In vitro fertilization is supposed to help couples with reproductive issues conceive a child. For a wife in Shanghai, China, though, the technology spawned another stressful problem.

After the wife, surnamed Zhu, survived lung cancer diagnosed in 2019, she discovered last November that her husband of 20 years had used a forged marriage certificate to create frozen embryos with another woman at a local hospital, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

Zhu showed her and her husband’s marriage certificate to Fudan University’s Zhongshan Hospital, where the embryos were stored, and asked the hospital to destroy the fertilized eggs.

The hospital refused because it could not ascertain the authenticity of a marriage certificate, but it decided to seal the frozen embryos.

Zhu next reported her husband, surnamed Tang, to the police in March, accusing him of bigamy and fraud, and asked the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission to destroy the frozen embryos. The commission said it had no authority to do so and advised her to seek help from the courts.

On 5 August, Tang said he had asked the hospital to destroy the embryos, with lawyers representing all three parties present as witnesses, according to SCMP. Zhu, however, was not notified of the supposed destruction and questioned whether it really happened.

Meanwhile, a widow in Wisconsin, USA, has sued her former fertility doctor for allegedly faking her artificial insemination 45 years ago.

Mary Ellen Lukezich and her son, Joseph Laedtke Heider, filed the lawsuit against retired obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Frederick Dettmann in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on 6 August, ABC 13 News reported.

Lukezich alleged that Dettmann recommended to her and her late husband, Thomas Laedtke, in 1982 that she use donor sperm from a “healthy young medical student” who wanted to remain anonymous, according to ABC 13 News.

She became pregnant and gave birth to her only son, Joe Laedtke, now 43, who took an Ancestry DNA test in December 2024 out of curiosity.

The DNA results showed he had multiple half-siblings related to Dettmann, indicating that the doctor was the sperm donor.

But Dettmann, now 91 and living in Arizona, said through his attorney that he could not remember the complainant or the events that occurred almost 50 years ago