Forced fatherhood
It can include deception by a partner about her ability to get pregnant or use of contraceptives, birth control sabotage, paternity fraud and sexual assaults of males that result in pregnancy.
[6] In a survey of 5000 women for the British magazine That's Life, 42% stated that they would lie about using birth control in order to get pregnant, in spite of the wishes of their partner.
When the obligation to provide child support is challenged by men who allege that their sperm had been stolen or otherwise used to inseminate a woman without their consent, courts will typically enforce the doctrine of strict liability: namely, that a man is liable to support a child conceived with his sperm, irrespective of the circumstances of conception, including any criminal conduct on the part of the mother.
[11] Myrisha S. Lewis has written that male victims of contraceptive fraud, sexual assault, and statutory rape should not be "punished with child support liability, but instead receive compensation for the unauthorized use of their biological products."
Morgan also documents a "somewhat troubling" case where a woman raped a man after he had gotten drunk at a party and passed out, and thus he did not knowingly or willingly have intercourse with her.
Morgan concludes: "to all men who complain about paying child support for children they did not want, the simple advice is, "Shut up and put on a condom.
The phrase entered the popular lexicon after a 2001 tabloid scandal involving Boris Becker and a resulting headline in Bild: War es Samenraub?
[23] In Israel, stealing sperm (גנבת זרע) is a common phrase used to denote a woman sleeping with a man in order to get pregnant without telling him.
[28] In January 2017, the compensation imposed on the woman was revoked after the district court hearing the appeal ruled that the sex did not result from misrepresentation, and it was not proven that the plaintiff was interested at the time in the defendant's medical condition or the need to use contraception.
[31][32] An episode of the SVT investigative programme Uppdrag granskning, entitled "Spermiestölden", spoke to a number of people who were conceived with stolen sperm over the period 1985 to 1996.
The fathers had submitted sperm samples at Halmstad hospital whilst undergoing fertility treatment with their wives, but it was then used to impregnate other women without their permission.
"[36] A court in İzmir province, Turkey, dismissed the paternity lawsuit of a 61-year-old man who insisted that the mother, who gave birth to twin boys via in vitro fertilization in 2015, stole his sperm.
Evans cited a letter the child's mother had written him in which she admitted to inseminating herself with his sperm after retrieving it from a used condom whilst he was in the shower.
Dhaliwal wrote "Luckily for me, my little troopers stayed loyal and didn't go to work for her, otherwise I could've found myself a father, emotionally and financially trapped by her for the rest of my life.
"[41] In 2011, The Daily Telegraph reported on an unnamed woman who forged her ex-husband's signature at an IVF clinic, allowing doctors to create embryos using his frozen sperm.
The man had stored his frozen sperm at the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge after undergoing arthritis treatment that could have left him infertile.
The court accepted that his signature had been forged and the insemination procedure was done without his consent, but denied his claim for compensation, on the grounds of public policy that damages cannot be awarded for the birth of a healthy child.
"[45] In July 2022 in the House of Commons, Flick Drummond MP raised the case of a constituent whose sperm was used by his ex-partner to become pregnant without his consent.
The judge ruled in Serpico's favor, stating that the mother's planned and intentional deceit barred her from any financial benefit at the father's expense.
[50][48] A Massachusetts court awarded Richard Gladu $108,000 in compensation from Boston IVF after the fertility clinic impregnated his ex-wife with their frozen embryos without his consent, resulting in the birth of a daughter.
The court ruled that Phillips' claims, if true, meant that Irons "deceitfully engaged in sexual acts, which no reasonable person would expect could result in pregnancy, to use plaintiff's sperm in an unorthodox, unanticipated manner yielding extreme consequences."
The appellate court dismissed Phillips' claims of fraud and theft: "when plaintiff 'delivered' his sperm, it was a gift – an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee.
[55] A New York court ordered Deon Francois to pay child support to his ex-wife Chaamel after she forged his signature and allegedly had it notarized with a stolen seal and used his frozen sperm sample to conceive a daughter through a fertility clinic.
[58] In 2019, a story circulated on the internet that a Las Vegas hotel cleaner had become pregnant after stealing sperm from a millionaire's used condom and successfully sued him for child support.
[59] Derrick Rose claimed that NBA players are taught to flush their condoms down the toilet or take them away after sexual intercourse so that women cannot use the sperm to impregnate themselves.
"[62][63] In Ancient Greek Mythology, Myrrha fell in love with her father Cinyras and tricked him into having sexual intercourse with her ("climb[ed] into his bed one dark night, when her nurse had made him too drunk to realize what he was doing").
[73] In Roald Dahl's novel My Uncle Oswald, the titular character plots to steal sperm from famous men and sell it to women who want children sired by geniuses.
Intended victims include Pablo Picasso, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Igor Stravinsky, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Giacomo Puccini, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, James Joyce, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Rudyard Kipling.
The CW television series Jane the Virgin centers around a young woman whose life is changed when she is accidentally impregnated with a man's sperm sample by mistake.
[75] Episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,[76] The Young and the Restless,[77] Archer,[78] Bored to Death,[79] Sunset Beach,[80] Boston Legal,[81] You're the Worst,[82] Being Mary Jane,[83] Neighbours,[84] Bridgerton,[85] Diagnosis Murder,[86] Passions,[87] Days of Our Lives,[88] All My Children,[89] The Game,[90] Creamerie,[91] Ray Donovan,[92] The Good Wife,[93] Hannibal,[94] The Cleveland Show,[95] and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit[96] have also featured sperm theft storylines.
