I’m not saying she went in blind necessarily. I’m saying she probably didn’t think it would have as much of an impact on her life as it might now - because it wouldn’t have. Or maybe she didn’t realize they were a bunch of racists until she had a biracial kid. I’m a little skeptical, but maybe this change in her circumstances made the problem a lot more obvious than it was in the past.
A hospital is not in the business of giving out babies based on people’s personal preference. It’s in the business of conducting medical procedures. If, in the process of conducting a medical procedure, the hospital ends up sending someone home with the wrong baby, the fact that the parents received A baby doesn’t in any way mitigate the loss of not having what is rightfully theirs.
Sperm banks aren’t in the business of giving out babies, either. Only genetic material. But in the plaintiff’s case, what was “rightfully hers” that she lost? A perfect baby with perfect white skin and perfect Euro features that no one would ever turn their nose up at? That baby never existed, except perhaps in her imagination. Her daughter is 100% hers biologically. She’s essentially arguing that because the child came out looking like nothing like her preference, she requires a bunch of money to set things right. To me that is nothing like swapped babies in a hospital.
No, her baby is 50% hers biologically and 50% the genetic material of some guy she didn’t choose. Part of the point of a sperm bank is that you get to select your donor - for most people going to a sperm bank, they are trying to pick someone like them or their partner. They select for looks, but they also select for hobbies - a family of readers looks for a reader. A family that rock climbs looks for an athletic donor. A woman with a red haired husband who has non-viable sperm probably picks a red headed donor. A sperm bank isn’t the grab bag at the carnival - people choosing donor sperm often spend hours finding the right donor.
Is there a chance genetics will steer you wrong - sure. My blue eyed bio daughter is the biological child of my hazel eyed self and my brown eyed husband. But she also has my smile and nose - and her fathers love of language and his sense of humor. Even with blue eyes, no one who knows her and us doubts she is ours biologically (with her brother along, people who don’t know us make all sorts of stupid assumptions and ask all sorts of impertinent questions - the best being someone who wanted to know how I managed to conceive two children with obviously two different fathers so close together - because that is exactly the conversation you should be having with a stranger in a grocery store line :rolleyes:. The scariest being an airport homeland security guard who decided that this was not our child and we were abducting him. Fortunately for us, he was old enough to say “DUH, I’m ADOPTED.” A few years earlier and we would have had real problems.)
I’d guess that more than just race went into picking a donor - whichever partner is the bio mom probably (assumptions here, but I know a few people who tried donor insemination) tried to find a donor who was the male version of her partner - had similar physical characteristics, the same love of music or sports, perhaps a similar sense of humor or intellectual curiosity - but race is the thing that is going to leave a significant emotional and economic impact due to how screwed up we are as a society about it.
Just leveraging off this specific situation and providing a scenario for consideration:
My husband and I require IVF to attempt to get pregnant. We harvest my eggs and his sperm and embryos are formed and transferred to my uterus. The child is born white, just like us. However, a couple of years later we discover that there was a mistake in the lab and our embryos were switched with another couple’s. Should either couple be able to sue, or should we just be ‘happy we have a child’, even though that child was not what was agreed upon?
I would sure as hell sue them for being entirely negligent AND for any hardship associated with it, including psychological.
The basis of the complaint was having the sperm of the wrong person, a person they did not choose after receiving 23-page comprehensive histories of the sperm donor candidates. They chose one donor, and received the sperm of another. That is the basis of the complaint.
If this were a straight couple and they’d intended to either use the husband’s sperm or donor sperm from someone who resembles the husband would you feel the couple was being racist and ungrateful for being upset that there was a mix-up?
I can tell you from personal experience that that is not a given.
But most people who don’t already know the women as a couple don’t starting thinking IVF and lesbian couple right away. Doesn’t even come in the top ten usually, in my humble experience.
They are much more likely to think they are mother and child with mother’ sister.
Or that any random male in the area is the father.
Iggy
Son of a lesbian
Big brother to much younger sister conceived via IVF
Given the issues she apparently has with her family (who I think live in the town or nearby) asking her to suppress her homosexuality, I doubt she thought this place was particularly progressive and accommodating. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the argument that she knew the town was racist, but didn’t think care until now because it didn’t affect her. Some of that choice is on her in my opinion.
I disagree. Yes, that is part of the complaint because the actual basis for damages, the child being biracial, is a byproduct of getting the wrong sperm. However, given that her complaint is primarily about the hardships of having a Black kid as a White woman, I think it’s disingenuous to say the basis for the suit is (only) because it’s the wrong guy given that the ways she alleges she’s been damaged only occurred because the child is biracial.
Do you really not see a difference between your spouse and a stranger whose bio you like?
I can tell you that common sense indicates it is a given because two women alone generally cannot conceive a child together. They have to involve someone else, so the only practical explanations are that the kid is adopted, or one of the women had the child via any number of methods. The kid being of the same race doesn’t really impact the likelihood of either thing being true; especially if the kid is biracial.
Yes, if they don’t know or think they are a couple, you are probably right. However, seeing a biracial kid who resembles one of the women doesn’t RAISE anymore questions, and is not some burden for which you should be compensated.
So just because they’re lesbian, they don’t get to complain that they were given the wrong sperm, because we all know two women can’t get pregnant together?
And if it was a straight couple? Or a couple using the husbands sperm but the lab mixed up and gave them the wrong sperm? Should those couples also just be ‘thankful they had a baby’?
Be careful, your bias is showing.
If you own or have a financial interest in the Sperm Bank, you really should recuse yourself.
Nah, I think brickbacon’s point is that if the family had ended up with the wrong sperm had discovered that meant that their daughter liked to play D&D and watch Doctor Who like her sperm donor instead of watching football with the family like the sperm donor the couple chose they’d have a point. After all, similar cases have been settled for much more and/or resulted in licensing being pulled or organizations being shut down (hospital switches, implantation of the wrong embryo in IVF cases, bait and switch actions by adoption agencies where you’ve been given the dossier for one child and arrive to discover that child isn’t available, but this child - with issues you didn’t anticipate - is). But because this family is looking for what in a case like this is minuscule compensation to facilitate a move so their bi-racial child can be raised in a more tolerant environment - racist.
It’s strange how some people pull the racist card as soon as any discussion related to race occurs.
To me its really odd that the simple acknowledgement that we have a sucky racist society where these sorts of considerations are necessary means we pull out the racist card. These parents themselves are being accused of being racists. Its racist for them not to merely accept the hand they’ve been dealt and adapt - anything else is racist.
And perhaps getting help is unfair. Millions of minorities are not compensated for needing to find tolerant neighborhoods with good schools in order to raise their children where their kids might get some justice. They all have to just suck it up. But unfortunately, they can’t sue society for a systemic issue. And unlike this couple who are having to revamp their lives suddenly, they usually have been living a path where - if its affordable and achievable - they are making the choices that minimize the racism they and their kids face.
And yeah, this couple possibly should have moved from an intolerant town long ago - being lesbians. But adults can choose to put up with things that, if you have the means to avoid it, you probably shouldn’t be subjecting your kids to.
All I have to say is that I hope the judge is black. If this thread is any indication, it takes at least one drop to see the eye rolleyness of her claims.
Routinely, when black people complain about how hard their lives are due to their minority status and racism, they are ignored, belittled, called liars, or accused of being hypersensitive. “Racism died out in 1968, so what are you talking about?”, is generally the attitude that blacks encounter when they talk about this stuff. What this case reveals is that when a white woman complains about how being associated with blackness makes her life hard and unpleasant not only is she believed without question, but people think her pain is so unfairly grave she’s owed money. This is the ultimate example in how whites are treated as more credible and sympathetic voices when reporting on racism. Blacks and others saying the same things are dismissed.
If a black couple had a biracial baby due to some screw up involving a white donor, and that black couple claimed that the baby’s alien appearance now required them to move to a better, more cosmopolitan place, I am 100% confident the consensus would be that this was a money grab on their part. First off all, a biracial baby = black in many people’s mind, so what would be the big deal? Didn’t the Huxtables have Lisa Bonet? Black people generally speaking aren’t under the impression that their race is pure, so there isn’t a premium on keeping whiteness out of the family.
Secondly, we’d immediately view their claim with skepticism, not because we doubt the couple could face unwelcome questions or awkward conversations. But because we’d doubt that such fairly mundane social discomfort would be so traumatic as to necessitate extreme measures like relocation.
For some reason, few people here are showing such skepticism with the plaintiff in this case. “She says she needs to move to a more culturally sensitive place with better schools and wants the sperm bank to pay? What a caring mother!” “She says she can’t handle a 2 year-old’s hair because it’s too nappy? Makes sense to me.” I just can not see any of this being treated like a given if the couple was black.
Here’s another article about what this lawsuit says about white privilege.
Interestingly, when listening to this bring discussed on NPR yesterday, many self-identified black callers said they were at first made about this, but after thinking about it, said they actually agreed and would be upset if they ended up with a white or biracial child as well.
I guess you’ll need to hope your hypothetical black judge doesn’t feel like they do.
One of my black friends said on Facebook “thank God we are having the opportunity to talk about the economic impact of being black.” Maybe the hypothetical black judge will see it that way.
Absolutely.
Again, because this point seems to be missed, no one is saying the couple doesn’t have the right to feel disappointed they were denied their choice in donors.
It’s the manner that they’ve chosen to make their case for damages that strikes me as obnoxious, offensive, and meritless.
My red-headed white kid analogy wasn’t picked up by anyone, but to me its the same thing. Her complaints about her daughter are a lot like someone complaining about how having a red-head kid when they wanted a blonde or brunnette. Lots of people have “ginger” hangups, but should we validate those hangups by compensating people for the trauma of having a red-head?
Wait. Are you suggesting that the judge’s race would alter the way he administered the law?
I’m saying one’s race is likely correlated with how credulous they are of this woman’s plight and thus, their assumptions of how deserving she is of damages for this plight.