\t\tMorgan Hellquist and her mother, Jo Ann Levey.
\n\tStephanie Mei-Ling<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, when Morgan Hellquist, a married art teacher with two kids, was having some issues with her period and needed a new gynecologist, Morris Wortman, MD, seemed like the obvious choice. Wortman ran a Rochester, New York, clinic treating menstrual disorders, and posted YouTube videos in which he would opine on treating endometrial ablation failures while dressed in royal-blue scrubs, his bald head reflecting the overhead lighting.As now outlined in a civil lawsuit, Wortman wasn\u2019t just admired in the broader community; he was also worshiped in Hellquist\u2019s home. Since she was eight years old, Hellquist\u2019s parents had told her about the \u201cmiracle worker\u201d doctor who helped them overcome her father\u2019s paralysis so they could have a baby using anonymous donor sperm. \u201cHe was very much part of our story,\u201d says Hellquist, 36. The first time Hellquist met Wortman in his office, she says she was \u201ca little fangirl-y.\u201d She reminded him that her mother had been his patient, that he was responsible for her conception. While she was initially impressed by Wortman\u2019s intelligence and diligence, over her nine years as his patient, Hellquist became increasingly uncomfortable. \u201cSometimes, he would be very professional and empathetic,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd sometimes, he was super inappropriate.\u201d Curious about her biological origins, Hellquist connected with some half siblings online, who she presumed were fathered by the same donor. And, to her surprise, a genetic test indicated she was 50 percent Ashkenazi Jewish, even though her parents had requested that the donor not be from any one specific ethnic heritage so the child could match their own mixed backgrounds. As these new discoveries emerged, she shared them with Wortman. According to the complaint, Wortman, himself Jewish, told her that her challenging PMS was all in her head, the result of being a \u201cJewish American Princess.\u201dWhen Hellquist tried to schedule an appointment with another practitioner at Wortman\u2019s clinic, Wortman changed her appointment to be with him and asked that she book with him moving forward. The whole thing struck Hellquist as \u201cskeevy,\u201d but she convinced herself she was overreacting. \u201cI was like, \u2018He sees a thousand women\u2019s vaginas a day. This has nothing to do with you.\u2019 \u201d Still, she describes the odd sensation of watching someone revered slip off a pedestal. \u201cUntil, all of a sudden, it was like a tsunami took out the pedestal in one swipe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIn what world do you look your daughter in the face and then give her a breast exam?\u201d<\/p>\n
On April 12, 2021, Hellquist had an appointment with Wortman. In his office, at the height of COVID-19, he asked her to take her mask off. \u201cHe told me I look better without a mask,\u201d she says. At one point, Wortman\u2019s wife and employee, Rebecca, stepped into the room, and Hellquist felt like she was examining her face, as if searching for a resemblance. Wortman started asking Hellquist a barrage of personal questions: What does her husband do? What was his name again? What about her children\u2019s names? He mentioned a relative of Hellquist\u2019s who worked for an auction house, and then got up to rummage through a pile of things, returning with a vintage \u201cmassage\u201d gun. He asked her if she could guess what he thought women used it for, according to court filings. It was bizarre and awkward. In his office following the exam, Wortman again made things personal, telling her his parents were Holocaust survivors and about his medical training. \u201cI was like, this is so much information,\u201d Hellquist says. Then he started chuckling to himself, calling her \u201csuch a good kid.\u201d Suddenly, Hellquist was struck by the resemblance\u2014Wortman looked exactly like one of the half brothers she had connected with online. \u201cMy throat dropped into my stomach,\u201d she says. \u201cSomething in my head said, \u2018This is bad. You\u2019ve got to go.\u2019 \u201d In May 2021, according to the complaint, Hellquist and one of her half brothers contacted Wortman\u2019s daughter from a previous marriage, who agreed to submit to a genetic test. The test revealed that Hellquist, her half brother, and the doctor\u2019s daughter were all siblings. Wortman was Hellquist\u2019s biological father.Over the next month, Hellquist says she lost 10 pounds. \u201cI could hardly keep food down,\u201d she says. \u201cI was physically sick every single day.\u201d She struggled to make sense of what had transpired. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine what was going through his head when he was treating me,\u201d she says. \u201cIn what world do you look your daughter in the face and then give her a breast exam?\u201d When her mother found out, she told Hellquist that she felt like she had been violated. (Hellquist\u2019s dad passed away in 2015.) Unsure what to do but determined to force accountability, Hellquist called a lawyer friend, who gave her some shocking news: There are no fertility fraud laws in New York State. What Wortman allegedly did\u2014swapping in his sperm instead of using the promised anonymous donor\u2014wasn\u2019t a crime. <\/p>\n
These allegations now form the basis of the civil suit filed by Hellquist. In an amended complaint filed in February 2022, Hellquist and her legal team outline an alleged timeline: Between 1983 and 1985, while Hellquist\u2019s mother was undergoing fertility treatments, Wortman told Hellquist\u2019s parents that he had the perfect donor\u2014a medical student who checked all their boxes, including screening for genetic issues. They agreed to pay the donor $50 for each live donation. According to her complaint, Hellquist now believes that not only was the donor not real, but Wortman pocketed the $50 and, Hellquist alleges, used his own semen sample to inseminate Hellquist\u2019s mother, who became pregnant and gave birth to Hellquist. She also alleges that her mother never consented to Wortman using his own sperm. Wortman did not reply to a request for comment for this article, and as of May 2022, had not yet responded to the amended complaint that alleges medical malpractice, fraud, and battery. In his response to the original complaint, he acknowledged that he treated Hellquist on a \u201cvery limited and infrequent basis,\u201d but denied her allegations that he had engaged in any wrongdoing.Hellquist is one of several women fighting a similar legal battle across the country, which is overwhelmingly being led not by the mothers who were betrayed by their doctors, but by their adult daughters. Over the last decade, dozens of people have alleged a very particular form of medical malpractice and personal betrayal: a fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate a patient without her permission and is, in fact, her child\u2019s biological father. Some of these doctors are alleged to have taken advantage of the new technologies and lax restrictions of the 1970s and \u201980s, and are believed to have deceptively fathered dozens of children. Among the accused is Las Vegas obstetrician Quincy Fortier, MD, who is believed to have used his sperm to father at least 26 children. And Donald Cline, MD, a fertility doctor in Indianapolis, who allegedly told at least 50 patients that he was using fresh sperm from a medical student before using his own sample instead. Fortier, who died in 2006, never lost his license, nor was he charged with any crime. Cline eventually surrendered his medical license and pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice for lying to Indiana investigators; to date, he has never been criminally charged or found liable in any court for allegedly using his own sperm to inseminate women without their consent. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cThe fact that it\u2019s not already specific grounds for losing your [medical] license is bonkers.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the absence of criminal recourse\u2014and with many of these physicians continuing to practice medicine\u2014civil suits like Hellquist\u2019s are sometimes the only option. But flabbergasted women are also now pushing for legislative change. Across the country, state fertility fraud bills are being introduced, and nine have been enacted so far\u2014in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, and Utah. At press time, Iowa\u2019s legislature had passed a bill that was awaiting Governor Kim Reynolds\u2019s signature. And in New York, Hellquist has joined nine lawmakers to lobby for fertility fraud bills that will clear the way for civil suits; classify the practice of using human reproductive material without explicit consent as aggravated sexual abuse; and include fertility fraud in the definition of misconduct for physicians, thus making it illegal for a doctor to use his own sperm. She\u2019s hoping it will pass by summer 2022. \u201cThe fact that it\u2019s not already specific grounds for losing your [medical] license is bonkers,\u201d Hellquist says. Much of the new legislation creates a pathway to criminal charges, likening fertility fraud to sexual abuse. New York state senator Samra Brouk, one of the cosponsors of the state\u2019s proposed senate fertility fraud bill, wants to see such acts classified as aggravated sexual abuse. \u201cIt is shameful to prey on those struggling with their fertility, and the insertion of reproductive material without consent of the receiving party must be penalized,\u201d Brouk says. Shifting ideas about consent underpin this movement. Hellquist and other advocates note that the reaction of many of their mothers\u2014some of whom may have faced considerable stigma when accessing this care decades ago\u2014tends to be some combination of shame and the desire to sweep things under the rug. But their daughters want to draw a hard line in the sand. \u201cThere are a ton of women now saying, \u2018Actually, Mom, this is a problem,\u2019 \u201d Hellquist says.There is a generational divide surrounding advocacy, says Jody Madeira, PhD, codirector of the Center for Law, Society & Culture at Indiana University Bloomington. For older women, who underwent fertility treatments when the science was much newer, every birth truly seemed like a miracle\u2014even if it was best not to talk about the details. Their daughters, who are now accustomed to these medical interventions as relatively common, and who were reared during increasingly open conversations about consent and bodily autonomy, are inclined to see sperm-swapping by doctors for the violation it is.Eve Wiley, whose biological father is her mother\u2019s former fertility doctor, found out that she was donor-conceived at 16, according to both live and written testimony she\u2019s given in support of fertility fraud legislation in several states. Living in small-town Texas, her mother had selected a donor in California because \u201cshe didn\u2019t want to be in the grocery store, wondering if someone was her child\u2019s biological father.\u201d But after the premature death of Wiley\u2019s father from a heart condition, her mother became concerned about the medical history of her donor.<\/p>\n
\t\tEve Wiley and her mother, Margo Williams.
\n\tStephanie Mei-Ling<\/p>\n
When Wiley turned 18, she petitioned for information, and a California sperm bank connected her with a man named Steve, according to her testimony. Their records indicated he had supplied the donation purchased by the fertility clinic of Kim McMorries, MD, in Nacogdoches, Texas. \u201cWe started this beautiful father-daughter relationship,\u201d says Wiley, 35. \u201cHe\u2019s the most gentle, amazingly kind person in the world.\u201d Soon Steve was joining her family for holidays; she began calling him \u201cDad,\u201d and he officiated at her wedding in 2013. Several years ago, Wiley\u2019s young son started to develop troubling health problems; he struggled to keep food down and had repeated severe allergic reactions. He had 12 surgeries before his fourth birthday. In the face of a medical mystery, doctors suggested that Wiley, her husband, and son try DNA testing kits. The results indicated that Wiley\u2019s son had celiac disease, a hereditary autoimmune condition. But neither Wiley, her husband, or Steve had celiac in their families. Wiley also kept getting alerts about potential first cousins, and she decided to reach out to one. He told her that McMorries was their biological father. \u201cI was like, \u2018No, you\u2019re confused,\u2019 \u201d she says. \u201c \u2018He\u2019s our moms\u2019 doctor. You see that difference?\u2019 And I was explaining to him about the sperm donor like he didn\u2019t understand.\u201d She reached out to another DNA match, who she thought might be a half brother, but the genetic connection was unclear. They got talking, and he mentioned that he had an uncle who lived near Wiley. His name was Kim McMorries. \u201cMy world just stopped,\u201d Wiley says. \u201cIt was like I finally swapped in the correct lens and the picture became clear. Something was really wrong here.\u201dWiley\u2019s discovery threatened to upend her entire life. She would have to tell Steve, the man who had come into her life and wrapped her in a warm duvet of paternal love, that he wasn\u2019t her father. Even worse, she would have to tell her mother. It was tempting to just pretend all of it had never happened. At first, Wiley stalled on telling Steve, but when she did call to break the news, he started sobbing. \u201cI started crying and kept saying, \u2018I\u2019m still here,\u2019 \u201d Wiley says. At the end of the conversation, Steve told her that she was still his daughter. \u201cI was devastated to have to be the one to deliver that news and was worried about how it would affect our relationship, but we banded together over the injustice of it all,\u201d she says. When Wiley worked up the courage to tell her mother, her mother went into shock. \u201cShe was shaking to the point where my husband thought we needed to call an ambulance. For her and a lot of our moms, it\u2019s really hard to process the trauma of it,\u201d Wiley says. \u201cBut also, they love us. They would not change us for anything. And it\u2019s really hard for them to tease apart those two things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cOur moms love us. They would not change us for anything. And it\u2019s really hard for them to tease apart those two things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many cases of doctor-father deception have been uncovered through the popularity of take-home genetic testing kits. \u201cThere\u2019s a culture of genetic testing in the U.S. that\u2019s quite different from that of other countries,\u201d Madeira says. \u201cWe treat it like a party game.\u201d But that game can have very unexpected results. Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, cofounder and CEO of Right to Know, an advocacy, mental health support, and education organization in Maple Valley, Washington, that promotes transparency regarding genetic information, says that two common forms of deception involve donors providing untruthful information and clinics mishandling genetic material. \u201cA heterosexual couple goes in because they\u2019re having fertility issues, and they take the husband\u2019s sample and the wife gets pregnant,\u201d she says. Years later, someone gives them a DNA kit for Christmas, and the results show that the father has other children out there. \u201cThey find out that the clinic used the husband\u2019s [leftover] sperm as an anonymous donor without his permission.\u201dIn addition to the sudden challenges to identity that arise, surprise home DNA test results can turn the notion of violation on its head. \u201cNormally, if you\u2019re wronged\u2014if you\u2019re in a car accident or robbed or raped\u2014you feel it directly,\u201d Madeira says. But in cases of fertility fraud, there\u2019s often no awareness of a violation until a test comes back. And in these cases, the person who underwent the fraudulent insemination\u2014the mother who was lied to\u2014is typically not the person who discovers it. Madeira says the closest analogy is when someone is raped while unconscious, and then told about it later.Wiley reached out to McMorries for an explanation, and the two exchanged multiple letters and emails before the doctor confirmed that he was, in fact, her biological father. He said he told Wiley\u2019s parents that since the donor sperm was not working, he would augment it with another anonymous sample in order to increase the likelihood of conception, and that the couple consented to that approach. He never suggests, however, that he informed them that those anonymous samples might be his own, rather that he was only trying to help the couple conceive. McMorries has said because he had consent to use an anonymous donor, he had no obligation to inform Wiley\u2019s parents that he would be a donor. His tone breezy, he invited Wiley and her mother to visit him and his son, now in practice with him. But Wiley pressed him. \u201cI want to believe you, and I want to believe this came from an altruistic place in helping a couple conceive,\u201d she wrote. \u201cYou must know how this looks given everything I was provided with. However, I can\u2019t imagine my parents agreeing to their fertility doctor fathering their child.\u201d (McMorries declined to comment for this article.) <\/p>\n
\t\u201cThere\u2019s a culture of genetic testing in the U.S. that\u2019s quite different from that of other countries. We treat it like a party game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Disgusted and distraught, Wiley reached out to attorneys\u2014only to be advised that McMorries did not violate Texas law and that a civil action was unlikely to be successful. And so Wiley filed a medical board complaint against McMorries in 2019. The medical board filed a formal complaint against McMorries with the Texas State Office of Administrative Hearings, but he challenged that complaint by claiming it was outside a seven-year statute of limitations. McMorries maintained his license and continued to practice until his retirement in 2021. He has never admitted to any wrongdoing, or been found to have violated any law or ethical rule.The stunning lack of recourse turned Wiley into an activist. Her Instagram account, once full of images of herself with a perfect blowout, smiling with an arm around her husband, or beaming at her joyful children in matching pastel outfits, has gradually given way to all-text posts that indicate her laser focus on criminalizing fertility fraud. She\u2019s working her way across the country, partnering with victims and lawmakers on bills state by state. Wiley started with Texas, which became the first state to classify fertility fraud as sexual assault in 2019. \u201cIt\u2019s important that these initiatives are victim-led,\u201d Wiley says. \u201cIt has been so central to my healing.\u201d She\u2019s also lobbying Texas for an exemption to the prevailing seven-year statute of limitations\u2014ensuring that women have an option for accountability when surprise DNA test results surface, often decades later. Some accused doctors have insisted they were simply trying to fulfill their patients\u2019 desire to have a baby at a time when sperm samples were harder to come by. \u201c[McMorries\u2019s] attorney ended up quoting my mother saying that she desperately wanted to conceive and would have tried anything,\u201d Wiley says. But she finds that explanation disingenuous. \u201cIt\u2019s the same strategy that abusers use in sexual harassment cases\u2014blame victims and present themselves as the injured party.\u201d The cold, detached, and sometimes flippant attitude exhibited by some of the accused doctors can also complicate efforts to pursue personal connection. When Traci Portugal got the shocking results of a home DNA test in 2019, according to testimony she gave in support of fertility fraud legislation being considered in Washington State, she decided to reach out to the fertility doctor she identified as her father. \u201cDespite an initial discussion with the doctor about my findings, he has continued to ignore all further requests to provide answers of what happened or to provide important medical history for me and my children,\u201d Portugal said in her testimony. \u201cAs such I continue to feel physically violated by those we should have been able to trust.\u201d For her, reckoning with the fact that her doctor father simply doesn\u2019t care has been the hardest part. \u201cAfter that, I went to a pretty dark place,\u201d Portugal says. \u201cMy husband had to work from home to make sure I didn\u2019t do anything stupid.\u201dPortugal\u2019s efforts to heal have been multipronged. In addition to supporting fertility fraud legislation in Washington State, presently being considered by house and state senate sponsors, she found comfort in Facebook support groups. \u201cIt\u2019s so helpful to know you\u2019re not alone,\u201d she says. The sense of community\u2014she refers to the other members as her \u201csiblings\u201d\u2014spurred her to create her own website, Donor Deceived, in which she offers resources and maps dozens of donor fraud cases around the world. She also collects testimonials from stunned individuals struggling with their sudden new identities, strained family relationships, and dozens of potential half siblings. \u201cI was uneasy with the circumstances through which I came into the world,\u201d writes one anonymous woman. \u201cKnowing who my biological father was became a burdensome gift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some women have had better luck forging ties with their newfound siblings. In 2016, Rebecca Dixon\u2019s parents began to doubt her father\u2019s paternity after her mother saw a random post on Facebook that stated two blue-eyed parents can\u2019t have a brown-eyed child. \u201cAnd I have very dark eyes,\u201d says Dixon, 32, who lives in Ottawa. A paternity test confirmed that Dixon\u2019s dad was not her biological father; it was their fertility specialist in Ottawa, Norman Barwin, MD. That same year, Dixon sued Barwin, alleging he used his own sperm or the wrong sperm, according to her lawsuit. Dixon, an only child, remembers the emotional experience of getting a phone call indicating that one of her half sisters wanted to meet. \u201cThere were tears streaming down my face,\u201d she says. \u201cThe idea of having a sister was something I had never been able to imagine before.\u201d During the pandemic, the half siblings had a regular Zoom call. And many of her half siblings joined Dixon\u2019s lawsuit to make it a class action, which was settled in 2021 for over $13.3 million (Canadian). According to a CBC report, Barwin denied all legal claims throughout the lawsuit, and maintains that the negotiated settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing. In 2019, the Discipline Committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario revoked Barwin\u2019s medical license and ordered him to pay a fine after determining that he had engaged in professional misconduct by using his own sperm or the wrong sperm with women seeking insemination treatments.While no one is obligated to turn their pain into purpose, many of the women involved in this advocacy movement have found refuge in the pursuit of systemic change\u2014though it comes at a price. \u201cMy current label of \u2018the girl whose gynecologist was her father\u2019 is not a thrilling position to be in,\u201d Hellquist says. \u201cBut this was the only option I saw as a way to hold him accountable. I don\u2019t want any other woman to pick up the phone and have someone tell her, \u2018There\u2019s nothing you can do.\u2019 \u201d Still, it can be hard to get up every day and hold your hand over the flame. Hellquist\u2019s initial reaction to her paternity shock was a mix of revulsion and shame. She blamed herself for not severing the relationship sooner. \u201cMy gut was trying to tell me he\u2019s not a good dude,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I kept wanting to believe my mom\u2019s miracle story.\u201dBut the thing that now spurs Hellquist on is her 13-year-old daughter, who she hopes will benefit from evolving conversations about consent, bodily autonomy, and the right to walk out on any \u201cskeevy\u201d situation without internalizing self-doubt. \u201cI could not look her in the face one day and tell her that I did not use my voice,\u201d Hellquist says. \u201cThat I did nothing about it.\u201d This article appears in the August 2022 issue of ELLE.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSarah Treleaven
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSarah Treleaven is a writer and producer, and the host of USG Audio\u2019s Madness of Two podcast.<\/p>\n