Traci Portugal, who is in her 40s, lives in Washington State and runs the website DonorDeceived.org, which catalogs and tracks the legal cases dealing with fraud and donor conception.
She has documented more than two dozen American doctors, and at least a half-dozen internationally, who have been sued by their former patients for fertility fraud.
Ms. Portugal founded the organization in 2019 after learning that her mother’s physician was also her biological father.
Nearly all of the physicians who have been accused were discovered as a result of DNA tests taken by their offspring.
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Many physicians donated sperm as medical students in the 1960s and 1970s, and some observers believe that a number of doctors may have gone on to use their own sperm to treat infertility when they were trying to build a reputation for themselves as successful fertility doctors.
These physicians’ actions may have been unethical, but they were not considered illegal at the time. Recently, there has been a movement to change that.
Ms. Portugal and other activists have been pushing for legislation, both statewide and nationally, that would make fertility fraud a crime.
