There's been a surge in twins over recent years--and the subjects of fertility treatments and sperm donors ranking as hot topics for debate. But one guy claims he's not a donor in the birth of twins where he claims stolen sperm. It's one weird court battle where a Houston man says his twin sons are his but that sperm was taken without his knowledge.
Joe Pressil is a 36-year-old telecommunications manager who says a fertility clinic used his sperm without his consent. The guy claims he hadn't considered having a family and that his religion means he never would've visited a fertility clinic or participated in artificial insemination. And yet he's got two kids.
A few months after he and a Texas-based girlfriend ended a relationship she became pregnant -- with his sperm. The Advanced Fertility Center of Texas is the clinic involved in a legal battle where the man says the occurrence was uncovered when he got a receipt in the mail from the fertility clinic that listed him as a patient -- despite the fact he'd never been to the Texas facility.
Things may not have ended up in court had the ex not given birth to two boys, then sued for child support. In a strange twist, she got it -- granted the financial support after blood tests confirmed Pressil as dad.
There's a concept that you're always safest ensuring your own contraception method. And it seems Pressil didn't quite do that -- though he seems to be claiming to be under the idea that contraception was involved. The two claims don't quite go together, since if you are using contraception then you shouldn't have to be quite so concerned with any medical condition that blocks pregnancy. But Pressil says the ex claimed an inability to bear children because of some condition involving fibroids. Covering all bases, he also seems to be saying that the ex insinuated the use of contraceptives when perhaps there was none involved -- or maybe worse, something being used to garner his sperm.
Pressil claims the medical condition supposedly required a certain type of condom used during sex. He claims it's suspicious -- in hindsight. Of course hindsight is 20/20 -- particularly when hindsight involves two kids you claim are yours, but shouldn't have been. And it all just gets stranger.
The guy claims: "I did notice a little bit because she would take the condom and ask me to discard it. And usually, a male would discard their own property, but she would always take the condom and she would run off out of the room and I just didn't think anything of it." Aside from the idea that you wouldn't think something odd of what you claim to be a man's duty, someone physically running out of a room -- as Pressil seems to describe -- would in itself seem a little strange to many, particularly after an intimate moment. But that's all according to the theory of what Pressil presents as being true. The case isn't complete yet. He says he didn't think anyone could take a condom to a clinic for in vitro infertilization. And there's the question as to why he would even have pondered that possibility, if in fact he had no clue of what he represents as occurring.
Of course the clinic's attorney is basically calling it a scam. The lawyer representing the Advanced Fertility Center and Omni-Med Laboratories, Danny Sheena, says it's "suspect" and "disingenuous" -- mighty strange and vague terms to describe a legal claim. It either is or isn't. But the legal team doesn't seem to be too straight-up in calling the lawsuit untrue. The lawyer seems to be claiming the clinic's got a signature on file for the guy. No one's saying whether it's an authentic one or some ink provided by someone else.