Woman Files Lawsuit After Discovering Her Gynaecologist Is Her Biological Father
Published
A woman has filed a lawsuit alleging medical malpractice, among other claims, after discovering the gynaecologist she’d been seeing for nine years was her biological father.
In the lawsuit, filed this weekend, Morgan Hellquist said she was conceived via artificial insemination and never knew her biological father, but knew her gynaecologist Morris Wortman facilitated the artificial impregnation of her mother.
Hellquist’s family is said to have believed the insemination involved the sperm of a medical student, but during an appointment in April Hellquist began to wonder whether Wortman could be her real dad.
The lawsuit claims that as Wortman conducted a vaginal ultrasound on Hellquist during the appointment, he asked her to take off her mask and invited his wife into the room to meet Hellquist so she could look at her features, The Washington Post reports.
The doctor then allegedly said: ‘You’re really a good kid, such a good kid.’
The following month, a DNA test suggested that Hellquist, who was born in September 1985, was the biological daughter of Wortman, from Rochester, New York.
Hellquist is said to have been ‘in shock and disbelief that he would continue [to] treat her as her gynaecologist if she were his biological daughter’, according to the lawsuit.
Hellquist’s mother decided to undergo artificial insemination in the early 1980s after Hellquist’s father was hit by a drunk driver and paralysed from the waist down.
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. Following multiple failed artificial insemination attempts, the mother became pregnant in 1985.
Hellquist was told about her artificial conception in 1993, with her parents also praising Wortman as a talented doctor. As she grew up and had her own children, Hellquist maintained the affinity for Wortman, the lawsuit says, as well as launching the search for her father, which resulted in the discovery of six half-siblings.
The DNA test that indicated she was Wortman’s daughter came from one of her half-brothers, who had been in touch with one of Wortman’s known daughters and did a test that found there was a 99.99% chance they were siblings.
If Hellquist had known she was Wortman’s daughter, the lawsuit says she could ‘never consent to being a patient in his gynaecology practice’.
The patient is suing Wortman for medical malpractice, lack of informed consent, battery, fraud, negligence and infliction of emotional distress, claiming Wortman told Hellquist’s mother the sperm he used in the insemination was from a medical student when he knew it was his own, and nevertheless going on to treat the daughter he helped create.
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