Dr Merle Berger told patient Sarah Depoian sperm had come from an anonymous donor, new lawsuit claims
A leading Boston-based fertility doctor secretly impregnated a patient with his own sperm despite telling her that it had come from an anonymous donor, new a lawsuit has claimed.
According to a civil claim filed in US district court in Boston on Wednesday, Dr Merle Berger, founder of Boston IVF and a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard medical school for over three decades, secretly impregnated a patient, Sarah Depoian, who had been seeking intrauterine insemination.
According to the claim, Berger told Depoian the sperm would come from an anonymous sperm donor “who resembled her husband, who did not know her, and whom she did not know”.
“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,” Depoian said in a statement released by her attorneys.
It’s almost entirely unlike rape.
She wanted the pregnancy. There was no violence. She consented to the procedure.
It’s a violation of trust, to be sure. But that’s not rape.
WHO defines violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened[2] or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation”.
So we could say this was a violent act. It was a violent sexual act. It involved penetration, probably done by the doctor himself. It was non-consensual. How is that not rape?
If she never found out whose sperm it was she would be completely happy with the outcome. It was “anonymous” until it wasn’t.
How can one suffer a “violent act” and not know about it for 20 years? I think you’re stretching the definition of “violent” rather far.
The “penetration” and the entire procedure was completely consensual. That’s how it’s “not rape”. Rape is a violent sexual act. Pregnancy is often an outcome but it isn’t the goal.
This asshole injected himself into her family which is a huge betrayal of trust. Just not rape.
Kind of an interesting analogy. I kinda feel the same way about how intoxicated people who are made ro have sex are victims but a much drunker person driving is a perpetrator.
Edit: at a certain point, our legal and medical understanding of agency has to be addressed for inconsistenies like this.
It’s the same as poking a hole in a condom. That has been regarded as rape. Just because the sex or insemination is consensual, doesn’t mean rape can’t happen. If one party secretly changes the terms of the engagement, without the others permission, exerting power over them and harming them, it’s rape.
Poking a hole in a condom is non-consensual though. This woman wanted the pregnancy.
People like you are why words lose their meanings.
Word meanings do change over time.
I said lose, not change.