2 White Ohio Women Sue Chicago Sperm Bank Over Black Donor

[Purveyor]

Associated Press

CLEVELAND (AP) -- An Ohio woman has sued a Chicago-area sperm bank after she became pregnant with sperm donated by a black man instead of a white man as she'd intended.

Jennifer Cramblett was five months pregnant and happy with her life in April 2012. She and her lesbian partner had married months earlier in New York, and within days of their nuptials she had become pregnant with donor sperm at a fertility clinic in Canton.

Cramblett, 36, and her partner, Amanda Zinkon, 29, were so elated that they called Midwest Sperm Bank LLC outside Chicago to reserve sperm from the same donor in the hope that Zinkon would someday also have a child.

But that's when Cramblett received some disturbing news, says a lawsuit filed Monday against Midwest Sperm Bank in Cook County, Illinois. She learned from an employee at the sperm bank that she had been inseminated with sperm from No. 330, a black donor, and not No. 380, a white donor she and Zinkon, who are white, had chosen.

more...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WRONG_SPERM_LAWSUIT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-01-21-12-18

[MADem]

1. A 3 can look like an 8 if you're not careful how you write it!

I should think that bank would have a simple check/balance on their numbers, ya know, something like 330/Three Three Zero and 380/Three Eight Zero somewhere on the forms, to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Fives can look like sixes, ones can look like sevens...even a 2 can look like a nine depending on who writes it!

[TheVisitor]

2. Well, uhmm...

I get that this was probably an honest mistake by the sperm bank, even though it is a horrible mistake to make.
Shouldn't this instead be focusing on the racism inherent in their town and trying to find a resolution to the core problem?
That would seem to be the most logical step, in my opinion. This act is just demonizing minorities even more by saying "how dare you give us a half black child".

[LisaL]

3. What if they were a straight white couple?

It would have been very clear that the husband was not the father.

[TheVisitor]

10. This is true, it would be clear...

but the same would apply... the ethnicity of the child is irrelevant, regardless... and why is it a stigma to see a man with a woman and a child which is obviously not his? Society has, overall, some very messed up priorities. To me, personally, it doesn't make a difference. This is yet another scenario where society is corrupted on a large scale to discriminate, and people feel the need to 'fit in' all the time. This is a huge cause of mental anguish in our country which I believe contributes to so many more disorders/diseases I wont get into.

I guess the real question is, why is society so concerned about the ethnicity of the child, regardless of the parents? Seems like a societal issue moreso that is being brought to light by an honest mistake, albeit, a serious one...

[LisaL]

11. How would it be irrelevant?

Couples can pick a donor that resembles a husband so they don't have to explain to everyone they used a donor.
If the child is of different race, that is pretty much impossible.

[pipi_k]

71. To you, personally

it doesn't make a difference, but to them it does.

Maybe they figure things would be tough enough for a child/children they have because there are two women in the picture, and not a man and woman without adding mixed race complications to the issue..

What if they had wanted sperm from an Asian or Black donor and were given sperm from a white man instead?

Would that make a difference?

Or what if they wanted sperm from a very short and muscular donor and were given sperm from a tall and lanky donor instead?


Good lord, not everything is all about racism

[TheVisitor]

75. Do you have children? I'd wager, a big NOPE.

You're absolutely right, we should reduce human beings being born to the short order cook process, and everyone should get to pick the most mundane and shallow features of their children in order to give them a perceived ''edge''.

Also, any time a child is born with undesirable characteristics, we should be allowed to sue the mother/father (whoever is responsible genetically or personality wise). In this case, we definitely need to attack the sperm bank for being so horrible. Society does not have a problem with stereotypes or discrimination and let us all ignore it completely, because that is a ruse. The problem lies in the children who must all fit into the exact mold we want them to! If they don't, society rightfully rejects and outcasts them. Not tall enough? Outcast! Not muscular enough for a 15 year old? outcast! Sue the weak one who contributed to it! Better yet, let's just start taking all the one's with the shoddy characteristics and just lining them up for execution for weakening the gene pool. After all, they are the problem for not being 'it' enough. Christ, what was I thinking? You've made me see the light. Because it's OK that their town is racist and discriminates against the child, how dare I try to insinuate that none of this would be a problem without discrimination: when you've already told me quite plainly that this IS NOT about race. I do apologize, so profusely.

It is about race in this case. If you can't see that, then you haven't read the article in it's entirety, and I am not wasting my time with another response.

[TorchTheWitch]

21. or a straight black couple getting sperm from a white man

This isn't about racism, it's is about getting the wrong sperm because of negligence. The lesbian couple love their mixed race child and aren't racist, but are now concerned about racial discrimination aimed at their child which neither one have ever experienced and therefore don't know how to cope with. They didn't get what they paid to get and what is a very personal choice not by accident but by negligence.

Couples that chose donor sperm whether from a sperm bank or "turkey baster" are just as concerned about getting the right donor as straight couples who conceive in the usual way. Sperm from donors in all cases are chosen in very personal ways just as couples who chose to conceive with "donor" sperm in the usual way. Race, height, medical background, hair color, eye color, intelligence, etc., etc. It's a highly personal choice. It's not like a couple goes to a sperm bank and says "just give some white guy's sperm".

Sperm banks are in the business of providing couples with exactly the donor sperm they chose, and therefore are keenly aware of the highly personal choice of which donor their clients want, and those clients go through a lot of personal debate with themselves in making their choices. What could possibly be more personal to a couple that can't conceive than choosing who they want to be the donor of the sperm that makes their future child? The entire ability of a sperm bank to function is their understanding of how important and personal donor choices are and their exactitude of making certain that the clients get the donor sperm of their choice.

Calling what happened to this couple being given the wrong sperm is not any more of a mistake or accident than a financial bank makes the mistake or accident of losing all the money in your account and not being able to put it back. For heaven's sake, the sperm bank doesn't even use computerized record keeping! How damn hard is it to distinguish the difference between Donor #this and Donor #that? It's disgraceful.

This isn't about racism, it's about a couple through negligence being given the wrong donor sperm instead of the one they chose through very personal and important searching, and a couple that loves their mixed race daughter and are rightly concerned about her emotional well-being because of her mixed race and what stigma she will have to endure through her life because of it without their having any personal knowledge/experience of racism and how to deal with it.

[hifiguy]

74. Eeyup.

When part of your business plan is "we insure that the customer will get exactly what they want" and they foul it up, that is negligence or, as the courts put it, the failure to take ordinary care/precautions."

[kwassa]

78. You have a child, you take your chances.

Having the right sperm from the right donor insures very little about exactly how that child will look, how intelligent they will be, whether they will be born healthy or not, or many other things. Just because the donor has a certain set of characteristics does not mean that his genes mixed with your genes will produce the effect that you want them to.

There are no guarantees with children, biologically-related or not.

[TorchTheWitch]

95. having a child by the sperm donor of one's choice is every woman's right

And I also fully understand how upset and angry men get when they find out that a child they believed was created by their own sperm turned out not to be the case.

No one would DO IVF if they couldn't chose who the sperm donor would be just like women chose which man they want to impregnate them in the usual way. That's what the business of IVF is all ABOUT and exactly how this sperm bank and every other one is run.

This couple has EVERY RIGHT to sue because of this sperm bank's negligence in assuring that they would get the donor of their choice and giving them the wrong one. Of COURSE it is devastating just as it is devastating to men when they find out a child they believed to have been created by their own sperm was not. It has no baring on whether or not they love that child, but they have a right to know if a child conceived was fathered by them or not.

[kwassa]

100. It is not a right, it is a contractual obligation from the IVF provider.

That contract was violated in this instance, and the contract provider deserves to be sued.

On the other hand, the woman who gives birth has no emotional relationship with the sperm-donating father, so turning this into an emotional issue really isn't valid. She was shopping for a certain set of genetic characteristics, and she didn't get the exact combination she wanted. She well may not have gotten what she wanted even if she had the sperm donor of her choice, as I pointed out in my previous post.

You get what you get and you don't get upset, as the saying goes.

[Jenoch]

14. I never have understood what the term an 'honest mistake' means.

I understand 'unintended mistakes', but I don't know why that would make it honest. If a mistake was not unintended, then it would be deliberate, but then it would not be a mistake.

[TheVisitor]

17. It implies that it was truly a mistake, and absolves the statement of any potential for...

underlying sarcasm...

it counteracts the frequent use of the word mistake. the word is commonly associated with underlying malice or intention in every day use...

at least, that is why i use the term

i find the word, in itself, to be quite jaded and negative... in need of some desperate reassurance at times

[Jenoch]

19. I have always taken the term mistake to be just that,

a mistake that was an act that was an action that had a negatuve impact, but was not intentional. Adding honest never made much sense to me.

For instance, I consider a typo to be a mistake, and yet I once had a DU post hidden because of a typo.

I suppose there are degrees of mistakes and that has an influence on the perception of the outcomes. In this case, I think negligence would be a better description of the error at the sperm bank rather than 'honest mistake'.

[TheVisitor]

25. I guess it depends on how you look at it...

and whether or not you believe the couple having a bi-ethnic child is considered such a bad thing... in this case, they seem to think so...

in law negligence is used to describe a lack of care taken during a task which causes damage or injury to another...

i'm not quite sure what kind of damage or injury this has caused... other than, the child may look back in later years and feel extremely guilty for being bi-ethnic... in which case, i would say, is a case of emotional negligence on behalf of the parents...

i look at it as a mistake, simply because i don't see why it is such a big deal if they truly love their child

[Jenoch]

28. Oh, don't misunderstand me.

I think if the child discovers this lawsuit in later years it will have a psychological impact.

I don't quite understand the part that may, may not, imply that the parents lack a connection to this child. I hope they are able to get beyond tge racial part of this situation. I also believe they are entitled to financial compensation because of this 'mistake'.

[TheVisitor]

33. i agree...

i think they should be compensated... it's not acceptable on a technical level... it is not what they 'ordered'... from a legal standpoint that ignores humanity more often than not, it will probably come to pass...

then again, i don't equate a living human child with an order at Burger King...

but i also feel if the parents put it aside it would've been better for their child in the long run...

personally, i would've accepted my child as-is, no questions asked, and learned to do my child's hair myself instead of making a big stink about it... and i kind of wonder if they are bringing the child to get the child's hair done to make it look more 'white'... it irks me to think about it... since obviously their main issue is that their baby is bi-ethnic almost all the things that i read in the article focused on the disadvantages the child brings them because of ethnicity... that is so sad, and i'm trying to imagine what that would do to a child's self-esteem and it feels horrible...

[Purveyor]

41. I ponder that thought myself. Not like this child will not be able to discover this hub-bub. eom

[Gidney N Cloyd]

4. Jump ahead a few years when the kid asks: "So, Mom, why exactly did you sue these guys?"

[ecstatic]

97. yikes! nt

[kelliekat44]

5. A half black child would be %100 my child and I could not feel anything but love for the baby.

I would still sue the clinic for enough money to take care of the child, who is no doubt going to face a miserable life in a racist society.

[pnwmom]

7. They say they love the child. But that doesn't mean they felt prepared

for the demands of raising a mixed race child in this society.

[AngryAmish]

34. I am sheltered, but raising my mixed race kids has been zero problem.

I am not kidding about it. Nobody cares. I am sure this is a artifact of living in a big city but we spend a lot of time in the suburbs and nobody cares.

This seems really weird. About 15% of the kids at my kids schools have two mommys, and about half of them are biracial.

[kwassa]

73. This is my experience, as well. Nobody cares.

[customerserviceguy]

30. Then the jury has to deal with

How much of this child's potential future hardship has to do with being mixed race, and how much has to do with being raised by a lesbian couple?

It's messy whichever way you look at it. Maybe they just fire the ambulance chaser they hired to take the case, and just try to raise this child the best they can, without blaming anybody else for "shit happens".

[Purveyor]

42. Oh FFS, seriously? Perhaps if it is so unsettling, they should have put the child

up for adoption and 'try again'.

The 'racist society' is enhanced by those who are suing the clinic because they didn't get the 'right flavour'....

[Scootaloo]

52. You're misrepresenting the mothers here

It's not as if they do not want, or like, or do not love their daughter. At least there's nothing implying this in the article

They're suing the clinic because the clinic fucked up. if you order something from a catalog, you expect to get what you ordered, right? well, apparently that didn't happen, and since sperm banks are not anything like Sears, it's not like you can take hte product back for a refund.

Now, this fuck-up is bad enough; who knows whose sperm that is, if the dude has any genetic conditions, or whatever. Nobody knows. But beyond that, this fuck-up has introduced some serious complications into the lives of these mothers and their daughter. Life tends to not be any easier for a child of mixed races than for a black person. especially when, as this family apparently does, that child lives within a racially backwards community.

That is, there are real and tangible complications and consequences for these two mothers and their daughter, that were totally unexpected, due to the clinic screwing up.

They're not angry about their daughter's skin color. They're angry that the clinic misrepresented itself, and as a consequence their daughter is going to face some potent hurdles in her life, more likely than not.

[cali]

54. wait a minute, you actually think that all kids who are mixed race face miserable lives?

and by extension do you think all black people face miserable lives in our society? Yes, it's a racist society, but no, all mixed race children or black kids do not face miserable lives. that claim, and I know you don't mean it that way, is racist in itself.

[NOLALady]

57. Thanks Cali!

I was reading these posts about how my childhood was so miserable and how difficult it was to raise my children. Damn! Who knew? No one told me that I was a miserable child. I also didn't realize that raising my kids was more difficult than raising other kids.

BTW, half of my Grand Kids are "mixed". Somehow, they don't seem all that miserable.

SMH, I can't believe the responses!

[Catherine Vincent]

65. For some reason...

For some reason, a lot of caucasians think this way.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

70. My life hasn't been that miserable big picture wise. But then I see/hear comments like yours and

I have to

[CreekDog]

6. Maybe the label got smudged somehow

[TorchTheWitch]

29. oh sure, a couple being given the wrong sperm

and are concerned about the well-being of the loved mixed race daughter of 2 years they now have because of racism directed at her is just hilarious.

Nobody fucking READS here.

[AngryAmish]

35. I see what you did there....

Ever see "The Right Stuff"?

[CreekDog]

85. .

[KentuckyWoman]

8. Ugh

This is just so stomach churning on so many different levels.

I get it that didn't get what they paid for ( donor #whatever) but really..... telling the world they are bent out of shape because the sperm they got has a little non white dna in it just makes them look like ignorant inbreds.

[pnwmom]

9. What if the women were both black and had an embryo transfer? Would they happily raise a white baby

if they had asked for black donors?

Not everyone is cut out to raise a baby of a different race. I know I've heard of African Americans objecting to the idea of white adoptive parents for a black child, from the fear that the parents wouldn't be able to share the child's cultural point of view.

Of course you should love your baby, but I don't think this case is as simple as it sounds.

[KentuckyWoman]

12. No I really do get it.

Uniontown OH is almost all somewhat affluent degreed whites. People don't move there for good schools. They mostly move there to limit there exposure to diversity. Now these women have a 2 yr old daughter starting to interact with that world....that is forcing them to face their own issues with race. Can't be comfortable at all.

I assume these women have some education because of where they live. I'm just in awe they so readily admit it's entirely about race. I feel bad for them and their family and Uniontown OH. Such foolishness because of skin....

[KamaAina]

13. "They mostly move there to limit there (sic) exposure to diversity."

Sounds like an ideal environment for a same-sex couple to raise a child of any race.

[mythology]

38. It doesn't sound like an ideal environment to raise any child

[kwassa]

18. So, a same-sex married couple has a mixed-race child, and this is a problem?

They won't get crap for being a married same-sex couple in Uniontown, but they will for having a mixed-race child?

Please.

[KentuckyWoman]

20. Well they sure think so.

The article says that's exactly why they are upset.

[kwassa]

24. They need to grow the hell up.

or get over their personal racism.

[Purveyor]

43. ^^^this^^^ indeed! eom

[Ms. Toad]

60. You got the race right -

but not much else.

Fewer than half have degrees, and the median family income is below $50,000/year.

As a white sibling of three Native American children, raised in a much smaller all white community, I know from close second hand experience the impact it had on my siblings not to have any adult in their family who looked like them, to have no one who understood because of first hand experience what it was like to live in their skin. That will be the case for this child

If I were to choose to raise a non-white child, it would be a choice which included relocating to a community around 50 miles away from where these women live, changing jobs (because the commute to our current jobs would not work from that distance), an intentionality about who is in our social circles that I don't currently exercise, to provide my child with people in her live who can give her what I cannot provide directly - first hand experience of what it feels like to live in her skin. There is nothing wrong with making that choice, and it has nothing with my "issues with race" - but it is a much larger choice than just choosing as a lesbian couple to have a child via donor insemination in a family that is unconsciously insensitive, living in semi-rural Ohio (choices our family also made).

[TorchTheWitch]

22. I see you didn't read the article

or you wouldn't have said something so stupid.

[Hekate]

15. Happened to my neighbor's niece. You know, couples who do this are trying for a baby who...

....looks like one they would have made on their own. This is not the time for being all politically correct and judging their reaction, it's time for some sympathy, and definitely time for the sperm bank to own up to an egregious mistake. IVF is not like adoption -- it's not meant to be -- and it costs a bloody fortune.

My neighbor's niece and her husband are white. Their twins are not; it showed at birth, and more so every year. The husband swallowed his hurt and set out to be a dad, just as she set out to be the biological mom she was. I've never met the family, but sometimes I ask my neighbor, and the gist of it is that it has been hard on everyone. The parents chose not to sue or make a stink, because they didn't want that notoriety for the babies. But the twins are well into their teens now, and the boy especially is having identity problems.

The extended family can choose to be embracing about it, and they are, but the nuclear family has to live with it , and it's not just about the parents ' feelings, it's about how the kids feel too. No one has to tell the kids a mistake was made -- they just have to look in a mirror.

Regarding adoption: one of my cousins is mixed race, and that adoption was over 50 years ago. One of my nieces adopted an African American baby, but as an adoptee in this day and age no one expects her to look like her mom and dad anyway. But if my niece and her husband had decided to go through the expense and prolonged discomforts of fertility treatments, they would have been entitled to --not a "perfect" baby -- but one that looked like them and shared as much of their DNA as possible.

[kwassa]

23. I am not sympathetic.

The only real priority is the welfare of the children. It is the parents job to care the best they can for the kids they have, and if they have mixed-race kids, they need to learn how to do that, too. It isn't that hard to do, and to not do that is negligent, in my opinion. This is life, this is reality, take care of business, and love your children.

We live in a very multi-racial society in most parts of this country, and mixed-race, and multi-racial families are relatively common now.

[pnwmom]

31. Regardless of the race, the insemination by the wrong donor could be viewed as a form of rape,

carried out by the medical personnel.

The woman was supposed to be impregnated by a particular donor. She did not consent to be inseminated with the sperm of a random donor selected by the agency.

[kwassa]

32. No, you are being ridiculous. This is stretching the definition of rape out of any connection with

reality. There is no definition of rape that would fit this.

Gross negligence, yes. Rape, no.

[Purveyor]

44. It is rape now? FFS, again. eom

[pnwmom]

45. Being impregnated without consent sounds like a form of rape to me.

She didn't consent to receiving the sperm of that donor; she only consented to the particular donor she chose.

[Purveyor]

46. Nope. She gave consent to be impregnated so the 'rape' bullshit is pathetic. eom

[pnwmom]

48. Just because you give consent to have sex with one man doesn't mean you give consent with any man.

And just because you consent to receiving sperm from a particular donor does NOT mean you give consent to receive sperm from any donor. She was impregnated with that particular sperm without her consent.

[Purveyor]

49. That certainly does not amount to 'rape'. You are lessening the word 'rape' with

such ridiculousness. Shame on you.

[pnwmom]

51. Becoming pregnant is as emotionally fraught as almost anything women do,

and even insemination involves a woman's female organs.

So most women would understand that "rape" is not a ridiculous metaphor in this situation. A woman can be raped with an object -- and that object could include a medical instrument used to deliver the wrong man's sperm.

[snooper2]

64. out of 10,000 people that view may be held by 2 just FYI

[Reter]

93. She consented to Harry but because the lights were out, she didn't realize Steve took his place

So I can see his point, although I'm not ready to agree with it.

[gollygee]

81. Rape is being penetrated without consent

She consented to penetration in order to be inseminated, and she consented to the person who did the procedure penetrating in order to inseminate her. Rape isn't about sperm, it's about penetration. Having a child with a different genetic background than you were expecting doesn't make it rape.

[pnwmom]

82. She didn't consent to being penetrated with the wrong donor's semen.

This isn't about the race of the child. It's about the identity of the sperm donor. She didn't consent to his semen being placed inside her.

[gollygee]

83. Yes, but that isn't rape

Rape is about who is penetrating, not whose sperm it is. It is wrong, but it isn't rape.

[pnwmom]

84. Rape is about being sexually penetrated without your consent -- which is what happened to her.

She didn't consent to her vagina being penetrated by an instrument carrying the wrong donor's sperm.

[gollygee]

86. She consented to penetration by the person who was penetrating her

Therefore, it is not rape.

You can't call it rape just because you don't like it to make it sound even worse. It simply doesn't meet the definition. The definition does not include what happens to, or whose, or if there is sperm involved.

Rape is rape. All rape is rape, and only rape is rape. It isn't a word to use for political reasons or whatever is going on in this thread. It means something specific.

[pnwmom]

89. She didn't consent to penetration by the living sperm that were put inside her.

I'm not saying the tech is guilty of rape, but that her EXPERIENCE and lack of consent makes it akin to rape from her perspective.

[gollygee]

90. Does she say that?

That she feels like she was raped? It sounded like she was worried it would be hard to raise a biracial child. I haven't read everything that's been written about this so maybe I missed it.

[cherokeeprogressive]

91. Rape involves actual sex, doesn't it?

Are you equating artificial insemination with sex? Don't they do that with a needle and anesthesia?

[Ms. Toad]

92. Nope -

a speculum & a syringe (without a needle). No anesthesia.

[TorchTheWitch]

26. exactly

IVF is very personal as is choosing one's donor. This couple right in the article expressed their love for her (she's now 2 years old) and are concerned about the racism she's going to experience in her life as well as their lack of experience or knowledge in how to cope with it for her well-being.

But nobody seems to like to actually read articles linked here and just make stupid knee jerk reactions that have nothing to do with what the story is really about.

This is not about racism of the couple. It's about the negligence of this sperm bank being so negligent as to give a couple the wrong sperm resulting in a child that is loved so much that her parents are concerned about the racism she's going to endure and not having the personal knowledge or experience to know how best to deal with that.

Damn bloody right they should sue. If nothing else maybe it will wake them up to not be so grossly negligent in giving clients the wrong sperm. Geez, they don't even keep computer records!

[pnwmom]

27. Thanks for your thoughtful post, Hekate. You are right --

"this is not the time for being all politically correct." It isn't fair to blame these women for being worried about the challenges of raising a mixed race child.

These women contracted for the sperm of a particular donor, and that obviously didn't happen. The mistake would probably have gone unnoticed, however, if the donor had been of the same race.

[kwassa]

36. The challenges of raising a mixed-race child in this day and age are not very great.

They are everywhere, and there are tons of resources.

[pnwmom]

53. "Where did you get the idea you could raise a black child?"

Black Americans have also spoken out against white people adopting black or mixed race babies, on the grounds that they won't understand the cultural experience.

http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2013/11/where-did-you-get-the-idea-you-could-raise-a-black-child/

We were waiting in the deli line at a local grocery store as we enjoyed our Daddy-baby time. An African-American woman who appeared to be in her early 60s approached us. “He’s beautiful,” she said. “Is he yours?” Her face held only the slightest hint of a smile.

SNIP

The lady ignored the question and looked directly at me. “What do you plan to do to make sure this child grows to be a strong, culturally connected young black man?” she asked. Honestly, this question had come up as we contemplated adopting an African American child. I had given it considerable thought, but I had trouble putting those thoughts together in the deli section.

Any hint of a smile went away. She looked at me and asked. “Where did you get the idea that you were qualified to raise a black child?” There it was. The statement oozed with racial and social implications that never, ever entered our minds when we decided that race didn’t matter when it came to adopting. Well . . . it didn’t matter to us.

My wife and I looked at each other. By now, it was pretty clear that our adoption of an African American child had social implications that we didn’t consider. This lady in the grocery store wasn’t the first African American to express concern over our adoption of this child. We figured the first few situations were just isolated opinions. It was now clear that the opinions were not isolated.

SNIP

[Hekate]

56. Thanks for linking this. The negative opinions by outspoken African Americans have been out there...

...for years. To some people it doesn't matter that a child might be left in the foster care system indefinitely, as long as they don't get adopted by the "wrong" parents, i.e. whites.

To others, well represented in this thread, there's nothing to see here, we're all just color blind now, and you're a bad person for wanting what nearly every human on this planet wants: Mini-Me, their own little bundle of DNA, their own reflection looking back at them from the gene pool. That's not evil; that's simply human.

The fact is, getting pregnant is as you say: fraught. My Gods, it's the most intimate thing a human being ever experiences, yet everyone feels entitled to tell women, any woman, how she should feel about it.

There was a doctor at a fertility clinic in California who inseminated dozens of women with his own sperm. Yes, they consented to be artificially inseminated and they paid good money for the service. Some thought they were getting an anonymous donor selected to "match" their family; some thought they were getting their husband's sperm. Instead they got the offspring of this egomaniac with a God-complex. If that's not a form of rape in addition to fraud, I don't know what is. Worse, there were cases of other couples' "extra" frozen zygotes being implanted in other women's persistently infertile wombs.

Adoption is adoption and you go into it consenting and with your eyes wide open. It is a totally different matter than being given the wrong sperm or the wrong zygote.

[kwassa]

59. I am a white man raising a black daughter. Neither of you have a clue.

My wife is African-American, our daughter is African-American with some white ancestry, and she is adopted.

There are no qualifications for raising a black child, other than raising it. There is no approval committee. This woman in the anecdote had no right to state her opinion on the parent's adoption, it is literally none of her damn business. I would note another huge error in this article: most black people are actually happier that this child has a parent that loves them. Many don't care at all, though, because it has nothing to do with their lives. This is my lived experience, over many years, in many different encounters.

Now, why would white people so cluelessly adopt a black child without doing a little research on the subject? I can't believe this sentence in this:

My wife and I looked at each other. By now, it was pretty clear that our adoption of an African American child had social implications that we didn’t consider.

This is an entirely separate problem.

[Ms. Toad]

63. Where this familiy is living, they are greater -

And there is a difference between deliberately choosing to do so (and heading into parenthood having accepted those challenges as part of the package), and having the choice imposed on you.

[kwassa]

68. I think this couple has a valid claim against the sperm bank for fraud.

but the racial aspect of this is really ridiculous.

Uniontown appears to be in a demographically purple area, so I don't see it as an area of extreme conservatism.

[Ms. Toad]

72. I live very close to it

so I suspect have a better understanding than you do of how it feels to live there. The purple you see is a more reflection of union membership v. republicans, and union membership is not necessarily a solid indicator of racial sensitivity - particularly in a nearly all white community. If I had chosen to adopt a non-white child, I would not have done so without also making a considerable investment in arranging our lives so that my child had people in her life regularly who had experienced first hand what it is like to be non-white in the US - and had people around her who looked like her, and I would not have chosen to do so in either Uniontown or in the neighboring community in which I live.

The racial concerns are not ridiculous - and I suspect your perspective is a bit biased because of your personal investment in minimizing the concerns because of your daughter. My - as white parents of three Native American children - truly believed it was not an issue if they loved my siblings enough and embraced, their ethnic heritage rather than ignoring it. I don't know what age your daughter is, but much of what my non-white siblings experienced, from a racial perspective, was not clear or shared with my parents until my siblings were adults (and I suspect there is more they still have not shared). If you have not had the experience of being immersed in a community which does not look like you, in a family which does not look like you - or share your experience of how people react to you because of how you look - you may not realize the impact. This couple, likely because of their experience as lesbians living in a straight world, has some sense of it.

[kwassa]

77. I still find the idea that same-sex marriage would be okay there ....

but a mixed-race child would not, to be quite bizarre.

I grew up in northern Ohio, and lived in the country outside of Oberlin, attended a high-school full of German-American farm kids before transferring into Oberlin. The rural school was completely white. Oberlin HS was about a third black, on the other hand, but also diverse in terms of the whites that were there. We transferred into Oberlin because the rural white high school was so academically weak, by comparison.

Speaking of unions, they aren't lily-white around there, either. I worked a summer job at US Steel in Lorain, which was union and extremely diverse.

These women may want to move to a place that has more diversity, which shouldn't be too hard. There are many places that are diverse that also have excellent school systems, as they do here in the suburbs of DC.

I also think that diversity is much more common and acceptable in the US than when I was a kid, with many more examples in the media, and in the lives of most Americans. Any major US city is diverse, as waves of immigrants come in from all over the world. Most minor cities are becoming more diverse, too. This relatively affluent county school system here is 33% white, 27% Hispanic, 21% black, and 14% Asian.

[Ms. Toad]

87. Oberlin is a world apart from Uniontown.

I have more than 3 decades of experience with Oberlin - (I did my student teaching there, and still return frequently) and more than 2 decades living next door to Uniontown. Comparing a town which is home to one of the more left-wing colleges in the country with Uniontown is like comparing apples to skyrockets. (But, FWIW, Oberlin's diversity is very bipolar. The school system is filled with the often very poor children of the college staff who are, for the most part, not college educated - and at the other extreme the far wealthier (both economically and in terms of educational support) children of the faculty. And if you think there aren't also racial tensions there, then you aren't paying attention.

I didn't say same-sex marriage would be okay in Uniontown - but when you go home to your same sex parents because someone bullied you at school because you were wearing an Equality Ohio T-shirt and you were told to turn your shirt inside out, your parents know instantly what you are experiencing. It is a very different situation from going home as black child (which is how this child will be viewed) to your white parents after some preschool school kid ran to the teacher's desk to sanitize their hands after holding hands with you when you walked to the playground - and having your parents intellectually empathize but without the capability to know what that feels like (and - frankly - without the ability to even recognize slights that are less overt because it is outside of their experience). And - this child will have to cope with both, when the choice her parents her parents made was for her to only have to cope with one.

Lesbians don't get pregnant by accident - we spent about 6 years planning to have a child and thinking through all of the possibilities, working through whether it was fair to bring a child into a family with two moms, knowing some of the prejudice we faced would also impact that child, whether it was fair to create a child when so many are already alive without homes, where we wanted to live, how we could afford for one of us to be a stay-at-home mom, and so on.

Frankly, my siblings' experience growing up racially isolated (even with a major commitment on my parents' part to help them learn about their heritage) convinced me that we would need to commit to significant life changes if we adopted a non-white child. We would need to move to an area which was racially mixed, and likely to a larger city which is likelier to be friendly to more diverse families. The former was not a problem, but as a farm kid the latter was - and all of my spouse's (often unintentionally racially insensitive) family is still within a half hour of the original family home. I don't have the emotional bandwidth to spare for the challenges very frequently associated with adoption of older children, and the infants who need homes are African American males - the group most at risk because of assumptions based on skin color. That is a significant part of why we decided to have a child by donor insemination. As a family, we were not in a position to make the commitment to providing for our child indirectly what we could not provide directly - and we did not believe it was fair to bring an African American child into our home unless we were willing to do so.

I don't pretend to know how this couple decided to have a child. But I do know how we did - and the kinds of things they are saying about their child needs are very much the kind of thinking we did when we decided not to adopt. Had our donor turned out to be non-white, it would have meant significant and costly (both socially and economically) changes to our lives in order meet the needs of a child we had already decided it would be unfair to adopt.

Yes, they can theoretically move elsewhere - and if I were in their shoes and could find suitable employment elsewhere I certainly would be considering that option, because that would be how I could best meet my child's needs. But that is not what they signed on for when they chose to have a child by donor insemination. And, frankly, it is pretty rude to call concerns that we seriously wrestled with for a significant part of 6 years "ridiculous" or to suggest that it "shouldn't be too hard" to just pick up and move and make a life elsewhere.

And if race is such a non-issue why Ferguson (and the many other young black men shot by policemen since then)? Why

?

[kwassa]

94. Yet they are where they are.

I am not questioning the decisions you made, or that they made either. It makes a great deal of sense in terms of the parameters of your life. I had no idea that yours were so similar to theirs.

I am actually fascinated by the idea that same-sex marriage is acceptable in a place that would be so resistant to a multi-racial family.

Adoption is also more complex than you make it out to be. There are many options out there in the adoption world, but few of them are Caucasian, except for children from Russia and Eastern Europe, and they can be problematic due to the horror stories that are the state adoption system. There are, however, trans-racial adoptions all around me. White folks with non-white children. I am talking infants, too.

Oberlin is also more complex than you make it out to be. It is not bipolar. At the high school are the kids of the college professors, the farm kids, the kids of the buildings and grounds crew who were mostly West Virginia immigrants, the poor black kids, and the middle class black kids. Kids of those who worked for Oberlin businesses. There may be more variations now. There were mixed-race kids, too, and this is quite awhile ago.

Either way, this couple ended up with the child they have. That happens to many, many people. Grown-ups deal with that. Call me unsympathetic to their complaints. They didn't get what they asked for, and many of us don't. We still love our children and do our best for them. Complaining about it is not supporting the child. I can just imagine this child reading this news story about his parents complaining about his mixed-race status years from now, and how he will feel about it.

[Ms. Toad]

96. I have actually not seen anyone say same sex marriage is accepted

The fact that it is not universally accepted - and that any child we had would face that discrimination because of who her parents are is one more reason not to add the additional complexity of being a non-white child in a white home and community.

As to adoption - what you're saying is pretty much what I've said. The options for adoption are mostly older children, or non-white infants (whether adopted at home, or abroad).

Many white families choose to adopt non-white children. I think that is a choice that is unfair to the child, unless the family is able and willing to make the commitment to surround the child with a community which shares the child's ethnic background (African American, Cambodian, Chinese, etc.). That is not going to happen in Uniontown, where this family chose to make its home.

So, because of the negligence of the clinic - and the race of the child - meeting the emotional needs of their daughter is far different than they planned for. It may require uprooting themselves and moving to a new community and finding new employment. Those things may be impossible and - at a minimum - cost money - and they are costs the couple would not have had but for their daughter's race. There is no way to make the case without talking about the race of their daughter. Had the donor been different from the one they chose, but white, they would not have felt compelled to contemplate this kind of life changes to meet their daughter's needs.

I doubt I would have sued - because of the impact the publicity would have on my child's self esteem. But the fact that I would have made a different choice than they did about how to handle it doesn't make their concerns invalid or racist.

As to Oberlin, there are faculty (and professional staff) kids - and everyone else. You've refined everyone else into lots of categories - but what characterizes all of those other categories is parents with less education, and less money. The bipolar nature of the schools isn't a divide along primarily racial lines, it is along lines of education & class.

[kwassa]

99. Many people get biological children far different than they planned for.

They deal with it. Making a public issue of their daughter's race is a very bad choice, however, on the part of this couple. The combination of these two things is why I have little sympathy for them.

They do have a valid court case against IVF providers, however.

Your understanding of Oberlin is still wrong. I, and my immediate friends, all came from well-educated middle-class families that had no connection to the college at all. There are quite a few families like this in town. I would suggest these people are at least as affluent as the professors. I was also friends with kids of the professors.

Like many places in this country, there was a range of income and educational background in the children's families. Calling it bipolar is simplistic in the extreme.

[underthematrix]

16. too bad parents r unhappy. Melanin-rich babies

are prettier and less likely to develop deadly skin cancer, which has increased as our ozone layer slowly retreats

[AngryAmish]

37. The Moorman Doctrine

And how does this interact with this cause of action?

Does this cause of action rest in tort?

Does this cause of action rest in contract?

Does this cause of action rest in warranty?

I say warranty, but UCC does not contemplate children.

[pnwmom]

39. And this is about a sperm donor who is equally outraged that his sperm

was accidentally used to inseminate a stranger, rather than his girlfriend -- and he's very upset that his biological child is out there somewhere and he can't have any contact with him or her.

http://www.salon.com/2006/11/16/fertility_mix_up/

Matthew Hayes and Nico Swift went to a Portland, Ore., fertility clinic because, like 15 percent of the population, they had been unable to conceive the natural way. And like many of the Americans who feed the $3 billion a year industry, the couple paid thousands of dollars for the hope that science could undo the bad luck of biology. Instead, they found themselves in the middle of a man-made mess.

In a colossal mix-up that is still unresolved, the clinic accidentally used Hayes’ sperm to inseminate the wrong woman, depositing his fresh gametes in the womb of a hopeful mother who had arranged to use a frozen sample from an anonymous donor. The woman got pregnant, but the hospital will not tell Hayes her name or even reveal whether a child was born. Hayes believes he has a valid claim to the baby. “They put my sperm into a stranger’s vagina,” he says. Hayes is in his 30s, a tall, broad-shouldered hipster, with flecks of gray in his brown hair. Normally confident, he crumbles easily these days. When asked about the common assumption that men regard their sperm as expendable, he begins to cry.

This fall, Hayes filed two lawsuits in Multnomah County Circuit Court. One seeks to determine whether a child was born, and if so, whether it’s his. If it is, he is asking the court to declare him the legal father; Hayes has said he is willing to negotiate the terms of custody. His malpractice suit asks for $2 million from Oregon Health and Science University, which houses the fertility clinic, for worry and emotional distress. Hayes and his fiancie agreed to talk on the condition that their real names not be used. The second couple, referred to in court papers as Jane Doe and John Roe, declined requests for interviews through their attorney.

In past cases, say legal experts, most sperm donors who have sued for custody have lost their cases. That’s because they signed away rights to custody when they made their donations. But this is far from a typical case. It raises the issue of what constitutes paternity in the cases of botched treatments, which may happen rarely — and be discovered even less frequently — but have happened in the past and are bound to happen again. Hayes was at the fertility clinic that day not to offer sperm to another couple as an anonymous donor, but to have his sperm delivered — explicitly and only — into his girlfriend’s body. Yet he has legally become an anonymous donor against his will. In the case of a screw-up like this one, who gets to be the father of the baby?

SNIP

[AverageJoe90]

40. I do feel somewhat sorry for this couple.....the clinic definitely screwed up.

I do hope they'll still love the baby, however.

[TorchTheWitch]

47. For heaven's sake people, read the article

These women aren't racists, they have a 2 year old mixed race child they love and are concerned for the racism she's going to face in her life and are worried about how to cope with it having no personal experience of racism since they're white.

They're concerned about racism against their mixed race child and have every right to be pissed off that a sperm bank grossly negligently used the wrong sperm from the one they had chosen.

[Jamastiene]

50. She needs to educate her "insensitive" all white family.

That part of the article really stood out to me.

[kath]

55. Do people here not understand the difference between artificial insemination and IVF?

Two different people refer to IVF in the context of this thread's discussion.

[AngryAmish]

58. Is selecting the race etc of your sperm donor eugenics?

Yes it is.

[kiva]

61. Not really.

Sterilizing men and women of an "inferior" race is, however.

[Orrex]

62. Sure, in the same way that every act of mating is eugenics.

[Orrex]

66. Has anyone here ever worked in food service?

I've literally (and I do mean literally) had people threaten to kill me on the street because they got the wrong kind of cheese on their cheesesteak.

By comparison, it seems quite reasonable that this couple has a legitimate complaint. After spending thousands and thousands of dollars for an advanced, invasive medical procedure, they have a right to expect that their specific choices would be honored.

[LibertyLover]

67. Disclosure: My daughter was adopted from China

and doesn't look at all like her father or I. We sometimes get funny looks, but we deal and she knows how much we love her. I see this case slightly differently in that I see it as a breach of contract. Ms. Cramblett contracted with Midwest to provide a specific service, i.e. insemination with sperm from donor No. 380. Midwest failed to provide the stipulated service by inseminating Ms. Cramblett with sperm from donor No. 330.

[reflection]

69. Nephew Tommy foresaw this.

[locdlib]

76. Nah, I call bullshit on these women.

Didn't one of them say they wanted blue-eyed, blonde-hair babies? Next time, they go sperm-banking, they should go in with their own legal team and a list and pictures of what they want their babies to look like. I was willing to be sympathetic to them because I do believe that people should have what they want. They lost me at the blue-eyed, blonde-haired comment.

[valerief]

80. "But if it's not my color, how can it be a mini-me????" That said,

the mistake made was inexcusable. Purveyors of life should be more careful than to use ONE KEY to identify sperm selection. And consumers should be more aware of the risks involved.

I forget what comedian said something like, "We should get rid of black people." Then s/he added, "We should get rid of white people, too." S/he went on to say we should just have brown people.

[NightWatcher]

88. they fell victim to the ol "Master-bait and Switch"

Thank you, tip your waitress and remember the 11 o clock show is completely different from the 7 o clock show. Goodnight

[ecstatic]

98. Discretion was violated.

Maybe they didn't want to stand out or be noticed, but now it's inevitable, because we live in a nosy and prejudiced society. That being said, I think this lawsuit was a mistake and the child will be very hurt when he realizes what happened.