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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.
Published in General
We’ve been there, done that…
Uhm, I’m not seeing this the way most others are.
To me this is roughly analogous to a woman who gets raped on her honeymoon, at an amusement park, courtesy of obvious negligence.
After she becomes pregnant, a refund of the ticket price seems a little…lacking. So she sues.
And here we are. Forgive me, but I’m not won over by the argument that she got a baby, which she wanted, so what difference does it make who the father was?
I have to wonder just how many other customers of that clinic who assumed they were carefully choosing the male parent of their offspring were instead getting a baby-daddy who just happened to have the closest vial to the top of the freezer.
Just in this case the clinic had to confess, for obvious reasons.
The mother cares about the child’s race, and her bio connection with the child. But the child isn’t supposed to care about who her daddy is.
Sounds legit.
The other problems I was referring to weren’t legal ones. I just find the whole situation horrifying for the child. I find it hard to imagine the poor child won’t find out that her mother sued for “wrongful birth” over her. I also watched the video and just felt an overpowering desire to wretch when the mother starting talking about the sperm bank. I’m having trouble putting a word on it — entitlement, ingratitude, I don’t know — but she struck me as so immature and selfish as to almost be pathological.
I think there’s probably a breach of contract, sure. But she got this beautiful, healthy baby out of it. That’s what we call in law a “high class problem.” To have that be your outcome and then sue over it just rubs me the wrong way. The very wrong way. Maybe “ungrateful” is the best word for how I perceive her.
Rape is just the wrong analogy. First of all, the clinic made a mistake. It’s actions weren’t willful. Second, there was no force involved. She participated voluntarily. Negligent misrepresentation? Perhaps. Rape? Not even close.
Q:Why does our society/culture have sperm banks and lesbian mothers?
A: Because our society/culture thinks it is so smart, so compassionate, so far above all society/culture that came before–and that no person or institution has the right to tell My Me-ness what is best for me–unless of course I’m not a true believer in “Progress”
OBSERVATION: Take a look around. Everywhere lies piles of paving material for that proverbial road we are on.
This all could have been avoided if she had conceived her child in the traditional way, looking the sperm donor in the eye as he… well, donated his sperm to her directly and personally. It’s the only way to be sure you’re getting what you want.
Excuse me, but this woman absolutely did not consent to be inseminated by some random stranger, which is essentially what happened.
I make no claim to be an expert on woman, but I’ve noticed that they tend to like to have a say about who is the male parent of their children.
This woman was denied that, by the negligence of that clinic. That’s why I used a rape analogy. As I said above, I wonder just how many other woman were also victimized by similar negligence.
I wonder how many people would defend an airline that had someone fall out of the sky because they forgot to close the door. Perhaps many someones, over a long period in time.
Oopsie, they made a mistake, which impacted someone who participated voluntarily with the flight, without any force being used.
Sure.
I thought about trying again, but then I re-read and realized that I pretty much said it all the first time. Nothing you said changes anything and this really isn’t a matter of opinion. Rape is a crime and it has a mens rea element. An accident, a negligent accident, even one which causes terrible consequences, simply isn’t the same thing. And by the way, in your airline hypothetical, same deal. It may well be an awful event, but it likely is not going to be a crime.
According to the Chicago Tribune the subject “mother” learned about the mistake around the end of her first trimester or start of the second. And yet–AND YET she went through with this “trauma” that society says was both legally and morally terminable. What a litigious twit.
Kevin Williamson:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389532/clash-progressive-pieties-kevin-d-Williamson
#102, Proud Skeptic, thank you for that link.
If the mom was really thinking about what’s best for her child (instead of sticking it to the sperm bank), she wouldn’t sue at all. When the child’s old enough, she’s sure to find out that her moms wanted their money back (and then some) because she’s half black. I feel sorry for the child when she realizes her moms didn’t want her the way she is. They wanted all white, not half. sheesh. Poor kid.
Publicly calling everyone in her town a bunch of racists … yeah, that’ll make things easier for her child growing up there! But of course, she has to blame all the racism on the neighborhood, otherwise she’d have to admit she’s the racist one.
It would be labeled a “mistake”, just like the sperm donor clinic episode should be. If a flight attendant was negligent and someone died it would not be the same thing as if they were pushed out the hatch on purpose.
Too bad baby fetuses can’t terminate their mom .. on occasion.