "If Cecil made any mistakes, it was in losing his objectivity and trying

• 38:52Phoebe Judge?

  so hard to get patients pregnant." The case was all over the news. There was even an SNL sketch about it. But it was seen as an anomaly. But then, almost 20 years later, at-home DNA testing started becoming widely available, and more and more cases started coming to light. In 2014, a woman in Indiana took a DNA test and realized that she had several half siblings, and that they were all the biological children of her mother's fertility doctor, Donald Klein. She eventually learned that he had fathered more than 90 children.

• 39:36Phoebe Judge?

  One Connecticut woman took a DNA test and found out that her biological father was her parents' fertility doctor, and that one of his other biological children was her high school boyfriend. One woman in New York discovered that her biological father had also been her gynecologist for almost a decade. There have been other cases in Idaho, Vermont, Colorado, Nevada, all around the country. And like Eve, when people started trying to bring lawsuits or criminal charges, they found out that a doctor using his own sperm to impregnate a patient without her knowledge wasn't illegal.

• 40:21Phoebe Judge?

  Cecil Jacobson was charged with wire and mail fraud. Donald Klein was given a fine of $500 for obstructing justice for denying the allegations.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  By and large, the law doesn't provide compensation unless the harm is one that you can test or verify or show to be tangible in some way, with certain exceptions that need to be explicitly laid out. Criminally, it was not, it didn't count as an assault or a battery, in part, a number of complicated questions. But basically, by and large, these patients had consented to being inseminated with sperm for the purpose of reproduction more broadly.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  And things had happened outside of the body with the transfer of the sperm into the egg and then back into the body without any physical harm or damage that could be shown from a resulting X-ray or psychiatrist's note, medical report. And so that complicated proof that an existing law had been broken.

• 41:45Phoebe Judge?

  Dove Fox says that even apart from the difficulty in showing that any tangible harm has been caused, there's this historical idea in United States courts that if a child is the end result of any action, it can't be a harm.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  You know, going back to the 1940s, there was a doctrine in the United States, many states adopted this principle of babies are a blessing, the blessings doctrine, it was called. And the idea was that if you got a baby, no matter the misconduct that may have resulted in your getting that baby, then by definition, you weren't harmed. And you couldn't claim a harm that would be redressable in our courts. The very fact that you had a baby, a bouncing, beautiful, smiling child, was proof that you had not been harmed but

• 42:45Speaker 02

  benefited and accordingly couldn't claim for compensation in the courts. So if you had been misled, whether negligently or even intentionally into becoming pregnant, into staying pregnant, into having a child that you hadn't planned on, or hadn't wanted, or wouldn't have carried, but for some clear misconduct by whether an intimate partner or the physician that you had entrusted to help you, then you couldn't sue because babies are a blessing. So I do think that is part of it. We struggle under the law

• 43:27Speaker 02

  still today to think of having a child as a harm. And I think we struggle with that for some good reasons. It is indeed a tension to think that the child that you now have and presumably love is somehow a legal harm under the law, which is a very difficult tension to navigate.

• 43:55Phoebe Judge?

  In the spring of 2019, after Eve Wiley's bill was filed, she continued to make the trip to Austin once a week to meet with legislators and ask for their support.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  So it's a lengthy, exhausting process. One of the roadblocks was that my biological father's best friend was a representative. And I actually met with him. And I was like, listen, you've seen me around the halls. I'm sure you've talked to Dr. McMorris. You know why I'm here. And so I told him the story and he was like, Eve, you have a duty to honor your mother and your father. And he goes, and besides, it looks like it all worked out well for you with this hand motion. Oh my gosh, it made me so mad. And so he's

• 44:52Speaker 01

  like, it's not going to pass. I'm not going to vote for it. And so I stood up and I was like, all right, you watch me.

• 44:58Phoebe Judge?

  About three months later, on May 16th, 2019, the bill passed. It became a crime in Texas for a doctor to do what Eve's mother's doctor had done. It's classified as a type of sexual assault. But Dr. Kim McMorris couldn't be prosecuted under the new law. It wasn't retroactive. And he continued seeing patients at his clinic until he retired in 2021. In 2024, he agreed to voluntarily surrender his medical license while he was under investigation

• 45:38Phoebe Judge?

  by the Texas Medical Board for, quote, "professionalism related to alleged lack of informed consent when providing fertility treatment to multiple patients." We reached out to Dr. Kim McMorris for comment, but haven't heard back. Around the same time the Texas bill passed, another passed in Indiana, where Donald Klein had been practicing. It made fertility fraud a felony in the state and allowed victims to file civil claims and sue for damages. Since then, bills have passed in at least 11 other states.

• 46:21Phoebe Judge?

  Today, Eve Wiley has relationships with many of her half siblings. She says she's especially close with her sisters. And she says that Steve, the man who she had thought was her biological father, still comes to family gatherings, that they talk all the time.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  And I still call him dad. He's my dad.

• 47:02Phoebe Judge?

  This November, I'm going out on the road with a brand new live show. This one is about my own family, and in part about how when we were starting Criminal, my own sister was in prison in Iowa. I hope you'll come. We'll be in Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC, Raleigh, Austin, Minneapolis, Denver, LA, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. You can find out more at thisiscriminal.com/live, or click the link in the show notes. Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie

• 47:44Phoebe Judge?

  Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susannah Roberson, Jackie Sajikko, Lilly Clark, and Lena Silison. This episode was fact-checked by Katie Cedarborg. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Special thanks to Jodi Madeira. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. Dove Fox's book is Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology Are Remaking Reproduction

• 48:23Phoebe Judge?

  in the Law. And you can find his audio documentary, Donor 9623: The Biggest Hoax in Reproductive History, on Audible. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reed's Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spoor, talking about everything from how we make our episodes, to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook

• 49:03Phoebe Judge?

  at This is Criminal, and Instagram and TikTok at criminal_podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.