Morris Wortman, a Rochester OB/GYN doctor sued in 2021 for fraud and malpractice, died over the weekend in a plane crash in New York’s Orleans County.
Wortman was one of two men killed in the plane crash on Sunday. He had been accused of artificially inseminating several women with his own sperm without his consent.
The other victim was pilot Earl Luce, 70, a Brockport resident. Police said the “homemade” plane broke apart, the wings came off and it crashed to the ground in Yates, near the New York-Canada border.
The aircraft crash, identified by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) as a Wittman W-5 Buttercup, remains under investigation. Preliminary findings indicate that “the wings of the aircraft separated from the fuselage and fell to the ground in an orchard,” Sheriff Christopher Bourke said in a news release Monday, it said. NBC News.
Wortman was a well-known obstetrician and gynecologist in western New York who was often criticized by anti-abortion protesters. He was sued in 2021 by the daughter of one of his patients, who became pregnant in the 1980s, alleging that the doctor secretly used her own sperm even though she told him the donor had been a medical student. local.
The daughter discovered Wortman was the donor after genealogy DNA tests revealed she had at least nine half-siblings, according to her medical malpractice lawsuit. The civil lawsuit, which is pending in Monroe County (NY) court, said follow-up DNA testing with Wortman’s daughter from her first marriage confirmed the genetic link.
Despite the allegations, Wortman appeared to have continued to operate his Brighton practice, The Center for Menstrual Disorders, “the first medical practice in the United States dedicated to menstrual disorders,” he said. ABC News.
According to The New York Times, Wortman is one of three Rochester doctors who, beginning in the 1960s, secretly used their own sperm to “help” women get pregnant. The other two are Dr. Frederick Dischinger, who died last year, and the now retired Dr. Robert Tichell.