A journalistic investigation revealed that a village doctor in Sweden used his own sperm to inseminate women in the 1970s and 1980s, when insemination was not yet regulated by the law. The doctor said that he was trying to help after the law allowed children to know the identity of their biological father.
A doctor in Norbotten, Sweden, admitted to SVT that he made several women pregnant using his own sperm. SVT, a Swedish public news outlet, told us that so far they have identified seven fathered children, most living within the same region of Norrbotten, the northernmost county in Sweden. The doctor said 15–20 of his inseminations resulted in pregnancies. It is not known how many are his offspring.
These inseminations occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, a period with no legal regulations as far as insemination goes. In 1985, a Swedish insemination law was passed, which allowed offspring of donor insemination to request the identity of their biological father.
SVT told us that they got in contact with the doctor on the phone, as he is blind and over 90 years old. The doctor chose to reveal his covert inseminations willingly during a 2‑hour conversation, saying he did not believe he did anything wrong.
The doctor said that during the period he started doing these inseminations, he used his own sperm when there were no other fresh samples, SVT told us. In this sense, he thinks he did the women a favor at the time. After 1985, he said that finding sperm donors was impossible, and debated the law itself.
Throughout this period, Sweden had many cases of medical malpractice. In Halmstad, a doctor stole sperm samples from men to use them for insemination between 1985 and 1996. One of these men, Zdravko Paic, opened a court case which ended up at the European Court of Justice’s (CJEU) desk, because a child was born as a result of the use of his sperm. Paic recently discovered he has an illegitimate son from the sperm samples he provided for medical use.
Paic’s case ended up being taken on by the CJEU, because the hospital in question in Halmstad refused to investigate the matter more closely. There was a specific doctor who “systematically took sperm samples from unwitting men,” reports SVT. The hospital admitted that there were 5 cases of this occurring, but refuses to release more information until more donor children reach out, as they are not legally obligated to release more information.
The case has not been resolved by the CJEU yet, and first it must determine if “all domestic remedies” for the situation have been exhausted.
It is possible to find genetic discrepancies like these through Sweden’s DNA register, which has collected DNA information on every child born since 1975. The register was created for medical purposes, however, the register has been used for criminal investigations.
In The Netherlands, several fertility doctors used their own sperm for inseminations without permission.
