Couple Sues Fertility Clinic After Aborting 6-Month-Old Unborn Baby They Say Wasn’t Genetically Theirs

A healthy, normally developing unborn baby was sentenced to death due to a lab mix-up. 

According to the Washington Post, a Massachusetts couple identified as John and Jane Doe is suing New York Fertility Institute for accidentally implanting the wrong embryo, which they claim led them to abort the 6-month-old unborn baby days before it would have been illegal to do so. Currently, abortions past 24 weeks gestation are not permitted in New York or Massachusetts unless the mother’s or child’s health is at risk.

The couple was apparently pregnant with the baby girl after multiple attempts to conceive via in vitro fertilization (IVF) were unsuccessful. Their obstetrician recommended genetic testing to ensure the child was healthy, and that’s how the couple found out the child was not related to them.

Court records indicate that the couple was repeatedly reassured by the clinic that the test was incorrect and that the expectant mother “shouldn’t be concerned.” They posited that the mother could have a genetically rare condition called “mosaicism,” where one person has two sets of DNA in their body. The clinic also insisted the mix-up wasn’t possible because the defendant was “the only implant that entire week,” the lawsuit states.

Ultimately, the couple opted to abort as a second genetic test indicated that the unborn baby was not genetically related to them. The Post reported that the couple feared “the emotional toll of a potential custody battle once the baby was born.” With the window for legal abortion closing, they opted to kill the unborn child “days before it would have been illegal to do so,” court records say.

Now the couple is suing the clinic for “incomprehensible physical and emotional pain and suffering” due to the “errors” of having an embryo implanted that was not biologically theirs. 

According to the lawsuit, the couple desired four children and were hoping to conceive their fourth and final child via IVF. They had their first consultation with fertility specialist Majid Fateh on April 28, 2020, and attempted the IVF procedure three times between October 2020 and April 2021. Court records state that Fateh told them that New York Fertility Institute “is not a factory” and that “he would oversee every aspect of the process for them.”

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

Fertility clinic mix-ups have been making headlines recently. Earlier this year, a lesbian couple sued a New York-based clinic for mistakenly implanting a male embryo when they had specifically requested a baby daughter. The women did not abort the unborn child, but claim to experience emotional trauma over the error, which they described as being “just like rape.” 

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