A now-deceased Las Vegas-area gynecologist is accused of using his own semen to artificially inseminate a woman rather than using a medical student as he claimed.
Gayle Fedele and her twin children Kevin Phelps and Allison Vece filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the estate of Dr. Joseph Plautz and unnamed medical facilities. In the lawsuit, Fedele claims that in 1984, she was a patient of Plautz and discussed with him the possible use of a sperm donor and artificial insemination. She wanted children, but her husband had undergone a vasectomy. She says that Plautz told her she could use sperm from a Wyoming-based sperm bank.
“Dr. Plautz informed Ms. Fedele that the donor was likely to be a student from a nearby medical school, but he joked that the donor might also be a ‘ski bum’ from Wyoming,” the lawsuit says. “Ms. Fedele requested a sperm donor that was Caucasian, under 45 years old, tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes.”
The lawsuit also states that Fedele was not required to sign any forms or documents regarding obtaining the semen from the sperm bank and that Plautz said he would take the steps necessary to get the donor sperm from the Rocky Moutain Sperm Bank in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
In June of 1984, Fedele told Plautz she was ovulating and met him to undergo artificial insemination using what she believed was the semen of a sperm donor. The lawsuit states that Fedele waited for about 15 minutes until Plautz came in the room and “artificially inseminated Ms. Fedele with his own semen.”
“During the procedure, Dr. Plautz was singing and making Ms. Fedele smile, relax, and laugh. She trusted him completely with her body, heart, and mind,” the lawsuit says. “Dr. Plautz instructed Ms. Fedele that it was best to repeat the procedure a second time and it was necessary to return in approximately 4 days to repeat the process; Ms. Fedele returned as instructed and the process and artificial insemination was repeated a second time.”
READ: Washington state bill would criminalize ‘doctor-conceived’ fertility fraud
Fedele became pregnant and nine months later gave birth to Phelps and Vece. Plautz continued to act as Fedele’s doctor and became Vece’s (his biological daughter’s) gynecologist beginning when she was 17 years old. When Vece was experiencing health issues, she asked Plautz for information about the sperm donor she believed to be her biological father, but Plautz allegedly told her that a fire had destroyed all of the medical records at the sperm bank.
In May 2022, after watching the Netflix documentary “Our Father” about another deceased Las Vegas doctor — Dr. Quincy Fortier, who used his own sperm to impregnate dozens of patients without their knowledge — Vece asked to see the result of a 2021 DNA test that her brother, Kevin Phelps, had taken. She “immediately recognized that relatives with the last name Plautz were likely related to Dr. Plautz,” according to the lawsuit. Plautz’s children were listed as Phelps’ half-siblings. Vece then took two DNA tests from two different companies and had the same results.
She contacted the sperm bank and was told there had never been a fire.
The lawsuit lists negligence, vicarious liability, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud. It asks that the defendants be awarded a minimum of $15,000. It also states that according to a 2023 Nevada law, a healthcare practitioner who knowingly uses his own sperm in a patient without the patient’s consent or knowledge is guilty of fertility fraud and any children who are born as a result are able to sue for damages.
This is not the first lawsuit to accuse a doctor of using his own semen to impregnate a patient without her consent. An Idaho woman is currently suing Dr. David R. Claypool of Washington state, saying a DNA test revealed that her daughter is the biological child of Claypool, not an anonymous sperm donor as she believed. A Dutch doctor, Jos Beek, inseminated patients with his own sperm, leading to the conception of at least 21 children. And in 2022, a woman who took an at-home DNA test learned that her biological father was her parents’ fertility doctor. That doctor, Dr. Philip Peven, had thrown away the sperm that had been provided to him by the woman’s mother and substituted his own. In 2022, a federal court jury in Vermont awarded a woman damages after she learned her fertility doctor used his own sperm to inseminate her.
According to documentation from the website Donor Deceived, countless children conceived during the 1970s and ’80s through the use of fertility treatments have learned — thanks to at-home DNA testing — that their biological fathers are actually their mother’s fertility doctors. Two of the doctors are linked to 75 children.
