A woman in New York has filed a lawsuit against a gynecologist after allegedly finding out she is his biological daughter.
The lawsuit, filed last weekend, is also against the Genesee Valley Group Health Association and the Center for Menstrual Disorders.
The gynecologist, Morris Wortman, has also been accused of using his own sperm to inseminate his patients after plaintiff Morgan Hellquist, who was conceived via artificial insemination at Wortman’s practice, discovered she had six half-siblings after taking a DNA test in 2016.
Her DNA test revealed she was half Ashkenazi Jewish at 50 percent, and her five half-siblings are also Ashkenazi Jews, as is Wortman.
The lawsuit states that Hellquist was born on September 19 1985 to her biological mother Jo Ann Levey and her non-biological father, Gary Levey. Gary Levey was incapable of having his own children after an accident. Due to this, Jo Ann enrolled as a patient at Wortman’s practice in Rochester.
Hellquist was artificially inseminated and was born in 1995. While she didn’t know her biological father, she did know that Wortman had arranged for artificial insemination.
She believed her biological father to be a medical student who donated his sperm. However, Hellquist believes that Wortman inseminated her mother using his own sperm.
Hellquist was studying biology in high school around 1998 or 1999. She requested to know more about the medical student who had supposedly fathered her, but according to the court documents Wortman said he didn’t retain medical records from his fertility practice from the time period in which she was conceived.
When she was 26 in 2012, she sought Wortman’s help for irregular menstrual bleeding after having two children. For the next nine years, Hellquist went to the gynecologist’s practice for vaginal and breast examinations.
She became suspicious in April this year.
During an appointment with Wortman, she alleges that he asked her to take off her mask because she “looked better without her mask.”
During the same visit, Wortman allegedly invited his wife, Rebecca, into the examination room and introduced her to Hellquist. The court documents state: “This was very unusual and had never happened before in any other of her patient visits.”
He then invited his wife to “get a close look” at Hellquist to see the physical resemblance between the two. The lawsuit alleges this was because “Rebecca and Defendant Wortman both knew Defendant Wortman was [Hellquist’s] biological father.”
At the end of the appointment, he supposedly remarked: “You’re a really good kid, such a good kid.”
The court documents state that Hellquist realized Wortman was her biological father when one of her half-brothers said he was in touch with Wortman’s daughter from his first marriage.
In May of this year, Hellquist found out that this half-brother had a 99.99% probability of siblingship with Wortman’s known daughter. Hellquist then took her own test, confirming the siblingship between Wortman’s daughter and herself.
It’s alleged that Wortman used his own sperm when Hellquist was conceived, without the consent or knowledge of Mr. and Mrs. Levey.
The lawsuit outlines that currently, given she has found six half-siblings herself, along with Wortman’s three known biological children, she now has a total of nine half-siblings “with likely more to be discovered.”
The lawsuit says if she had been aware he was her biological father, she would never have consented to be treated for gynecological care by him.
Hellquist is being sued for various reasons, including medical malpractice and negligence, insufficient informed consent, fraud, or battery.
indy100 has contacted The Center for Menstrual Disorders for comment.