31 May 2023 , 14:37
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A fertility doctor in New York branded a 'serial sperm donor' after he was accused of secretly impregnating his patients has died in a plane crash.
Dr Morris Wortman, 72, died in Orleans County when the plane he was in crashed. Pilot Earl Luce Jr also died after the handbuilt Wittman W-5 Buttercup came down in an orchard at 5:42pm in the town of Yates on May 28.
Both men were pronounced dead at the scene.
Orleans County Sheriff Christopher Bourke said in a press release: "The preliminary investigation indicates that the wings of the aircraft became detached from the fuselage and fell to the ground landing in an orchard.
"The fuselage of the aircraft continued west approximately 1000 to 1500 yards before crashing into a pasture behind a residence.
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Dr Morris Wortman"Sheriff’s Investigators and the NTSB will be on site Tuesday to continue the investigation. The Orleans County Sheriff’s Office would like to extend our deepest condolences to the families of the victims of this tragic event."
Wortman was well known in western New York, where he was the target for anti-abortion protesters.
The daughter of one of his patients sued him in 2021. Her mother became pregnant in the 1980s and the lawsuit claimed the doctors used his own sperm despite telling her the donor was a local medical student.
The suit - filed by Morgan Hellquist - claims the doctor kept the secret despite becoming the resulting child's gynaecologist.
The doctor did not comment on the suit at the time.
Due to his profile as a subject of anti-abortion protests, Wortman was no stranger to appearing on TV.
"He was all over the news when I was in my late teens," Hellquist said in an interview. "My mom would stop cooking dinner and say, 'There he is.' "
By 2015, Hellquist was already trying to find the donor, but Wortman's Centre for Menstrual Disorders and Reproductive Choices had already told her the records had been lost.
Genetic tests then told Hellquist she was Ashkenazi Jewish, despite the family's belief that the donor was a mix of ethnicities.
She says she was then able to track down two half-brothers who were also half-Ashkenazi Jewish, before learning of six half-siblings. Two, she believes, bear a resemblance to Wortman.
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Eventually, Hellquist said a DNA test showed a 99.99% match that she and Worthman's biological daughter were siblings.
In recent years, a web of incidents known as 'fertility fraud' and over 50 fertility doctors in the US have been accused of fraud in connection with the donation of sperm, the New York Times reported.
Hellquist's suit is still pending in Monroe County Court.