October 2, 2014 — An Ohio woman and her partner are suing a Chicago-area sperm bank after she became pregnant with sperm donated by a black man instead of the white man's she had requested. But how valid are her REAL reasons for the lawsuit?
It’s an unforgivable mistake.
Jennifer Cramblett and Amanda Zinkon, a white same-sex couple, go to a sperm bank and choose a donor’s sperm after looking extensively through his history. They pay. The sperm’s inseminated into Jennifer and she conceives. The she finds out that the sperm bank accidentally inseminated different sperm to what she asked for. Yes, it is unforgivable.
Jennifer gave birth to Payton, a beautiful, mixed-race baby girl two year ago, the Chicago Tribune reported.
But now the couple has initiated legal action against the sperm bank for “wrongful birth and breach of warranty”, citing emotional losses that she has suffered.
Part of the lawsuit reads as follows:
“On August 21, 2012, Jennifer gave birth to Payton, a beautiful, obviously mixed-race baby girl,”
“Jennifer bonded with Payton easily and she and Amanda love her very much. Even so, Jennifer lives each day with fears, anxieties and uncertainty about her future and Payton’s future.”
Raising a mixed-race daughter has been stressful in Cramblett and Zinkon’s small, all-white community, according to the suit. Cramblett was raised around people with stereotypical attitudes about nonwhites, the lawsuit states, and did not know African-Americans until she attended college at the University of Akron.
“Because of this background and upbringing, Jennifer acknowledges her limited cultural competency relative to African-Americans and steep learning curve, particularly in small, homogenous Uniontown, which she regards as too racially intolerant,”
Now this is where the sillyness comes in – her reasons for the lawsuit. It’s not so much that the sperm was from the wrong donor, but it’s the fact that the non-white baby is to be brought up in a “small, all-white community” and could face “stereotypical attitudes about non-whites”.
According to the lawsuit, Cramblett’s therapists have advised her that for her and her child’s psychological well-being, she must relocate to a racially diverse community with good schools.
The lawsuit alleges the error occurred because the sperm bank keeps handwritten instead of electronic records, which allowed the donor numbers to be misread.
It would seem to me that Ms Cramblett seeks redress to protect herself in the eyes of her community – a community which is, presumably, more accepting of same-sex unions than people (and babies) of a different race. I would think that if she indeed did bond with little Payton, the opinions of her community would not matter so much.
In other words, she seeks to protect herself and not her child. Payton will grow up to find out her mother publically sued a sperm bank because she was unhappy with the way that she turned out.
The ignorance here is frightening.
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