A US couple is suing a New York fertility clinic and three doctors for allegedly impregnating the mother-to-be with a stranger’s embryo.
The couple terminated the pregnancy after discovering there was a zero per cent probability they were the biological parents and fearing the emotional toll of a possible custody battle, court records state.
A US couple is suing a New York fertility clinic after discovering they were not the biological parents of their child.Credit:Istock
The ordeal started after the couple, identified only as John and Jane Doe, learned last year that they were expecting a baby girl after several unsuccessful attempts to conceive a baby through in vitro fertilisation.
Months into the pregnancy, their obstetrician recommended that the mother undergo genetic testing to rule out abnormalities. The baby was OK, court records state, but the test results revealed something the couple never saw coming: They were not the biological parents.
Specialists at the New York Fertility Institute, which they had paid for the IVF procedure, repeatedly assured the couple that the test was not a problem and that they were, in fact, the biological parents, court records state.
The doctors first allegedly claimed the test was inaccurate before diagnosing the mother with a rare condition, saying her body contained two sets of DNA.
But the parents worried the test was accurate – that they weren’t the parents and that the clinic had transferred a stranger’s embryo into the woman’s uterus. Fearing the emotional toll of a potential custody battle once the baby was born, the couple chose to terminate the six-month pregnancy days before it would have been illegal to do so, according to court records.
Now, the couple is suing the New York Fertility Institute, embryologist Michael Femi Obasaju, and fertility specialists Khalid Sultan and Majid Fateh for allegedly impregnating the mother-to-be with a stranger’s embryo.
They also accuse the clinic of losing Jane Doe’s embryos and failing to disclose whether those were implanted into a stranger, potentially giving away their biological child, according to a lawsuit filed last month in the US Southern District Court of New York.
An attorney representing the couple, who are from Massachusetts, did not respond to messages from The Washington Post. The New York Fertility Clinic, Obasaju, Sultan and Fateh also did not respond to several requests seeking comment. Court records do not list attorneys for any of the defendants.
In the lawsuit, the couple also alleges the clinic and the three doctors purposefully covered up that Obasaju “has a history of mistakenly implanting a stranger’s embryo into the wrong patient”.
The couple chose to terminate the pregnancy. Credit:iStockphoto
“Each of these errors have caused Mr and Ms Doe incomprehensible physical and emotional pain and suffering and, ultimately, when the errors were discovered, led to a termination of Ms Doe’s pregnancy,” the suit states.
According to the lawsuit, the couple – who met in 2010 and dreamed of raising four children – consulted with several fertility specialists to try to have what would be their fourth and last baby. They had their first consultation with Fateh on April 28, 2020.
In that visit, court records state, Fateh told the couple that the fertility clinic “was not a factory” and assured them that “he would oversee every aspect of the process for them”.
The woman underwent three egg retrievals at the clinic between October 2020 and April 2021, court records state.
On July 7, 2021, Sultan implanted what was supposed to be the couple’s embryo into the woman’s uterus during a visit to the clinic, court records state. The following month, the couple confirmed they were expecting a baby. The pregnancy progressed normally – then the couple’s obstetrician asked for the genetic tests that later revealed their DNA did not match that of the fetus, court records state.
When the woman inquired about the results, Sultan allegedly assured her it was a “lab error” and said “she shouldn’t be concerned”. About a month later, when the woman had a second genetic test that revealed the same results, Sultan stated that the clinic did not transfer the wrong embryo because she “was the only implant that entire week”, according to the lawsuit.
In October, the couple visited a genetic counselor who suggested additional DNA tests. The result again said they were not the parents, court records state.
Sultan and Fateh assured the woman she was carrying her “own child”, according to the lawsuit. Sultan also told the woman the test results were likely due to a rare condition called mosaicism, where a person can have two sets of DNA in their body, court records state. In that call, Sultan allegedly told her that he had “never heard of [mosaicism] before”, adding that “even for him – a doctor – this was a complex situation and very hard to understand”.
He also said that the priority was for the woman to have a healthy baby and that “this will be an interesting research paper to write”, the lawsuit sates.
The couple then hired an independent embryologist as the legal termination date for a pregnancy – six months – was approaching. The independent embryologist sought to meet the doctors, but the clinic did not allow Obasaju, the clinic’s embryologist, to meet them nor provide the evidence confirming the embryo transferred that summer was indeed the couple’s, court records state.
On December 1, 2021 – near the end of the woman’s second trimester – the couple aborted the pregnancy.
“Defendants’ misconduct robbed Ms Doe of the ability to carry her own child,” the lawsuit states. “Ms Doe and Mr Doe are haunted by questions about what became of their embryos. They have needed to worry about whether their embryos were transferred to another unwitting couple, and whether they have another child or children out in the world whom they have never met?”
The state health department is now investigating the New York Fertility Institute.
The Washington Post
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