Yup. Turns out that being a liberal doesn’t mean you know much of anything about what people of other races go through or about some of the forms of racism built into our society.
…is the title of the worst Lifetime Channel movie ever.
Or possibly the best.
I get that (this specific case is indeed a clerical error), I am just talking more about the abstract problem of “getting what you ordered” when it comes to sperm banks, and the threshold in which suing is reasonable.
In the specific case of the OP, I agree that the a case could be made for suing based on the fact that a negligent clerical error was made. This would still be true even if vial 330 was a white guy and the resulting baby didn’t have any visible signs of non-whiteness. Granted the likelihood of this error being investigated is pretty small, but even if found out I wonder if other people would still think suing is reasonable. After all, in some sense, they (the buyers) got what they wanted: a baby clear of obvious non-white traits that looks like them.
In a different case, if there was no obvious negligent clerical error, but the baby still came out with traits undesirable to the buyers I don’t think suing is reasonable at all. Other people might likely disagree because the buyers did not get what they thought they purchased.
Is it the input (sperm) or the output (baby) you are specifying in your order? I say it’s strictly only the input (probably not controversial), but some seem to suggest that output should be a factor as well. That just having visible non-whiteness itself (regardless if the correct sperm was delivered or not) in the baby means the bank has somehow failed. I mean the same “hardships” are going to be faced by the buyers in either situation.
I think the answers to all of those questions would depend on what the sperm bank tells the customer - because they’re all about what a service promises vs. what it delivers.
And I disagree. Suing the sperm bank so that you can afford to make the unplanned adjustments in your life to raise your child in the best manner possible is absolutely the right thing to do. Moreover, it helps make sure the sperm bank has a reason not to make the same mistake - perhaps with parents who are really ill equipped to raise a bi racial child.
And this won’t be a deal for long - it isn’t like it will be national news when the baby is a teenager. As long as they make sure to introduce it with the spin they want - the kid will look at it with the appropriate spin.
I have a friend who has a severely disabled daughter due to issues at birth. They sued the hospital - they needed to because they really needed the hospital to step up to some of the costs involved. Does that mean that their daughter believes they think she should have never been born? No, it simply means that in her birth, mistakes were made that cost money to address - and those burdens need to be shared by the people who made the mistakes.
I agree.
It’s just the input. Sperm banks do not guarantee outcomes at all. They don’t even guarantee that you will become pregnant - sperm motility and female fertility being what they are. They just guarantee that the donor you select will have the traits indicated.
Okay, I still disagree.
I suppose you are legally correct. Whiteness would be a hell of a thing to quantify.
“Our babies are guaranteed to be 99.5% clear of non-whiteness!”
or
“Our white sperm is guaranteed to contain at most 0.5% non-whiteness!”
or
“Our white donors are guaranteed to be 99.5% clear of non-whiteness!”
IMHO everyone piling on the mother for be racist or insensitive needs to tone it down a notch.
The quote being cited about hair cuts is from the lawsuit. That is probably not the only issue in the law suit. Why did the reporter chose that particular one to cite? It seems a poor choice to have only that item highlighted.
The line about living in a all-white community is from her lawyer. Would be interested to see it in context. It says more about her lawyer than her
The mother actually is quoted as saying
and
Nothing the mother says in the article or the interview sound racist at all.
Obviously giving birth to a black child when you ordered the sperm of a white donor flags a mistake. Suppose instead donor 330 had also been white and she had found out about the mistake some other way. She still has a case might still be suing. She and her partner spent quite a lot of time selecting one particular donor. They did not get the donor they had selected.
Clearly the sperm bank made a mistake and has quality control issues. Hand written orders, come on like anyone could not see that causing potential problems.
She seems more upset that the sperm bank is completely ignoring the issue.
Once you get the point that you decide to sue, yes you have to document all of the potential harms for your case, even the more trivial like haircuts. I would guess that you could excerpt some minor harm listed in any lawsuit to make it seem frivolous. It is almost as if they wanted to slant this a particular way. Not a very well written story, if it did not say NBC news I would have guessed Fox.
As far as American society is concerned, if you’re a little black, you’re black. Lately there’s been some more awareness that being biracial or multiracial is a thing and an identity of its own, so maybe that’s changed a bit. And yes, it’d be kind of nuts for a company to say, for example, that if you’re tall and you pick a tall donor your baby will be tall.
Because it’s attention-getting and tells part of the story.
The lawyer is making these claims on her behalf and presumably with her knowledge. Otherwise you’re saying maybe the lawyer made it up out of thin air, and I don’t think that’s likely. Here’s what is going on: the lawyer is listing everything that might reasonably be viewed as a hardship for the mother because the more hardships he includes (and defends in court), the more money the mother might get.
I agree with this. That what a lawyer is supposed to do. I just thought it was interesting which hardships the article chose to highlight. They played up the race issue to sensationalize the story. What I still can’t believe is that the mistake occurred because of a hand written order at a place that advertises exceptional quality control.
When dealing with something of this magnitude if you even think you can’t clearly read the order, wouldn’t you double check with the customer.
Or winks and elbow pokes while looking at the adoptive father, assuming that the child was Anaamika’s and the product of adultery. People can be amazingly nasty.
The race issue is pretty much the entire story here.
Sorry for the confusion; I guess it stemmed from the fact that the OP is about a woman who was inseminated and carried the baby to term, not about a woman who adopted a baby. I must have missed where the discussion jumped from one to the other.
Over/Under on the weeks until we see a Law and Order SVU episode on this topic?
February Sweeps is my guess.
Could they have done this without all the publicity and their daughter learning that they sued because she is the “wrong” race? Couldn’t they have worked toward that a little more privately?
I think it’s pretty much only uncommon these days in cities where people move because they want their kids to attend all-white schools.
If it’s true that the sperm bank broke off contact with her and wouldn’t talk to her, what else was she supposed to do? Most people don’t sue as a first resort.