The woman’s daughter, Carolyn Bester, as a result of the insemination, was born in January 1981.
A retired fertility doctor from Boston is being sued by a woman who alleged that he used his own sperm to impregnate her more than 40 years ago, The Guardian reported. According to a civil claim filed in US district court in Boston on Wednesday, Dr. Merle Berger, one of the founders of Boston IVF and a former professor at Harvard Medical School, secretly impregnated a patient named Sarah Depoia.
Mrs Depoian explained that she and her husband went to Dr. Merle Berger in 1980 for help getting pregnant. Dr Berger told her the sperm would come from an anonymous donor ”who resembled her husband, who did not know her, and whom she did not know.”
However, Mrs Depoian claims that the doctor used his sperm and impregnated her. Her daughter, Carolyn Bester, as a result of the insemination, was born in January 1981.
Earlier this year, Ms Bester conducted a home DNA test and discovered Dr Berger was her biological father, according to the lawsuit. Among her DNA matches were Dr Berger’s granddaughter and second cousin, she said.
”I spoke to one of them, and I started piecing it all together. To say I was shocked when I figured this out would be an extreme understatement. It feels like reality has shifted,” Ms Bester said.
Adam Wolf, a lawyer representing Mrs Depoian, said Dr Berger knew that what he was doing was wrong.
”He did so without her consent and against her wishes. Some people call this horrific act medical rape. But regardless of what you call it, Dr. Berger’s heinous and intentional misconduct is unethical, unacceptable, and unlawful,” the woman’s lawyer said.
”This is an extreme violation. I am still struggling to process it. I trusted Dr Berger fully. We thought he would act responsibly and ethically,” Mrs Depoian said in a statement released by her attorneys.
Reacting to the lawsuit, Dr Berger’s lawyer also released a statement on his behalf: “Dr. Merle Berger was a pioneer in the medical fertility field who in 50 years of practice helped thousands of families fulfill their dreams of having a child. He is widely known for his sensitivity to the emotional anguish of the women who came to him for help conceiving. The allegations concern events from over 40 years ago, in the early days of artificial insemination. At a time before sperm banks and IVF, it was dramatically different from modern-day fertility treatment. The allegations, which have changed repeatedly in the six months since the plaintiff’s attorney first contacted Dr. Berger, have no legal or factual merit, and will be disproven in court.”
There have been several other instances of fertility doctors being accused of using their own sperm to impregnate a patient.