An Ohio couple is suing a fertility clinic for a fertility mixup. Mike and Jeanine Harvey recently discovered that their now-adult daughter is not biologically related to her father.
The couple visited Akron City Hospital fertility clinic in 1991 for help in getting pregnant. The doctor then performed intrauterine insemination, as a part of which Mike’s sperm was directly into Jeanine’s uterus. This is how Jessica was born.
However, Jessica, who is believed to have Mike’s Italian heritage, took a DNA test recently and discovered that she had no Italian roots. It all happened because Jessica was planning to spend her 30th birthday in Italy. Just before she left, her parents bought her an Ancestry.com DNA testing kit as a Christmas present.
Jessica and her husband had been planning to use the results of the test to find distant relatives.
Who knew the results would come as such a major shock?
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While speaking to CBS News, Jessica said, “My entire life, I have always been so passionate, so proud of my heritage on both sides where I came from, how my ancestors got here, what makes me today.”
“The test comes back, I’m sitting at my desk at work, actually, I opened up and see some English. There’s Irish, Welsh, German. Like, where’s the Italian, maybe Sicilian, What? What? Nothing,” she added.
“My stomach just dropped and I knew something was, I knew something was wrong from the get-go.”
Further testing revealed that there was a 0 per cent chance that she was biologically related to her father.
Her parents claimed that for 30 years they had no idea about any of this. “I’m like, wait a minute, I carried a total stranger’s child, you know, for nine months, and who in the world is this other half of this child belong to?” Jeanine said.
The fertility clinic claims that it is taking the allegation seriously. A Summa Health system spokesperson in a statement said, “We take this allegation seriously and understand the impact this has on the family. At this point, we have not met with the family or conducted testing of our own.”
(With inputs from agencies)
