Offbeat | Lawsuit: Fertility doctor used own sperm to impregnate woman

A family alleges in a lawsuit filed this week that a Colorado fertility doctor used his own sperm instead of that of an anonymous donor to impregnate a woman without her consent.

KUSA-TV reports that the lawsuit contends Dr. Paul Jones of Grand Junction committed fraud by using his own sperm to artificially inseminate Cheryl Emmons, allowing her to give birth to two daughters in 1980 and 1985, respectively.

The Mesa County District Court suit contends the daughters discovered they shared Jones’ DNA with a number of strangers this year — including cousins of Jones, according to plaintiffs’ attorney Patrick Fitz-Gerald.

It alleges negligence, fraud and other causes of action and seeks damages in a civil trial.

Attorneys Nicole Black, who represents Jones, and Ivan Sarkissian, who represents Women’s Health Care of Western Colorado, where Jones practiced, didn’t immediately respond to telephone messages seeking comment.

Plaintiffs include Emmons; her husband, John Emmons; and daughters Maia Boring and Tahnee Scott. They live in Texas.

The daughters’ claimed discovery of shared DNA with at least five strangers — people born between 1976 and 1997 — came through use of Ancestry.com and 23andMe.com, KUSA reported.

The daughters confronted their mother, who disclosed earlier this year that she had had artificial insemination procedures by Jones to conceive.

“I would like to ask him, ‘Why? Why did you do this?” said Boring, who lives in San Antonio.

Jones, of Grand Junction, refused to answer when asked if he’d donated his own sperm to father the children.

“I don’t deny it. I don’t admit it,” he told KUSA.

Jones, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, has been licensed to practice medicine in Colorado on July 11, 1972. He co-founded what’s now known as Women’s Health Care of Western Colorado, where the suit claims he saw Cheryl Emmons from 1979 to 1985.

Texas this year passed a law barring a fertility doctor from inseminating a patient without her consent. California and Indiana have so-called “fertility fraud” laws, but Colorado does not.