One test, many siblings: Michigan woman fights to ban fertility fraud

Michigan woman fights to ban fertility fraud in Michigan after learning her mother’s doctor had used his own sperm
State lawmaker proposes new law to fight the practice by making it a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $100,000 fine
Legislation has stalled in prior sessions, frustrating advocates like Jaime Hall: ‘Give these families … the protection that they deserve’

LANSING — It’s been six years since Jaime Hall learned the truth about her conception and began a fight to ensure what happened to her family can never happen again in Michigan.

“I am the product of a fraud,” Hall, 66, of Traverse City told Bridge Michigan. “I’m glad I’m here, but … I think everybody has a right to know where their DNA material is coming from.”

Hall is on a mission to stop fertility fraud — the failure on the part of a fertility doctor to obtain consent from a patient before inseminating her with his or someone else’s sperm.

In Hall’s case, she said, her mother’s doctor disregarded her chosen sperm donor and used his own instead, claiming he didn’t know whether the initial sample “was viable.” In her sister’s case, that same doctor used the sperm of a colleague who had moved to open his own practice.

And in Michigan, there is no specific law to prevent it.

State Rep. John Roth hopes to change that with legislation that would make Michigan join more than a dozen other states in banning and penalizing fertility fraud in some fashion.

“We need laws against this, and we need to get it going,” said Roth, R-Interlochen, who is the lead sponsor behind bills that would make fertility fraud by medical specialists a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

State Rep. John Roth, R-Interlochen, has twice tried to ban fertility fraud in Michigan. This term, he’s hoping the third time’s really the charm, telling Bridge Michigan earlier this week: “We need laws against this, and we need to get it going.” (Courtesy of Michigan House Republicans.)

The legislation also proposes up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine for someone who knew fertility fraud was committed but did nothing to stop it, steps to revoke a doctor’s license and a statute of limitations.

It’s the third time Roth has introduced the legislation since 2021, when Hall — a constituent of his — first brought the issue to his attention.

The package has stalled in prior sessions, but Roth is confident this could be the year. He’s already been promised a hearing in the House Family, Children and Seniors Committee, and two bills in the package boast a Democratic sponsor in Rep. Samantha Steckloff of Farmington Hills.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, said she didn’t know if the upper chamber had “anything in the works” with regard to fertility fraud.

But “we’re going to get it done,” Roth told Bridge, “because we’re not going away until it does.”

One test, dozens of siblings

At least 50 fertility doctors nationwide have been accused of substituting their own sperm over a donor’s selected one, according to a 2022 New York Times report.

But finding out is difficult, usually happening only after a child resulting from fertility fraud attempts to learn about his or her biological parents.

For Hall, that happened in 2019, when she ordered an at-home DNA test kit as part of an effort to further map out her family history.

She’d already known she’d been born through the help of a fertility specialist, and had been told by her mother that she was 100% Scottish — with DNA from her mother and Scottish donor who was a family friend.

Related:

When the test came back showing she was 50% Ashkenazi Jew, Hall thought there’d been a mistake.

Then she noticed the report indicated she had many biological siblings, including a handful with the last name Peven — the same last name as Dr. Philip Peven, who’d been her mother’s fertility specialist.

Hall said she later confirmed that Peven, who has since died, was her biological father. Her sister, also conceived with the help of Peven, was the genetic offspring of a former doctor in residency at the clinic who’d long ago moved to California. The sisters were not 100% related.

“I think that he really looked at himself as a pioneer in the industry,” Hall said of Peven, who died in 2022 at age 105 but allegedly used his own sperm to help conceive dozens — perhaps even hundreds — of children over his decades-long career in metro Detroit.

“He looked at himself as doing nothing more than helping women have the babies they all wanted.”

Hall said she later learned Peven had decided to toss the sample Hall’s mother provided as a sperm donor, and instead elected to use his own. She tracked him down not long after and confronted him.

“I’m sure he was in shock,” Hall recalled, saying that Peven himself even admitted he’d never thought any of his biological children would find out. Instead, as Hall explained it, Peven was “very scientific” about what he’d done, and didn’t appear to show any remorse.

He tried to pitch his viewpoint to her, Hall said: That she, and all the other children he’d played a hand in fathering actually had dads — the men who’d raised them — and that he was not actually a “father” to anyone other than the children he’d had with his own wife.

“Maybe he thought what he was doing was the right thing – helping men and women have children — but the ethics behind what he was doing is just so lax, and so unbelievable, that it should be illegal,” said Hall.

She said she’s lost count of how many half siblings she’s found in the years since but believes it’s well over 100. Peven began donating sperm in the 1940s as a student, Hall said, then began using his own in fertility procedures beginning in the 1950s.

He continued donating sperm in some fashion well into the 1980s.

“I have half-siblings younger than my own children,” she added.

Moving forward, helping families

Hall never chose to tell her parents about what she’d found out.

By the time she took the DNA test in 2014, her mother had already died. Her father was still alive, but a stroke had put him in a mental and physical state where Hall felt telling him could have worsened his condition.

It’s not that she thought they’d love her any less or not consider her their daughter, Hall is quick to note, but she was sure the news would have devastated them because it was “a violation in so many different directions.”

She’s met some of her biological half-siblings over the years. Some have found it hard to deal with.

In one situation, Hall said a half-sister told her she found out about Peven’s role in her conception during a medical emergency after her father — the man who raised her — was told he couldn’t donate blood to her because the pair were genetically incompatible.

While Hall knows she can’t undo the harm that Peven and others have caused families, she said the least she hopes to do is prevent it from ever happening again in Michigan.

Hall’s message to lawmakers now?

“Give these families, these mothers and fathers, give them the protection that they deserve — the right to know where their donors are coming from, who their donors are,” she said. “Give these children, the unborn product of these situations, the right. Put this into law so they can be protected.”