Last edited Wed Oct 10, 2018, 11:12 PM - Edit history (3)

But if "limited cultural competency" is causing so much distress, a big paycheck isn't going to help: Put the child up for adoption and have the sperm bank cover the bill for their trying again at ANOTHER sperm bank.


rocktivity

This woman should receive a huge settlement due to negligence.

I hope nobody tells this child about the story of her birth.

appalling. When you carry a child and give birth to it, you love it unconditionally, or at least you should. No amount of money would make up for what she lacks in the motherhood department. That being said, the sperm bank should reimburse her fully for the mistake they made. Apparently she views her daughter like most people view a new car and since it is not what she expected, she thinks there should be a baby lemon law.

My dad claimed to love me and spent 17 years tearing me down to appease his own ego. Words aren't meaningless, but what you do matters more. This woman is going out of her way to sue for a pretty minor mistake that functionally has the impact of telling her kid that the kid was a mistake.

There are times as a parent you have to suck it up and do the right thing for your kid, not yourself.

Everything else is irrelevant. The sperm bank was negligent, and they are liable for that negligence. As any business is.

Just like some people here

White people can raise black children well. It happens all the time. It is not a hardship.

A multiracial child to find itself being raised by someone who is ethnocentrist against them.

I'm multiracial, and growing up it can be hard enough to fit in and find acceptance in society without having unsupportive parents.

I bet not

actually i think i left out the word "agree".

don't remember.

but my point was i don't think she would agree to anything which results in the child getting the money.

A mother like this will probably not spend it on the child.

She is all about herself.

You don't know a single thing about this woman (and neither do I) and yet you condemn her as greedy and selfish?

Project much maybe?

I actually read the papers. This story started last October.

The lawsuit is fatuous, and racism is implied from the get-go. She can't get a haircut for her daughter? Oh please. There are many white parents with biracial children who learn how to do the hair. She and her partner CHOSE to move back to her all-white hometown from a multi-ethnic environment, further isolating her own daughter. What wonderful parenting.

This is first-world, white people problems, and underlying it all is selfishness. And racism.

On this thread.

little girl

The mother's action is cold. Your child is your child.

I know the child isn't the plaintiff and I have no idea if there is a legal basis for a claim on the child's behalf.

I'm simply saying of all the parties here, I think the child is the real victim and deserves the most compassion.

Some day that girl will grow up and use Google. She's going to find out that her mother considered her less desirable due to her race. That will cause a ton of issues for her.

The sperm bank is 100% in the wrong but she should have sought a settlement confidentiality if she just wanted money.

for me the issue is that her husband and her would not have a mixed race child by themselves. A different father had to be involved. Therefore, in public it raises the question of infidelity. Public shaming might ensue not due to the race issue, but because it is obvious the husband isn't the father. I think that is worth big lawsuit.

The sperm had to come from somewhere.

She and her partner also moved from a diverse environment to her predominately white home town, as part of a lesbian couple.

Riddle me that.

"All you judgmental people, ask yourself how you'd feel as an infertile couple, spending tens of thousands of dollars for intensive medical procedures, and you pick a donor who looks somewhat like you do. You are in a relationship, and if you could have gotten pregnant the usual way, you would have and you would expect your kid to look like you.

Say you are an Asian couple and your in vitro infant has light colored very curly hair and gray eyes, not typical of anyone in your family. Say you are African American, which almost by definition is a mixed race category due to slavery, and your infant has light green eyes and red hair because the accidental donor was white and the recessive genes in your family popped up to join the fun. You might confess to shock, and you would be human to do so."

This post is really disturbing. All children are a blessing and should be treated as such, regardless of their race or looks.

"If you think I'm just confabulating these results, let me mention again that I grew up in Hawai'i, where the population has been happily intermarrying for over 200 years. I love watching what happens when you stir up the gene pool with cheerful abandon. Voluntarily."

It's o.k. if they do it over there.

I've been to Hawaii, I've seen the multiethnic society with very few white people involved.

Bizarre food combos. Pierogies, squid, and two scoop rice. Rada's Piroscki, as she spells it.

What I am saying is that there is no guarantee that IVF kids will look like their parents, regardless of racial background. That is the point.

have right to choose what type of kid they want to have.

But to say that "people have the right to choose what type of kid they want to have" illustrates how children have become little more than commodities with little to no regard for the human being being purchased. Privileged people clutch their pearls when those of us who have had our identity, history, natural family, and genealogy taken from us and locked away along with the right to access that information state that we believe we have the right to our own information and birth documents. But that's how privilege works, your privilege prevents you from understanding what those of us without that privilege experience.

me.iam not previliged by any stretch of imagination. of course in the future there will be more opportunities for prospective parents to choose the characteristics they prefer in their children using embryo selection.

Even if your child was the same race as you, even with the same color hair and eyes, the child could end up looking ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE YOU. Different nose, chin, face shape, overall body shape, in many different ways.

You take your chances, just as you take your chances with your own biological child. There are no guarantees as to the results.

The larger question is this: why are you trying to hide the fact that your child is the result of a sperm donor?

My neighbors down the street went to a surrogate for their most recent child. They are totally public about it, and have one incredibly cute baby. My wife and I are adoptive parents, and we are totally public about it. If asked, we tell the truth, to our wonderful daughter and anyone else. We are an interracial couple, my wife and daughter are black.

There are also transracial adoptions all over the place around here. Seeing a parent with their child that is clearly biologically not theirs is really not a big deal.

I guess that people notice. I don't look for their reactions. When I do, I don't see a reaction.

So what? I notice them, too.

The reality is this: almost no one comments, ever. Almost all appear not even to care. That is the reality. We live in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial America.

I am actually rather shocked that anyone in Hawaii can actually care about this, because Hawaii is the most racially blended society I ever encountered. Maybe this is about the white minority there trying to preserve their privilege.

All the sons and daughters of the missionaries that cashed in on being there first, families like Carter, Hawley, and Hale, and Dole ......

that are not federal or state lands.

Many are descended from the Christian missionaries that came to convert the indigenous Hawaiians.

There is no legal remedy here

Two children to a devastating inherited disease. Each parent carried the recessive gene and twice, the fetus inherited the disease, resulting in death at a young age.

In order to start their family, they decided to go to a sperm bank. They selected a donor with characteristics as close as possible to the man who would raise the kids. This was a very private, sensitive situation, having kids that were not biologically the father's. If the bank had made such an error, it would have caused incredible pain and grief for the parents in dealing with the rest of their family.

But I have no idea what damages due to neglect should be. Perhaps closure of the facility? New management?

in cases where there is a donor mixup, simply out of respect for reproductive rights, and of how intensely personal a choice of donor is. Plus it's the sperm banks JOB to get this sort of thing right.

My two sons are IVF, through donor sperm, and I put a HELL of a lot of time and effort and thought into my decision. I personally did not rule out any donors on the basis of race, and even ordered the long profile of at least one AA. In retrospect, and seeing what this country is currently like for young AA men, I'm just as glad that I didn't end up going that route. I can't even begin to imagine the sort of guilt, and fear that I'd be dealing with in the aftermath of Treyvon Martin and all the other shit that's been happening.

My belief is that when someone chooses a sperm donor from one of these facilities, they are making a choice. We don't have to like or respect the choice that someone makes here, but should respect the fact that it was their choice, and one of the most intimate and personal choices that one can make.

Putting on my flame retardant suit now.

I am a single mother by choice. After much thought, I ultimately made the decision to use a donor of the same racial, ethnic, religious background as myself and my family. My family is not diverse - my grandparents were first generation born in America and pretty much everyone has married, had children, with people who are ethnically just like them. I felt it would be easiest for my child to fit in with their only legal and social family and not have a heritage they didn't share with a single person in their family.

If I had not been single, but married to an infertile man, I would have chosen a donor of my hypothetical husband's race/ethnicity. So if the husband had been a different race than I am, the child would have had him and his whole family to share that with and not be the only one, and possibly feel like an outsider. My child might already feel different someday because I purposely had her on my own with donor, I wouldn't want to make her feel even more different.

After reading about this case, I am appalled that in this day and age, the bank was using handwriting records and relying on the employees to read them correctly. The bank I used had all electronic records, all vials had a NON HANDWRITTEN label attached, and the doctor I chose for the procedure required me to tell him from memory the donor number I had chosen so he could confirm it matched what was typed on the vial of sperm before going ahead with the procedure.

What donor to use is a deeply personal choice and in the end this is also about bodily autonomy.

She could get messages that hurt her.

to some form of compensation, and not just a "partial" refund.

But the reason she filed a lawsuit is just bizzare, imo. "limited cultural competency" What?????

that hope is gone.

Everyone will know one of the moms isn't the bio parent anyway.

Edit: I can understand them being bummed out that the baby doesn't look like she could theoretically be a bio child (I know a white/black lesbian couple who intentionally had a biracial child for this reason) but I worry about the child learning about this, and that is inevitable in the age of the internet. How will she feel when she reads about her parents being unhappy with her as she is? And they specifically say it's because she's African American. How does that make her feel about herself?

I agree with everyone that having a baby is a crap shoot. You take your chances and love unconditionally. I'm not seeing unconditional love here.