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White Lesbian Sues Fertility Clinic for Giving Her Sperm from Black Donor
The 21st century is exhausting:
A white Ohio mom is suing a sperm bank for sending her vials from a black donor, saying her biracial 2-year-old daughter will be stigmatized by her family and the “intolerant” town where they live and has to travel to get her hair done.
Untangling the grievances here is daunting:
- Is the woman racist for objecting to a black sperm donor?
- Is the sperm bank homophobic for providing poor service to a lesbian?
- Should the town be razed for being racist, homophobic and offering inadequate sperm classification?
- How exactly are the Koch brothers to blame?
Jennifer Cramblett thought she was being inseminated with a white man’s sperm in 2011 and only discovered after she was pregnant that the Midwest Sperm Bank sent the wrong batch, according to the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
The child, Payton, is now 2 years old and already experiencing prejudice in Uniontown, where 98 percent of the residents are white, court papers say.
Excuse me, but what prejudice does a biracial two-year-old face? Segregated sippy cups? Being sent to the back of the Big Wheel? As an sleep-deprived parent of former two-year-olds, one of the few redeeming features of that age is a complete lack of preexisting biases.
As an example of the difficulties the family faces, the suit cited hair care for the toddler.
This is Selma all over again.
”Getting a young daughter’s hair cut is not particularly stressful for most mothers, but to Jennifer it is not a routine matter, because Payton has hair typical of an African American girl,” the suit says. “To get a decent cut, Jennifer must travel to a black neighborhood, far from where she lives, where she is obviously different in appearance, and not overtly welcome.”
Eek — not a black neighborhood! The struggle is real. And, for the record, getting a two-year-old girl’s hair cut is a harrowing nightmare for every parent. My eardrums are just beginning to heal.
Cramlett’s lawyer, Thomas Intili, told NBC News his client “lives in an all-white community in eastern Ohio. She did not encounter any African-American people until she entered college. Not all her friends and family members are racially sensitive.”
No offense, mom, but it sounds like you’re the one freaking out about race, not your friends or family members — and certainly not your innocent child. No one else in Uniontown is suing over sperm being insufficiently Aryan.
The only person making race an issue is Cramlett. What do you think her child will think when she learns how disappointed mom was over her racial makeup? Not only that she sued over this “mistake,” but that she ran to the national media to publicize her anger over her daughter’s unacceptable melanin count?
Meanwhile, Cramlett’s hometown is bewildered at her allegations of intolerance. John Arnold, a town trustee, says the community accepts everyone. “We have a large Mennonite community and a lot of the members have adopted African-American children and babies from all over the world and those kids have been treated fine,” he said. Speaking of Cramlett and her partner, he adds, “they obviously have a beautiful, healthy 2-year-old.”
This guy sounds like a monster.
In this age of designer babies and in light of the sperm bank’s legitimate error, this ungrateful mom probably has a legal case. But Cramlett’s plan to make money by making her kid feel unloved and calling everyone in her family and community a racist makes her the true culprit in this story.
Image via NBC News.
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I belive clinics have some sort of pictures of donors, but are they just for straight couples who cant have kids?
What is the Koch brothers gag?
I think we would all be against selling a child. That would be immoral. Why is it okay to sell sperm to make a child? Or an ovum for that matter? It seems sick to go through a catalog and pick and choose the characteristics you want. One man can father 20 children this way. Is this at all fair for the child?
I really think it is selfishness in the extreme to deny a child a connection to their biological parent. I understand death and bad behavior does this but from day one, one parent deciding a child doesn’t need a mother or father is unkind. As I have stated before, a man makes a poor woman and a woman makes a poor man. There is a difference.
The Koch brothers get blamed for everything. He could have said it was Bush’s fault.
10 centsBut in this case?
If a “gay gene” is ever discovered, and an unborn child can be tested for it, the pro-life movement will see a sudden influx of homosexuals.
The resulting cognitive dissonance on the left almost makes me wish for a gay gene.
Obviously the Koch brothers go through the requests for sperm on a periodic basis and saw that this Lesbian was getting some and made darn sure she got a “bad” batch. That’ll teach ’em.
I wonder if anyone has done studies on the sex, race, and class of the unborn. It might closely follow the horrors of eugenics. In some communities it might be the leading cause of death if it was counted such.
Sorry, I haven’t read all the comments yet to maybe this has been discussed: Do we give the mother credit that when she found out about the donor’s race while she was pregnant she didn’t have an abortion?
You’ve identified the key legal issue. Like, if she’s happy with her child and the child is healthy, the error is inconsequential and who cares?
Nonetheless, isn’t it perfectly normal to want a baby of your own race? Let’s not get on our moral high horse too quickly–when people (white, black, or otherwise) choose mates, the near universal preference is for one of their own race. And, when a sperm bank promises to honor that preference, but then doesn’t, isn’t that a big deal? It’s certainly hard to quantify in terms of dollars–the difficulties with finding a hair salon and slamming all of Eastern Ohio as racist are laughable and should never have been included in the complaint–but, still, there are all kinds of damages in civil suits that are impossible to quantify in dollars, but juries award money for them all the time (pain and suffering and loss of consortium jump to mind). I smell a quick settlement, if plaintiff isn’t too greedy.
P.S. Cato, you seem to think there are other legal problems with the suit. I’m curious what you think they are. It seems like a clear-cut liability case against the sperm bank.
I saw this woman on television yesterday. Twice. She was making the rounds. She is pretty clearly working out her own issues through this effort. I couldn’t believe she threw her entire town under the bus.
I’m sure we’re only getting the small details in this case. Of course she’s trying to show damages, and I’m also sure that the “race” issue will be peripheral issue overall in her case.
You don’t think that getting impregnated by an “unknown” person constitutes damages?
The press focuses on race because that’s the interesting part for them. Doesn’t mean that’s the case the lawyers will present.
And people here, meanwhile, seem to want to ignore the obvious fact that this is a more than justified suit.
I guess we have reached the point of children as a commodity. Just as you have the “right” to purchase an I-phone you have the “right” to purchase a child. My suggestion would be that if someone wants a living, breathing possession they should purchase a cat or a dog.
That’s just it, she’s not unhappy with the kid. She likes the kid just fine, but she see’s an avenue that could get her big bucks at the expense of an evil corporation and she’s taking it.
I see this as a breach of contract suit, and were I defending the clinic I would argue that the mother’s acceptance of return of the contract price has made her whole. Mom has a beautiful child, and the baby was conceived at no cost to Mom, now that the sperm purchase price has been refunded.
I don’t think anyone at Ricochet is ignoring the fact that Mom has a valid suit for the clinic’s mistake. But, instead, we are shaking our heads at the large hypocrisy and willingness to mentally abuse her child in which Mom is engaged. And to paraphrase what someone said in an earlier abortion thread, while it’s great that Mom didn’t abort, special praise should not need to be heaped on anyone for not killing her child.
Would breach of contract occur if the mother to be specified that the child must have blue eyes and blonde hair and instead the child had green eyes and red hair?
What I gathered from Cato’s comments was not that there is an issue in determining liability, but in putting a dollar amount on the damages. How much more is an all white person worth than a half-white person? How do you even go about answering such a question?
OK…I have thought long and hard about this. The sperm bank definitely owes the folks restitution.
If they had ordered a car and it came in with the wrong equipment or the wrong color then the car dealership would be obligated to replace it with the one ordered. That doesn’t quite work here, does it?
If they were in a restaurant and ordered their steak rare and it came well done, the restaurant would feel obligated to replace it. Again, the remedy in this case doesn’t apply.
However…when you buy a candy bar the company will often tell you that if you are not completely satisfied then you should return the unused portion for a full refund.
I think that is the model here. From now on sperm banks should cover this in their liability waiver. If for any reason, you are unhappy with the child you get, please return the unused semen for a full refund. This will also cover the sperm bank for things like dyslexia, autism, and male pattern baldness.
That’s it.
Only if the contract guaranteed those things. I doubt it did, but I don’t doubt that the race of the donor was in writing somewhere.
I wager that it probably is covered by the liability waiver, and that she’s going to lose her suit.
We must remember, there is no decision yet in the case.
Hello All; Happy Friday!
Classic !!!
Chainsaw
Most of the good points have already been made so I won’t re-plow that same field.
A person’s racial self-identity doesn’t always align the the facts. Everyone calls Barack Obama black, but he’s 50/50. Some people who call themselves black might have only one black grandparent. If you’re a college professor, you might call yourself native American because you think one of your great, great, great grandparents was Cherokee. So even if you get a sample from the person you selected from a catalog, you may not get what you expect.
For that matter, even if you have children exclusively with your spouse, there’s a lot of possible variation from one kid to the next. You might have one kid who has a genetic trait that hadn’t been seen in either family for three generations. It’s always a spin of a roulette wheel, to some degree.
Not unless that was what was contracted for. But even then,under current medical abilities, that is not possible, so I’d argue the contract was incapable of being fulfilled. And while breach couldn’t occur, the contract is void ab initio and Mom should get her money back.
Edit- I hit comment on Doug’s question as to whether eye/hair color could be a breach, but his comment did not reproduce.
Thank you for providing the really important news! This is awesome, I love it. Funny stuff.
Eeyore,
I am well aware of the nauseating perverse incentive society we live in at the moment. However, if your faith in Gd is strong enough you will realize that “a pit is prepared for the wicked” and they will fall into it. I think Holder will go down in history as the failed AG of the failed Obama administration.
For the short term we must pray for Harry Reid’s pink slip. “All things are ready if our minds be so.”
Regards,
Jim
Next up a suit seeking child support from the sperm donor.
Ha……Ha…….very funny, Flei.
There is a bit of fluff humor in making fun of competing grievance-monger camps. But consider, it is only a couple of baby steps from here – so to speak – to Brendan Eich being banished from his company (and the left hopes, his legacy destroyed) for the evil of contributing to Prop 8 six years previously.
We are definitely there.
Patrickb63, this is almost certainly some type of professional malpractice claim, so the damages will not be as limited as they would be in contract.
I have wondered about this for years. What is preventing children from tracking down their fathers and mothers and suing them for support?