A frmer Harvard Medical School professor is accused of inseminating a woman with his own sperm decades ago and misleading her about the donor, according to a new lawsuit.
In what plaintiff Sarah Depoian called “an extreme violation,” Dr. Merle Berger, an OBGYN professor at Harvard and founder of Boston IVF, one of the nation’s largest fertility clinics, is accused of inseminating her with his own sperm, leading to the birth of Depoian’s child, Carolyn Bester, in 1981.
The lawsuit filed in federal court Wednesday states that Depoian and her husband went to see Berger for help conceiving a child in 1980 and that he promised, according to the complaint, “to perform an insemination using the sperm of a medical resident who resembled her husband, who did not know her, and whom she did not know. With that understanding, Ms. Depoian consented to the insemination.”