Prominent local OB-GYN involved in fertility fraud scandal killed in plane crash
Dr. Morris Wortman, a well-known local OB-GYN whose reputation was sullied by multiple allegations that he committed "fertility fraud," died in a plane crash in Orleans County Sunday.
Wortman, 72, was a passenger in a homemade aircraft that apparently came apart in flight and crashed to the ground.
The pilot - 70-year-old Earl J. Luce Jr. of Brockport – also died in the crash, according to the Orleans County Sheriff's Office.
The plane – a fixed-wing. hand-built experimental aircraft – crashed shortly before 5:45 p.m. Sunday in a pasture behind a house west of Townline Road in the town of Ridgeway, according to the sheriff's office. Aircraft parts were scattered around the area, according to WIVB television in Buffalo.
According to the preliminary investigation, “the wings of the aircraft became detached from the fuselage and fell to the ground in an orchard,” Orleans County Sheriff Christopher Bourke said in a news release. The fuselage of the aircraft continued west for another 1,000 to 1,500 yards before crashing.
Deputies and the National Transportation Safety Board will continue investigating at the scene on Tuesday. The Federal Aviation Administration was also investigating.
Wortman was a prominent local obstetrician/gynecologist who first became the focus of news stories in the 1990s as an abortion provider often targeted by anti-abortion activists. In the past 18 months, however, Wortman has been accused by number of people of using his own sperm to inseminate women who came to him in the 1980s for fertility treatment — a practice often called "fertility fraud" in cases when the physician lies about the source of the sperm.
In New York, there is little in the laws that respond to fertility fraud and, despite the advocacy of the offspring of physicians who lied about fertility treatment, lawmakers have yet to approve proposed statutes that allow for criminal and civil penalties.
Wortman is the target of a lawsuit from Geneseo resident Morgan Hellquist, whose parents used Wortman for fertility treatment. Hellquist was a gynecological patient of Wortman's when she learned via genetic databases that he was her genetic father, the lawsuit alleges.
She alleges medical malpractice in the lawsuit, saying Wortman knew he was her biological father but continued to see her as her OB-GYN. Wortman told her parents that the sperm donor was a medical student, the lawsuit alleges.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Morris Wortman, controversial OB-GYN, killed in plane crash
