She wanted a White child from a Sperm Bank

In My Humble Opinion
321

So what you’re saying is that if they had accidently given her the sperm a Sephardic Jew and her hair had come out looking almost the exact same way and her skin coloring just a shade lighter, she’d still have a case? All because kids that don’t look their parents–except for when they do–feel worse than kids who look like their parents–exccept when they really don’t?

Let’s twist this around for a minute. Let’s say we were talking about two brown-skinned parents and they were wrongly “stuck” with a little girl who looked exactly like Payton, except that her face bore a strong resemblance to the mother’s. Are you saying that they would be entitled to damages because she doesn’t look exactly like them?

Newsflash. Families often have a motley crew look to them. My sister’s kids are chocolate and vanilla–and they have the same father and everything. Neither look like my sister. They got that beautiful Haitian thing going on that we Americans seem to lack. I don’t know how no one has managed to fly off a rooftop in distress over these troubling facts, but somehow they’ve kept it together.

I’m going to channel brickbacon for a moment and remind you that we aren’t talking about adoption. We aren’t talking about an African American child that’s been swept up from an African American home and dropped into a new, foreign culture. We’re talking about a child who may grow up not identifying as a black person. She certainly wouldn’t be the first racially ambiguous person to make that decision.

And if I were the defendent’s lawyer, I would say that those studies are totally irrelevant to this case. Payton isn’t a randomly drawn black child. She’s a child living with her biological mother who just happens to be white, growing up in a two-parent home, with socioeconomics X and genetics Y. Comparing her to “averages” who don’t look like her, have parents like hers, have the same life circumstance as her–is, well, crazy.

If there are no data to answer the question, you go out and collect some. What you DON’T do is say, “Well, what happens to Jermaine, Keisha, and Temika is emblematic of what’s going to happen to Payton. Let’s put aside how they are different and focus on their trivial similarities. BECAUSE BLACK IS BLACK, AMIRITE?” Payton is no where close to being a foster child or an adoptee. She’s not black, she’s biracial. And she resembles her mother just as much as any biological child resembles a parent. She just doesn’t resemble a “fantasy”.

322

I’m not saying anything at all, I’m giving your years worth of studies over the past forty years THAT YOU ASKED FOR for you to review and draw your own conclusions. But if you want to say that this is in no way analogous, fine. This is where my data is coming from. Determining if this sort of data is pertinent will be up to the judge. It appears that the mother in this case has gotten similar advice from professionals to integrate herself into a more diverse community and everything I know - not about being black - but about being a white woman raising a minority child - says her lawyer can put a ton of experts on the stand that say that is the case.

323

Would you disagree that integrating herself into a more diverse community would be beneficial, even if her child was white? Not just because she is attempting to raise a child as an openly gay woman in a state that lacks SSM, but also because it would be advantageous to any child to learn how navigate life in a diverse population.

By the time Payton is an adult, whites will be the minority in this country. That’s the ironic consequence to setting the bar so high for whiteness; all it takes is a few drops of “other” blood and suddenly you have a non-white on your hands. Predominately white enclaves are fast becoming a thing of the past.

In 2014, raising any kid town in a racially intolerant town is going to leave them ill-equipped for handling life. The mistake is in thinking being white makes one immune to this hardship. It does not.

324

Please explain to me why YOU think is pertinent? I’m assuming you do because you bothered to look it up.

Additionally, if you think being born Black is an inherently harmful relative to being born White (for example), then why should ANY sperm bank accept donations from black or dark skinned people? Because if you agree the harm is sufficiently connected to being Black why should any business willfully damage their clients even if they ask for it? Sure, you can argue such harm can be mitigated by moving to a diverse community, but why introduce the harm in the first place? Would a sperm bank knowingly accept and sell donations from people with costly disabilities? Of course not.

Additionally, why would a sperm bank sell donations to people without means or with less desirable backgrounds? Should a clinic not sell sperm to people who suffer from mental illness, or people who are gay, or people who have a shaky marriage? Why or why not?

325

The people who keep insisting this little girl is “black”, who insist that there’s some kind of terrible stigma attached, that getting her hair done requires a road trip - they’re insane. Seriously, they’re nuts.

Credit to you, monstro, and brickbacon for remaining civil, but arguing with crazy people is usually futile.

326

Yeah, that’s nuts. Who said that?

327

This is a depressing thread. People actually arguing that a sperm bank, uniquely among businesses, doesn’t have to pay compensation when it screws up. (Some) black people, bizarrely arguing against the idea that black people are disadvantaged compared to white people - actually asking for cites to prove it. The fact that the women are lesbians seemingly makes race a non-issue, according to a couple of people, because apparently being raised by lesbians is so horribly bad that it nothing could possibly make it worse.

I really wish we’d chosen the Danish sperm bank instead of the American one. From the sounds of brickbacon’s cites we wouldn’t the right to any compensation if they funked up and that doesn’t make me confident that they bothered to get it right.

328

What lengths would you willing to go to receive compensation for an error like this, if suing meant implying you wish your daughter hadn’t been born because of her skin color?

Apparently some of yall would be willing to scotch the Earth just to win some money. What’s really unfortunate is that it is likely she will lose, which will make this insult to her kid all for naught. That you seem unconcerned about that tells me you’re only looking at this from the woman’s position. Not from the innocent child who is supposedly the real victim in this. The potential for her to have a self-hating complex is much higher with this lawsuit.

Going back to the legal aspects: If the sperm bank’s legal counsel is smart, they will ask the plaintiff whether she checked the number on the vial before she put the stuff in her vagina. Unless these vials were unmarked or the wrong number got put on the vial, she should have had the means of catching the mistake. If she opted not to check the vial, then I don’t think she’ll be able to fault the company. It would be like suing a pharmacist for giving you prednisone when you wanted hydrocodone, when the prednisone was labeled as such.

329

The plaintiff did. Have you read the filing?

330

smh … No matter what anyone thinks or what reasons they’re using, we’re not in their shoes. Like someone else said, it sounds like it would be very emotional if they’re in mid pregnancy and they found out they got the wrong donor. Then add in whatever other internal stresses they’ve had to deal with because of the mix up …

Some of you want to excuse incompetency and negligence when it comes to something so serious such as this … that is crazy …

If a chinese couple, straight out of china, went to one of these places and their kid came out indian or white or black or anything obviously not asian and that’s what they wanted more than anything, are you going to be offended if they sue the sperm bank ? How about a black couple and their kid comes out looking white as snow and they sue ? … call them cold, callous, whatever you want but the sperm bank @% up … end of story … they should be held accountable and these people should be able to seek compensation

331

There is nothing “so serious” about having a child with butterscotch skin and curly hair. And the more this gets treated as an unassailable given in this discussion, the more pessimistic I feel about race relations in this country.

See, this where you and others start losing me. The assumption that a biracial child doesn’t look like its parents is grounded in racist programming. By what mechanism would a child born to a Chinese parent, with half that parent’s DNA, not look Asian? The child will inherit it’s parents’ features just like any other child would. There is nothing biologically unique about the genetics of mixed-race children that sets them apart from other children.

332

No one has said that. Many have said she is not due additional compensation because her daughter is biracial. More importantly, she has already received compensation in the form of a refund which was reportedly “thousands of dollars”.

Wrong again. I think everyone acknowledges that most Black people experience fairly unique difficulties. What is at issue is if Blackness is something you should/can sue for and receive compensation even if your decision aggravated the harm, and even when you are not the person “injured”. Furthermore, people have issues with this lady saying her child was a wrongful birth because she is part Black, and elevating awkward situations like being in a Black salon as a White person to the basis for a lawsuit.

Most importantly, do you want the law to codify racial and other prejudices, distilling them to harm that justifies payment? Do you want them law saying one marriage is worth less than another because the people are not lily White? Or saying injuring a Mexican person in an accident isn’t as costly because he’s Mexican? Once you go down the road from acknowledging disadvantages based on irrational prejudices, to using rational entities like the court system to give weight to those prejudices, you completely undermine basic human rights, and the collective effort to make to treat everyone as equal in the eyes of the law.

0/3. Not surprising though. The argument is that if your standard of injury is not introducing any potential harm to the child, then you wouldn’t give a child to two lesbians. Additionally, it’s that one would hope that these two lesbians would be more enlightened given the struggles these two in particular have gone through.

People keep saying this as if lawsuits, and the fear of lawsuits are the only reasons people do their jobs. Are you really that cynical? Lawsuits are a terribly ineffective way of ensuring compliance and morality. If that is all that existed between people committing fraud, breaching contracts, and generally not giving a fuck, then we would collectively be in a MUCH worse state.

Then sue 2 years later.

Yes, if they sue on the basis of their kid being damages because it’s White, or Black, or any other race.

They are able to seek (additional) compensation. My opinion doesn’t prevent them from suing someone, nor is anyone arguing they shouldn’t be able to to sue. The flak is coming from people saying it’s in incredibly poor taste and ethically questionable to do so.

333

It seems that this couple should be paying the sperm bank an extra fee for giving their child white privilege.

I’m in favor of giving this family some money for the screw up, so they can move away from their terrible town, but if they use half of the arguments that have been used in this thread, I think the best choice would be to put the girl in a home that will treat her as an individual and not a statistic. Even if her parents only treat her as a statistic long enough to get as much money as they possibly can.

334

I hate to say it, but I agree. If we take the mother at her word, she doesn’t have the cognitive skills, mental resilience, or resourcefulness to raise a child properly. Not just this child, but any child. And here is why I say this.

  • She is still living in the same town she claims is harming her child. Why hasn’t she moved already? If she thinks her kid is really suffering from a hostile environment, it shouldn’t take winning a lawsuit to get her to move. More diverse communities (like Akron) are a 20 minutes drive from where she’s living currently.

  • She needs a therapist to tell her the obvious–that moving to a more racially-tolerant community with good schools would be beneficial to her child. Gee, ya think? Why would a parent need a professional to tell them this? The implication is that she would be okay with raising a white child in a racially-intolerant town with bad schools. Why would she be okay with this, when we could just take one look at her own upbringing and see how racial insularity turned out badly for her?

  • She is putting her relationships with other family members above that of her child. If my uncle acted like my child was icky because her skin wasn’t the right color, I wouldn’t seek damages for my impaired relationship with this person. I would conclude the relationship wasn’t worth keeping in the first place. By blaming the sperm bank for her family member’s prejudice, she sends the message to the child that their hostility is a natural, forseeable, and logical consequence to the mistake that led to her conception. Bigotry should not be indulged in this way.

The mother should hope people inclined to discriminate against homosexuals will not generalize her behavior to other lesbian couples. Because if they do, it will make it that much harder for gay parents to attain equality.

335

She’s posting here?!

336

She might as well be since plenty of posters in this thread agree with her position. Do you disagree or are you being deliberately obtuse?

337

She chose her genetic mate ahead of time. She in effect adopted the offspring based on attributes that mimic her genetic makeup just as most people do in the adoption process.

It’s the right of the woman to choose her genetic mate. This was denied her.

338

Most people choose their genetic mates ahead of time. Mixing your genetic material with someone else’s is nothing like adopting a child who’s not biologically related to you.

339

Try your other east :wink: Dayton is Western, OH and over 40% African American in the last census.

From the wikipedia page for Uniontown, OH:

That works out to about 9 African Americans in her town. Numbers like that make NHL players look racially diverse. It really is uncommon in her town.

340

The vast majority of adopted children are adopted within their racial heritage.