Fertility docs using their own sperm to impregnate unsuspecting women

A quick search over the Internet turns up other cases where fertility doctors were found to have impregnated women using their own sperm.  It has been confirmed that Dr. Fortier of Las Vegas used his own sperm to impregnate at least one woman without her knowledge.  He practiced medicine beginning in 1945 and some experts suspect that their could be dozens of other families that have no idea that Dr. Fortier was their "sperm donor."  Dr. Cecil B. Jacobson was convicted of 52 counts of fraud and perjury for inseminating unwitting patients with his own sperm and for telling them they were pregnant when they were not.  Prosecutors charged that he may have fathered as many as 75 children.  Dr. Jacobson practiced at George Washington University Medical Center.

Most people think that such shenanigans in the infertility arena are a relatively recent occurrence.  Not true.  In fact, the fertility industry began with them.  The first documented case of a woman becoming pregnant by artificial insemination was in 1884.  A Quaker woman and her merchant husband, not able to conceive, approached Dr. William Pancoast of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. When Dr. Pancoast presented this couple's case to his medical students, one of the students suggested:

 … that semen should be collected from the "best looking" member of the class, and used to inseminate the woman. Dr. Pancoast agreed to the experiment. Without informing either the woman or her husband of his intentions, he called the merchants wife back under the pretense of doing another examination. The woman was anesthetized, and the procedure was carried out. It wasn't until it became evident that the woman had actually conceived that her husband was informed.

There are few important aspects of this case.  First, in the absence of the actual act of sex between a husband and wife, procreation by artificial insemination is reduced to a “shopping list” of desired traits.  Second, the fact the doctor and his medical students did not deem it necessary to inform the wife or husband is evidence of a mentality that continues to pervade the business of creating life through artificial means: try it first and ask whether it is ethical later.  Third, the woman was never told of what was done to her.  I think it is typical of an industry that regularly uses woman desperate for children as guinea pigs for whatever new procedure a doctor can think up.

Why doctors do this to unsuspecting women is beyond me, but clearly there is a medical precedent. My guess is that it is a combination of a desire to help the patient, a "because I can" attitude, mixed with a huge amount of arrogance.