Victims of an alleged “serial inseminator” joined a public hearing to share stories of how they and their mothers had been violated by doctors who used their own sperm during fertility treatment.

Several people who called themselves “victims of fertility fraud” testified at the hearing in the Connecticut legislature’s Judiciary Committee in support of House Bill 5423, including those who had recently been featured on a CNN segment about the practice.

The bill would prohibit doctors from using their own sperm to inseminate a patient without their consent and expose those who do to civil suit.

Janine Pierson, of Canton, said she, like many others, had discovered her father’s identity through DNA testing like 23 & Me or Ancestry.com. Her mother, like others, had been told that a young medical intern would be the donor. The discovery of her paternity and 24 half-siblings, she said, has been traumatic and impacted her deeply.

“I have siblings who have dated, I have grown up in close contact with other siblings, and I wasn’t even aware of it. Learning I was the product of fertility fraud has impacted my entire identity as well as my mental health, I’m in constant fear that anyone I know could be my half sibling and it has forever changed how I feel about placing trust in medical providers,” Pierson testified.

She announced at the hearing Monday that she is nine months pregnant with a boy, whom she fears will be exposed to the same risks.

“Once my son is born, he will have 42 first cousins that we are currently aware of. Many of whom live in close proximity to us,” she said. “The likelihood that he will date or mix with his cousins one day is terrifying and it illustrates how this deceit and intentional infliction of nonconsent has consequences which trickle down through multiple generations.”

Alison Vece said she and her twin were both allegedly conceived through artificial insemination by her mother’s longtime gynecologist and fertility doctor. As a teen, Vece said she, too, saw that doctor, whom she did not know was her father.

“We can’t begin to tell you how emotional and traumatizing this has been,” Vece said through tears.

When her family sought medical information regarding health issues she was experiencing, the doctor told her the sperm bank burned down and all of its records destroyed. She said has found 13 siblings and expects there will be more.

Victoria Hill, of Wethersfield, said she and her brother were both conceived through artificial insemination by a fertility doctor. When confronted, the doctor claimed he had done nothing wrong, but Hill said her mother had been violated.

“I view this as a form of sexual assault among other things, as the line between medical touch and sexual touch is then blurred and without her knowledge while she was in an incredibly vulnerable and trusting state,” Hill wrote in submitted testimony.

The outcome was also damaging to children of those doctors, many of whom were raised in proximity to each other. Hill discovered that included her high school boyfriend.

“I was intimate and in a relationship with (my) brother and very much could have seen myself marrying this man and having children had we not gone to different colleges and allowed life to take us in different directions,” she wrote in testimony.

Currently just 13 states have laws on “fertility fraud.” Hill said that after the CNN segment was aired, victims reached out to her, many saying they’d been turned away by lawyers because there was no legislation on the issue.

She claimed five Connecticut doctors have been identified as having switched the chosen donors’ specimens for their own.

Two speakers, including a representative from GLAAD, offered testimony in opposition to the bill, both with concerns that in the context of conservative attempts to limit fertility treatment nationally, Connecticut shouldn’t pass such a bill.

Katherine Kraschel, executive director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School, was the other. Kraschel said the bill attempts to protect against practices that are no longer a threat.

The lax practices that “harmed patients so deeply are not tolerated in the field today … Not only is it no longer standard practice but runs afoul of federal law,” she said.

State Sen. Craig Fishbein, an attorney, countered arguments for the bill, saying that while “if it’s not a crime, I would sign off on it being a crime,” it would be difficult to argue for damages when the mother sought a child and then bore one.

Speakers on both sides were also concerned about the statute of limitations, usually two to three years from an act, when the fraud is generally not discovered until an adult child submits a DNA sample for testing.

An anonymous person who submitted testimony wrote, “As a victim of fertility fraud, it (has) impacted my family, my mental health, my identity. I’d love for this never to happen to anyone else.”