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Woman has abortion at six months; fertility clinic had implanted wrong embryo

Apr 8, 2022

By Dave Andrusko

Having learned that a fertility clinic had inadvertently implanted someone else’s embryo in “Jane Doe,” the Massachusetts mother of three aborted the child at six months.

She and her husband are now suing the New York Fertility Institute  [NYFI] and three  of its specialists, accusing them of “subjecting their family to “physical and emotional pain and suffering.”

“The Does say their nightmare began with a phone call to NYFI on April 28, 2020,  that led to three egg retrievals and a successful IVF procedure in July 2021,” Tracy Connor reported.

Ms. Doe’s obstetrician recommended genetic testing to rule out chromosomal abnormalities, and the couple was stunned when the results that came back suggested she had used a donated egg instead of her own.

“This result did not make sense, since Ms. Doe was supposed to be carrying her own embryo,” the suit says.

According to the complaint, NYFI repeatedly told the Does that there was no way embryos could have gotten mixed up, even after repeated testing showed the same results. At one point, it alleges, the clinic said the mother must have “mosaicism”—an extremely rare condition in which someone had two forms of DNA.

It was now October 2021 and to settle the matter she had an amniocentesis  which Mrs. Doe described as “humiliating, stressful and physically excruciating for Ms. Doe,” according to the lawsuit. The results, which did not come back for nearly a month, proved the baby was not genetically related either to Mr. or Mrs. Doe.

“Ms. Doe and Mr. Doe did not know what to do,” according to the Daily Beast. “They had grown to love this baby, who had already begun kicking. On the one hand, they did not want to lose her even if she was not genetically related to them. On the other hand, they could not imagine carrying a stranger’s baby to term, only to potentially lose her in later legal battles to her biological parents, which would be devastating to the entire family.”

The lawsuit said the couple was “stonewalled” when they tried to get further information from the New York Fertility Institute. “Ultimately, Ms. Doe and Mr. Doe had to make the most traumatic decision of their lives. On December 1, 2021, Ms. Doe terminated the pregnancy,” according to the lawsuit.

Tracy Connor writes

The mixup is all the more shocking, the lawsuit says, because in the late 1990s, NYFI’s embryologist Michael Obasaju implanted the wrong embryo in a different patient, resulting in a white woman giving birth to one white baby and one Black baby.

“The Defendants have a history of mixing up, mislabeling, and/or outright losing their patients’ genetic material,” the couple in the current suit, referred to as Mr. and Ms. Doe, charged.

According to the lawsuit, “Defendants’ misconduct robbed Ms. Doe of the ability to carry her own child. …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?”

While it is true they don’t know what happened to their embryo, there was nothing in the news accounts that suggested the parents of the embryo Mrs. Doe was carrying knew what happened to their child. 

Categories: Abortion
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