Infertility Doctor’s Fraud Trial Draws to Close

ALEXANDRIA, Va. —  Infertility doctor Cecil Jacobson’s lawyer summed up his case Thursday by calling the defendant a medical pioneer who acted “out of love,” while the prosecution said he routinely lied to patients “about the single most important matter in their lives.”

The closing statements ended arguments in Jacobson’s trial on 52 fraud and perjury counts, including allegations that he used his own sperm to artificially inseminate patients who thought that unknown donors had been physically matched to their husbands.

Jacobson is also accused of misleading other women into believing that they were pregnant.

Defense lawyer James Tate told the U.S. District Court jury that Jacobson was a medical pioneer who acted “out of love, out of a desire to help people.”

Jacobson had extraordinary success in helping high-risk women have healthy babies, Tate said. The women who testified against him were a small minority who were misdiagnosed as pregnant or had miscarriages, he added.

But if Jacobson had treated his patients properly, “women would not have left his office believing they had received the greatest news of their lives,” that they were pregnant when they actually were not, prosecutor Randy Bellows told the jurors.

Tate said the patients who now contend that Jacobson fathered their children were happy until the government broke the guarantee of sperm donor anonymity.

“They got a child, a healthy child, and until the anonymity was broken, they were absolutely happy, all of them,” Tate said of the husbands and wives involved.

The prosecution claims that Jacobson fathered up to 75 children through artificial insemination. Genetic tests were provided to the jury in 15 cases, and they showed that he likely was the sperm donor.

If convicted on all charges, Jacobson could be sentenced to up to 280 years in prison and fined up to $500,000.

Jacobson told reporters: “As God is my witness, I have never harmed or purposely done anything wrong with my patients. I’ve never lied to my patients.”