A woman finds out that her gynecologist for 9 years was her biological father, she filed a lawsuit for medical malpractice.
Morgan Hellquist, 35, from Geneseo, said she knew her current gynecologist Morris Wortman, 70, from Rochester, New York is the one who facilitated the artificial impregnation of her mother in the 1980s.
The lawsuit says that Dr Wortman falsely told the family the sperm donor had been a local medical student. He kept the truth a secret, the lawsuit said, even after the woman, his biological daughter, became his gynecology patient.
The court documents state that Morgan was born in 1985 after the treatment given to her parents by Dr Wortman.
It says that Dr Wortman would attempt to insert live sperm into Morgan’s mother and has required a $50 payment for each insemination attempt.
The doctor then told Morgan’s parents that the sperm donor was a University of Rochester medical student with a specific ethnic background and no history of health issues, the court documents read.
Morgan’s parents paid Dr Wortman $50 two-to-three times a month from late 1983 through January 1985. After multiple unsuccessful insemination attempts, the complainant’s mother became pregnant with her.
Dr Wortman inseminated at least one woman through his Rochester-based private fertility practice, The Center for Menstrual Disorders.
The lawsuit claims that as Dr Wortman conducted an ultrasound on Morgan, during the appointment, he asked her to take off her mask and invited his wife into the room to meet her so she could look at her features.
“You’re really a good kid, such a good kid,” the doctor allegedly said.
After taking a DNA test in 2016, she discovered that she was 50 percent Ashkenazi Jewish, which matches Dr Wortman’s as well as her other five half-siblings.
The lawsuit states that Morgan was born on September 19, 1985, to her biological mother Jo Ann Levey and her non-biological father, Gary Levey.
Gary was unable to bear his own children after being hit by a drunk driver and got paralyzed from the waist down. Due to this, Jo Ann enrolled as a patient at Wortman’s practice in Rochester.
The family stated that the donor needed to have a clean medical history, as well as northern European heritage matching that of the Levey family.
Morgan says she was informed how she was conceived when she was 9 years old in 1993. Throughout her life, Dr Wortman was viewed as “trusted” “by Morgan’s family.
As she grew up and had her own children, Morgan maintained the friendship with Dr Wortman, the lawsuit says, as well as launching the search for her father, which resulted in the discovery of six half-siblings.
Morgan and one of her half-brothers asked one of Dr Wortman’s children to take a DNA test, which showed that the half-brother and Dr Wortman’s daughter were 99 percent likely to be siblings.
In the lawsuit, she claims that Dr Wortman has “genetically significant risk factors.” It goes on to state that he and members of his family have been diagnosed and treated for mental illness.
Moreover, the lawsuit states that if Morgan knew that Dr Wortman is her biological father, she would “never consent to being a patient at his gynecology practice”.
Morgan is now suing Dr Wortman for medical malpractice, lack of informed consent, battery, fraud, negligence, and infliction of emotional distress.
The lawsuit also states that Dr Wortman is liable for “significant emotional and psychological trauma, loss of enjoyment of life, monetary damages, conscious pain, and suffering.”
It also includes “pain and suffering akin to that experienced by survivors of sexual abuse and incest which is realized or remembered later in life, and she will continue to suffer these damages for the rest of her life.”