Retired Idaho doctor and Mormon temple president denies fraud in insemination lawsuit

Boise, Idaho • An eastern Idaho fertility doctor accused in a lawsuit of secretly using his own sperm to inseminate a patient nearly four decades ago says he did nothing wrong and doesn’t remember using his own sperm for the procedure.

Dr. Gerald Mortimer, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist from Idaho Falls who once served as president of an LDS Church temple and a church mission in the Philippines, filed his response to the lawsuit in Idaho’s U.S. District Court on Wednesday. In it, he contends his patient agreed to let him select the “anonymous donor sperm” as long as he judged it to be appropriate and safe.

Kelli Rowlette and her parents Sally Ashby and Howard Fowler filed the lawsuit against Mortimer in March, contending that the doctor committed medical malpractice, breach of contract and fraud when he carried out the artificial insemination procedures on Ashby over several months in 1980.

At the time, the couple was told Ashby had a tipped uterus and Fowler had a low sperm count. They say Mortimer told them he could attempt to inseminate Ashby using a mixture of genetic material, with 85 percent of the sperm coming from Fowler and 15 percent coming from an anonymous donor. Ashby and Fowler maintain that they agreed to the process, as long as the donor sperm came from a college student who resembled Fowler: more than 6 feet tall with brown hair and blue eyes.

Rowlette was born the following year, and her parents never told her how she was conceived. It wasn’t until Rowlette took at DNA test through the genealogy company Ancestry.com and got an unexpected result — the company predicted that Mortimer, who had also apparently submitted a DNA sample to the company at some point, was her father.

The couple says they wouldn’t have agreed to the insemination procedure if they’d known Mortimer was going to use his own semen.

Mortimer, meanwhile, denies the allegations.

“Dr. Mortimer admits only that Ms. Ashby decided to use anonymous donor sperm/semen in an artificial insemination process as long as, in Dr. Mortimer’s judgment, the anonymous donor sperm was appropriate and safe,” Mortimer’s attorneys Raymond Powers and Portia Rauer wrote on his behalf. “Dr. Mortimer has no recollection of having utilized his sperm/semen in the artificial insemination process with Ms. Ashby, and therefore, denies the allegations.”

A news release from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dated Oct. 3, 2009 announced Gerald Elbert Mortimer and wife Linda Gay McKinnon Mortimer as the president and matron, respectively, of the then-new Cebu City Philippines Temple, The Tribune has reported.

Gerald Mortimer previously served as president of the Philippines San Pablo Mission and was the area medical adviser for the Idaho Pocatello and Idaho Boise missions. Mortimer is originally from Payson, Utah, and his wife was born in Logan.



from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/2H6PyjV

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

U.S. nuns demand action to end ‘culture of silence’ on abuse

Vatican City • The largest U.S. association of Roman Catholic nuns urged its members Monday to report any sexual abuse of religious sisters by clergy and demanded that church authorities “take action to end a culture of silence, hold abusers accountable and provide support to those abused.” The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 80 percent of Catholic sisters in the U.S., issued a statement Monday in response to an Associated Press report about several sisters coming forward recently to denounce assaults by priests and bishops. The LCWR said it didn’t have data on incidents in the U.S. but thanked the sisters for speaking out. “We understand that reporting abuse requires courage and fortitude. However, bringing this horrific practice to light may be the only way that sexual abuse by those in positions of trust in the church community will be put to an end,” the association’s statement said. The conference has about 1,300 members in 300 orders. LCWR s...
Read more

Latter-day Saint women can ‘remove prejudice’ and improve the world, Eubank says

Image
Highlights from Saturday evening’s women’s session of the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 6:30 p.m.: Jesus heals our brokenness, says Primary leader (Photo courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Cristina B. Franco, second counselor in the general presidency of the children’s Primary, speaks during the women's meeting Oct. 3, 2020. Cristina B. Franco, second counselor in the general presidency of the children’s Primary, discussed the healing power of Jesus Christ. She told about getting a new piano that fell off a hand truck during delivery and was damaged. The manager offered to give Franco and her husband, Rudy, a new piano, but Rudy would not hear of it. He wanted the broken one back. “Sisters and brothers, aren’t we all like this piano, a little broken, cracked and damaged, feeling like we will never be the same again?” Franco asked. But Jesus Christ can “heal brokenness,” when people have faith, repent and seek...
Read more