The Health Ministry revoked the licenses of two senior staff members at Assuta Medical Center in Rishon LeZion following a mistaken embryo transfer that rocked Israel.
The ministry said the sanctions followed serious management failures and procedural violations that led to the incident. Both employees have 30 days to appeal the ruling.
In 2022, clinic staffers implanted the wrong embryo in a woman undergoing in vitro fertilization. The mishap was discovered during the third trimester after doctors detected a heart defect in the fetus.
Sophia was born on October 26, 2022, through IVF in Assuta. While the biological mother was in her 28th week of pregnancy, medical staff found a heart malfunction in the fetus. This led to testing, including genetic testing, which showed that she was not their genetic child.
Sophia’s biological parents were eventually confirmed, sparking a custody battle. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in May that the girl, now two years old, will remain with the birth mother while allowing the biological parents visitation rights.
The decision was handed by Justices Yael Willner, Daphne Barak-Erez, Ofer Grosskopf, Alex Stein, and Yechiel Meir Kasher.
'An unusually tragic case'
Willner, who wrote the main decision, was joined by Grosskopf and Kasher. Stein agreed as well to dismissing the appeal, but ruled that Sophia’s genetic father should be listed as such, though without any guardianship rights. Barak-Erez, in the minority opinion, held that the ruling should have been the opposite.
Willner noted that this is an unusually tragic case, and that the dispute between the two sides touches on one of the most vulnerable aspects of a person – their identity as a parent, and their relationship to their children.