00:02so my mother's fertility doctor decided to use his own sperm instead of the sperm
00:11donor that my parents selected and did this without their consent and without their knowledge
00:22I'm from a really small town in East Texas called Center it's about 5,000 people in population so
00:29it's really really tiny my parents struggled with infertility so at the direction of my parents
00:36fertility doctor dr. Kim McMorries they looked into artificial reproductive technologies
00:41specifically artificial insemination by an anonymous sperm donor dr. McMorries handed them a sheet of
00:49paper from California Cryobank in which they selected sperm donor 106 so after many inseminations
00:58with donor 106 I was finally conceived when I was seven years old that father Doug passed away from
01:09cardiomyopathy which is a heart disease when I was 16 I was very nosy and curious and I had a
01:18habit of
01:19going through my mom's emails and I came across the communication she had with California Cryobank
01:25and that's how I found out that I was donor conceived when I was 18 I was eligible to submit
01:34my mother's
01:35insemination records in order to gain more information on donor 106 after about a year they finally got a
01:42hold of Steve donor 106 and they told him that he had an offspring we got really close and that's
01:49been
01:50our story for the last 13 years
02:06my son Hutton was struggling with some pretty significant medical health issues last year at the
02:13direction of his doctors we decided to gather more genetic variations on him and the way that they
02:20wanted us to do that was through 23andMe plus health when we got those results back we found out that
02:27he
02:27had celiac disease that I had a celiac variant and I was not reporting this to his doctors because I
02:35I was reporting medical history from sperm donor 106
02:40Hey Hutton are you ready?
02:42Hey Hutton are you ready?
02:44Here jump
02:50Yum yum yum yum
02:53Once we finally got him okay and his allergies sorted out and his you know food therapies and speech therapies
03:00I really started to become more curious about connections
03:04So I was looking at ancestry and 23andMe on the DNA portion and I was immediately connected to two half
03:12-brothers
03:12So I talked to them they both know that their donor conceived and this is a part of their story
03:18And then there was a third one so I contacted who I assumed was a third half-brother
03:25He was very adamant that he was not donor conceived
03:29So we went back we looked a little bit you know deeper into it and I said well you know
03:34we could be first cousins according to this
03:36So why don't you tell me about your uncles?
03:39And he said I have one uncle and he's actually from your area in Nacogdoches and his name is Kim
03:47McMorries
03:49My exact reaction was oh shit that is my mom's fertility doctor
03:57Being donor conceived is really lonely
03:59And then to find out that you're actually not donor conceived and you're the product of your mom's fertility doctor
04:05It's even lonelier
04:07When I discovered this I had to be the one to go tell my mom
04:11And I had to be the one to call Steve donor 106 who I've called dad for the last 13
04:18years
04:19Who my kids call Papa the man who officiated my wedding and tell him that he wasn't my biological father
04:30These are all of our letters and emails and all of the communication that I had with the doctor
04:41We had multiple communications over the course of five or six weeks
04:45With those letters he kept changing his story he wasn't consistent in his story
04:51I asked him if he ever discussed mixing the sperm or inseminating with his own sperm
04:56And then told him that my mom was very overwhelmed and insist that she did not consent or acknowledge this
05:02He says that there was only one to two pregnancies that were successful
05:07But now we have four illegitimate children
05:12It's shocking to me that this is a 5.4 billion dollar industry that is essentially self-regulated
05:21So the next thing that I did is I called a friend who's a lawyer
05:25And I was just in complete shock to learn that this is not a crime in the state of Texas
05:30or anywhere else
05:34I really wanted to make this about changes not about charges against dr. McMorries
05:40And I wanted him to be a part of my legacy. I didn't want to be a part of his
05:44legacy
05:53So at that point, you know, I really recognized that the only healing to take place with this whole tragedy
06:01Was to make it bigger than myself
06:02And to protect the future of vulnerable people who are using artificial reproductive technologies
06:09This is the drive that I made every single week
06:12Once a week to come to Austin for four months
06:18When I started coming it was so emotionally exhausting because I would tell my story over and over again
06:25But it was also very therapeutic because it was like I was putting, you know, like a purpose to my
06:32pain
06:33And then it became really empowering
06:40Okay, so this is the lobbyist group that I worked with
06:43And they're the ones that championed this bill for me
06:46So the first time Eve came down to Austin to meet with me was January 31st
06:52So we were already 22 days into the legislative session
06:55We didn't have a champion
06:57We didn't have an author in the House or an author in the Senate
07:02From that point on, Eve came down to Austin one day a week
07:07Every week for the session and we just wore out the capitol halls with meetings
07:14All of our meetings were good with one exception
07:17The meeting with the local state representative that represents Nacogdoches and knows Eve's doctor daddy
07:24Did not go well
07:26We kept trying to talk and he kept interrupting
07:28And then finally at the end he turned to Eve and said
07:34I don't know why you're all upset anyway because it looks like it all turned out well for you
07:38That was really marginalizing for me
07:41Because here I am struggling with this
07:45And feeling like they didn't think that my genetic identity was important
07:49Or I shouldn't be doing this
07:52This man was my mother's doctor
07:56He was not her donor
08:01Thank you
08:02It's very clear to me that it should be a violation of the law
08:07And I would expect this bill to be reported out to the full Senate
08:11In the future we'll be able to hold people accountable
08:15I really want to continue this Erin Brockovich approach to this
08:19Because I am only one person
08:21But I have the ability to share my story
08:24And raise awareness
08:25To show people that fertility frauds are out there
08:30And that this is an important issue
08:32You are not protected
08:48You are protected
09:00You are protected
