When IVF goes wrong: Two families, two continents and one question about parenthood

Rahul and Meenu Rathore in Gurugram and Tiffany Score and Steven Mills in Florida have never met, and their legal systems share almost nothing in common. But both families arrived at the same devastating realisation after IVF: the children they had longed for, carried and given birth to were not, in fact, biologically theirs.

The Rathores are still fighting to find out what happened to their own embryos. Score and Mills have already settled into a custody arrangement with their daughter's biological parents. Read together, the two cases trace the same fault line running through fertility medicine on opposite sides of the world.

Two families, two IVF nightmares

The Rathores began IVF in late 2024 after a gynaecologist referred them to SCI IVF Hospital in Greater Kailash. Five embryos were created in May 2025, three were implanted, and on January 5 this year Meenu gave birth to twin girls. The couple soon noticed the babies bore no resemblance to either of them.

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Independent DNA tests in January confirmed the twins were unrelated to both parents and, more strikingly, unrelated to each other, suggesting anonymous donor embryos had been used.

A Delhi court ordered an FIR in March after finding grounds to suspect forgery and possible trafficking; a second order in June, dismissing the hospital's challenge to that ruling, went further and flagged irregularities in the hospital's own record-keeping. The hospital maintains the couple knowingly agreed to donor gametes. An FIR has since been registered and the police investigation continues.

In Florida, Score and Mills underwent IVF at the Fertility Center of Orlando. Tiffany gave birth to a daughter, Shea, and the couple pursued genetic testing about a month later after noticing she did not share their racial appearance. The results showed she was unrelated to either of them.

By April, attorneys for both families announced the search was over, and the parties have since reached a custody agreement allowing Score and Mills to remain Shea's permanent parents.

In neither case did the clinic come forward first. Both families say it was their own decision to pursue independent DNA testing that exposed the error.

When genetics and parenthood no longer mean the same thing

The Rathores have said they intend to keep raising the twins, whom they call Chiku and Strawberry, as their daughters, even as they press authorities to locate their own biological children.

Score and Mills made a similar declaration earlier in their ordeal, insisting that the bond formed during pregnancy and birth made Shea their daughter regardless of genetics. Where the cases diverge is resolution.

Score and Mills have reached a custody agreement with Shea's biological parents, who say they intend to remain part of the child's life. The Rathores have no such clarity yet; the families whose embryos may have been mixed with theirs have not been identified.

Both situations push against the assumption that DNA settles the question of who a parent is. Pregnancy, intention and care all compete with genetics for primacy, and neither India's courts nor Florida's have had to resolve that question outright, because both sets of intended parents chose to stay.

Could these cases reshape IVF oversight?

India's ART Act allows couples to knowingly use donor gametes, but only with documented consent, and the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has previously fined a Delhi clinic over an undisclosed donor mix-up and recommended mandatory DNA verification for ART births, a suggestion the health ministry has not acted on.

The Rathore case has revived that debate, with the courts noting that record-keeping failures left the burden of proof entirely on the hospital.

In the US, the Score and Mills case has put a spotlight on the IVF industry, which experts say lacks oversight compared with other developed countries.

The Fertility Center of Orlando has since closed amid legal and financial difficulties, with another network opening at the same site, and a frozen embryo the clinic says belongs to the couple is now undergoing further genetic testing at a different facility.

Different legal systems, different remedies, but the underlying concern is identical: consent forms and storage logs are the only safeguard against an error with no possible reversal. In Florida, the custody question is settled even as litigation against the clinic continues.

In Gurugram, investigators are still trying to establish what happened inside the hospital and whose embryos are involved. Both cases suggest that as IVF becomes more common, courts and regulators will keep being asked to define parenthood in terms the law was never built to anticipate.