‘Medical rape’?: Woman accuses NYC doctor of impregnating her with his own sperm
A woman is accusing her New York City OB-GYN of using his sperm to impregnate her almost 40 years ago when she sought out a sperm donor.
Bianca Voss filed a civil complaint against Dr. Martin Greenberg on Tuesday, alleging he inseminated her with his own sperm without her consent when she sought out fertility services in 1983, according to court documents.
“Some people call this horrific act ‘medical rape,’” the lawsuit said. “But regardless of the name, Greenberg’s heinous and intentional misconduct is unethical, unacceptable, and illegal.”
Voss said she learned of Greenberg’s actions after her daughter, Roberta, received her DNA profile from 23andMe.com, and he was listed as her father.
Voss went to Greenberg’s Manhattan office in 1983 after struggling to conceive and elected to undergo intrauterine insemination using sperm from an anonymous donor, according to court documents.
Greenberg charged Voss $100 for the procedure and asked whether she had a preference for the ethnicity and/or the religion of the donor.
“I wanted someone anonymous,” Bianca Voss told reporters on Tuesday, NBC News reported. “He did say, ‘Do you mind the donor is Jewish?’ And I said, ‘no,’ and that was it. I kind of thought it might be a medical student from the hospital, but that was it. And then he asked me for the check for $100 to cover the donor, his inconvenience.”
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As a result of Greenberg using his own sperm, Voss gave birth to a daughter in 1984, court documents said.
“He did not tell her that he would use his own sperm, he stated that the sperm donor would be anonymous, and he otherwise led her to believe that the sperm donor would not be himself,” the lawsuit said.
Calls by USA TODAY to numbers listed for Greenberg were not immediately returned.
Roberta was seeking to learn about her family history when she learned the identity of her biological father last fall. She reached out to Greenberg in hopes of learning his medical history, but he never responded, court documents said.
The lawsuit said Greenberg has caused Voss “severe and debilitating anxiety and emotional pain, shattering her trust and disrupting her life”
The complaint didn’t specify a figure Voss is seeking, but said “the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs.”
“It’s horrifying to look in the mirror and see the person who violated my mother and I see his face every time I look in the mirror,” Roberta told NBC News. “I’m in turmoil about who I am, what this means and what kind of person would do this? And is that a part of who I am? And what about my son?”
This lawsuit is reminiscent of other cases in recent years involving fertility doctors and their patients.
A DNA test from Ancestry.com revealed an Idaho OB-GYN inseminated his patient with his own sperm in 1980. A Canadian doctor lost his license in 2019 after it was determined that he used either his own sperm or the wrong sperm when he artificially inseminated between 50 and 100 patients.
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