An American woman sued a gynecologist who secretly impregnated patients
Official abuses can be very different and the worst when they are committed by people of noble professions. A scandal broke out in the United States after it became clear that a well-known specialist in the field of infertility, Dr. Morris Wortman, fertilized patients with his sperm. One of the biological daughters filed a lawsuit against a gynecologist and she has far more than one claim to the doctor.
Morgan Hellquist, who is now 35 years old, was born as a result of artificial insemination, as her formal father was paralyzed after a car accident. For two years, from 1983 to 1985, her mother visited the clinic of Dr. Wortman, who injected her with donor sperm 2-3 times a month.
According to the doctor, the sperm belonged to a certain medical student from the University of Rochester, absolutely healthy physically and mentally. As a result of the procedures, Morgan was born in 1985, to whom the secret of her conception was revealed only at the age of 8. But Hellqvist did not even suspect that she did not know all the secrets of her birth and this year she had to go through a shock.
In 2012, Morgan Hellquist began to suspect that she was pregnant and turned to... Morris Wortman. An experienced female doctor monitored the woman's health throughout the pregnancy, regularly examining her. Everything could have ended there, but in 2016 the woman decided to take a genetic analysis, and it showed that she was half Ashkenazi Jewish.
Morgan immediately suspected something was wrong, since there were no Jews in her family, but Dr. Wortman liked to talk about his Jewish ancestors ... Ashkenazim. After that, the woman began her own investigation and in less than a year found 9 brothers and sisters whose mothers were at one time patients of her doctor.
In the spring of 2021, one of Morgan's alleged biological brothers agreed to take a DNA test and it became clear that they had a common father. After that, Hellquist immediately went to the Monroe County Superior Court and accused Dr. Watman of a series of malfeasance. The lawsuit includes not only the fact of sperm forgery that occurred 35 years ago, but also other points.
Hellqvist accuses the doctor of using his seed for fertilization, even though he knew that there were people with mental illnesses in his family. The doctor's mother and brother were treated in psychiatric clinics with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. In addition, Morgan demands compensation for moral damage, since the news that her own father examined her in a gynecological chair greatly affected her psychological state.
The plaintiff 's lawyer formulated his client 's claims to Morris Wortman in this way:
The amount of compensation that the injured party will receive will be determined by the court. So far, the 70-year-old doctor's license has been frozen, and his clinic is closed. Most likely, the lawsuit will not be the only one and soon other children of the inseminating doctor will turn to the courts. I must say that Wortman is not the most productive doctor, since he is far from Dr. Philip Peven, who has hundreds of secret fertilizations on his account.
Keywords: USA | Health and medicine | Court | Relatives | Deception | Artificial insemination