Woman’s gender reveal party ruined after wrong paternity test led to abortion, only to find out it was incorrect
A Yonkers woman is suing DNA labs after receiving incorrect paternity test results, which led her to abort her pregnancy and break up with her fiancé.
A Yonkers woman is taking legal action after a mistake by two DNA labs led her to make a heart-wrenching decision. She claims that incorrect paternity test results from Winn Health Labs in the Bronx and Ohio-based DNA Diagnostics Centre caused her to abort her baby and ultimately lose her long-term relationship. The woman, an administrative assistant, is now grappling with emotional trauma as she faces the aftermath of the error, which she says was the reason behind her decision, reported the New York Post.
“My daughter would have been born on the 17th” of April, she tearfully told the outlet. “I’m grieving. I just have a lot of emotions. These results were the reason why I decided to do what I did.”
The 28-year-old woman, who asked to remain anonymous, was struggling to conceive with her then-fiancé. They broke up briefly last summer due to stress over their infertility. During this break, she had a sexual encounter with another man, though she used protection. When the couple reconciled, she was soon pregnant and assumed the child was her fiancé’s.
To be sure, and to avoid revealing the brief fling, the woman sought a paternity test through DNA Diagnostics Center. The first two tests, which cost over INR 82,000 (USD $1,000), were inconclusive. The couple then turned to the DNA Diagnostics Center, a lab that claims to have completed over 20 million tests and markets itself as a “world leader” in DNA testing. In October, they went to Winn Health Labs in the Bronx, which operates out of the back of a hair salon, to submit their samples.
Gender reveal gone wrong
Confident the results would show her fiancé was the father, the woman even held a gender-reveal party while waiting for the test results. However, a call from the lab on Halloween left her “utterly surprised, disappointed, and frustrated,” when she was informed that the other man was the father with “99.99% certainty.”
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By that point, the woman was nearly 20 weeks pregnant and faced New York’s legal abortion deadline of 24 weeks. The shock revelation forced her to disclose the affair to her fiancé, who was devastated. “He just cried,” she recalled. “He asked, ‘Why would you go through a gender reveal?’ I told him, ‘Because I was positive it was yours.’”
After a two-day pregnancy-termination procedure, the woman said she had a change of heart, but it was too late, and the baby could not be saved.
Devastated, she and her fiancé remained together until Valentine’s Day, when DNA Diagnostics Centre contacted her with unimaginable news. The lab admitted the results had been caused by an “IT error.” The man she had briefly been with was not the father, according to the lawsuit.
In the wake of the mistake, the woman and her fiancé ended their relationship in March.
“For 30 years, DDC has provided reliable and accurate testing to millions of customers,” the company said in a statement. “If any concern is raised, we take immediate action to validate the results and rapidly notify customers of any issues. We understand and appreciate the incredible amount of trust people place in us to get this right, and we expend every effort to meet that high standard.”
The woman’s lawyer, Craig Phemister, said they still do not know how the error occurred. “When you know people are relying immediately on paternity tests to make life decisions, why did it take four months for them to call? It just doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Now in therapy, the woman wants the labs to be held accountable. “How many other people did it happen to?” she questioned.
