PIERRE, South Dakota (LifeSiteNews) — The governor of South Dakota signed into law a bill making “fertility fraud” a felony.
Governor Larry Rhoden signed House Bill 1164, making it a crime for a doctor to use his own or another stranger’s sperm for artificial insemination without a woman’s written consent.
The bill, which had sailed through the state House, unanimously passing 65-0, makes it a class 5 felony for a physician to “Knowingly cause the use of reproductive material from a donor if the patient did not give written consent to receive the reproductive material from the donor”; or “Intentionally cause the use of the licensed health care provider’s own reproductive material without the patient’s written consent.” Class 5 felonies are punishable by five years in jail and/or a $10,000 fine.
In addition, the new law makes offending physicians vulnerable to civil suits from any patient who gave birth to the child of a donor to whom she did not consent, the patient’s surviving spouse, the resulting child’s intended parent, the resulting children themselves, and any donor whose sperm was used without his consent or contrary to the terms of his consent.
“As lawmakers, protecting children is one of our most important responsibilities. A child’s biological identity is not interchangeable. When a doctor secretly replaces one man’s genetic material with another’s, he isn’t just deceiving parents,” said Republican state Rep. Terri Jorgenson, who introduced the bill. “He’s making a permanent decision that shapes the child’s identity and family relationships for the rest of their life. I brought this bill because children’s biological identity matters.”
“This is a rare moment of bipartisan clarity around a simple reality. A child’s biological identity matters,” declared a Substack post by the global children’s rights activist group, Them Before Us (TBU).
“For years, stories of fertility fraud have surfaced across the United States. In some cases, doctors secretly used their own sperm to impregnate patients. Many families did not discover the truth until decades later through DNA testing,” TBU explained. “The practice gained national attention after the 2022 Netflix documentary Our Father, which exposed a physician who secretly fathered dozens of children.”
“The consequences do not fall on the doctors alone. The fallout lands squarely on the children,” the group said. “Children conceived through deception often discover that the man who raised them is not their biological father. Many also learn they have dozens of half-siblings they never knew existed.”
Katy Faust, founder and president of TBU, reacted to the passage of the bill:
South Dakota just made it a felony to commit medical rape because no child deserves to have their biological identity violated. No child should endure the shock of discovering that the man who raised them isn’t their dad, nor the destabilizing discovery that they have dozens of unknown siblings.
We are thankful that Rep. Jorgenson confronted the reckless fertility industry and chose instead to protect children from victimization.
“South Dakota’s new law recognizes that this kind of deception violates more than patient trust,” TBU noted. “It disrupts a child’s identity and family relationships for life.”
