UPDATE: Here is a link to another articlein slate which gives a more detailed account and more informative than my diary. Consider the diary as a placeholder for your comments.
I will be honest enough to say my tone for this diary is a little condescending. I am not a fan of sperm banks, especially the ones that operate like a luxury good store where consumers can pick and choose sperm. I would rather see non profit donor banks with donor identities filed for perusal. I have no problem either if the donor sperm comes from a friend or referral. Having said that, this diary is not about what I prefer. I just found it a little amusing that a lesbian couple would cite that it would be tough to raise a mixed race kid in a neighborhood that is bigoted. Geez, I don't think that neighborhood is exactly overflowing with openness over their orientation, let alone the kid's race. Give me a fucking break. Using terms like disappointed in public when talking about your baby is stupid. Keep that to yourself.
Actually, I feel bad for the kid. She looks so happy in the pictures. These parents better work hard at making her feel accepted in case any problems occur.
Here is an intro from the Pittsburgh Courier article:
An Ohio woman has sued a Chicago-area sperm bank after she became pregnant with sperm donated by a Black man instead of a White man as she and her partner had intended.
The woman is seeking damages and wants to ensure the sperm bank doesn’t make a similar mistake again
Then as I play the world's smallest violin, I keep reading:
Cramblett said they had chosen sperm from a man known as No. 380, a White donor. The sperm used for insemination came from No. 330, a Black donor, she said.
“How could they make a mistake that was so personal?” Cramblett said during a telephone interview on Wednesday.
According to the lawsuit, her excitement about the pending birth was replaced with “anger, disappointment and fear.”
“They took a personal choice, a personal decision and took it on themselves to make that choice for us out of pure negligence,” Cramblett said.
The community in which they live are, I guess, more lesbian friendly, than racially friendly.
Cramblett said she and Zinkon love their 2-year-old daughter, Payton, very much and wouldn’t change anything about her. But they are concerned about raising her in the predominantly White community where they live.
The lawsuit said they had moved from Akron to Uniontown for better schools and to be closer to Cramblett’s family. She said that as a lesbian she has felt the sting of prejudice but doesn’t know what it’s like to be mistreated because of skin color.
Cramblett said she decided to sue to prevent the sperm bank from making the same mistake again. The lawsuit says the sperm bank has no electronic record-keeping and no quality controls that would have prevented it from sending the wrong sperm to fertility clinics.
The lawsuit seeks a minimum of $50,000 in damages. Cramblett’s attorney, Tim Misny, said some of the compensation would pay for ongoing counseling.
Random thoughts by me(not necessarily in any order of importance, some are Seinfeldian trivial thoughts that pop up in my mind)
1) You cannot pay for sex in most areas, but you can pay for sperm. Why is one legal and the other not?
2) You cannot discriminate organ donation, but I guess that's fine with sperm.
3) The baby deserves better.
4) Sperm bank is not off the hook. They got a commercial transaction wrong. They have to compensate the customer.
5) This diary has nothing against sperm donation, per se. But if they reduce it to a crass commercial transaction, then maybe all the bank has to do is give them a free sperm of a white guy like a fast food place gives them a free burger after a wrong order.
6) Does commercializing it like this make it easier for eugenics to be practiced on a wider scale? Take it to the extreme and if the sperm bank offered to take the baby back and find a family to adopt the baby and then compensate for lost wages during delivery and given them a replacement sperm, should that be sufficient compensation? Are there uniform controls in the industry to prevent a "super sperm" candidate in impregnating way too many people since it becomes too easy to do catalog shopping in such a system. Sure this is possible under a donor system too, but is it as impersonal? And this would prevent sperm banks from stockpiling "desirable" sperm because according to another article on this topic, different sperm fetch different prices. And if the race is the same, what is to prevent fraud about claims related other traits?
7) What bothers me is not the fact that the couple preferred to have a white baby, but the way they expressed the "harm" done to them on TV. Just sue them in private.
Anyway, this diary does not pretend to know what the right answer is about this issue. This diary is mainly a placeholder for the comments section where all of you can add a diversity of views. I guess, the sperm bank is going to be liable since it is legal to choose sperm based on different criteria. But I just don't like the tone of the response by this couple even if they have a right to choose the race of their baby. I am sure people reading this will have their own opinions and that is what the comment section is for. Fire away.