EVE'S BIG CORE PROBLEMIn a recent nationally reported case of a classic baby mix-up at birth, that fact in itself is not a new occurrence nor was it really noteworthy. However, the particular background details have proven otherwise. This situation was just ripe and ready to happen as "man-made" planning in birthing test-tube babies was just that, a "man-made" creation is by human design fraught with "man-made" frailties.
In this case the string of controversial moral decisions and missteps began early in deciding to have a test-tube baby by ordering from
Neapolitan Man - Vanilla & Chocolate Flavor a mail-order house catalog of genetic materials, birthing the child and then the shock of discovering that the baby was the wrong flavor, chocolate instead of vanilla. There is no disparaging humour suggested here, but there is ironic sarcasm since "man-made" means just that and meddling into human genetics has its risks as well as rewards. Genome engineering has enabled many women to gestate babies to term as human obstetrics has evolved to offer mothers a range of conception choices. Sometimes, things don't go as planned.
As this birth, in itself, is a mixed blessing with a new life and loved by both parents, major socio-cultural implications have arisen in both parents' minds. They now have a mixed race child who will be raised within a predominantly white community where they live. They are deeply concerned about their child's "skin color" raising the hackles of racial prejudice based upon their own experiences and interactions about sexual preferences growing up as lesbians. Okay, now it's time out here!
1. First of all, the United States is not Qatar or Saudi Arabia or Iran where the Queran's Sharia laws dominate societal mores and lesbians are an offense against the religious morals of society and stoned to death.
2. Secondly, the United States is not a slave society anymore nor does it have an intolerable society that harbors prejudice against minorities.
3. Thirdly, the United States has a mixed race President and it sure didn't stop him from getting into the top job in racially diverse American society.
My recommendation to those parents: Let's stop the "Wah-Wah!" and "Oh Poor Me!" You made your decisions to get married, to have a child, to live where you want. I see no one, anywhere, that blocked, attacked or stopped you from your lifestyle choices. The imagined concerns for prejudicial animus to any minority group are virtually non-existent and absurd in the United States and are a rich, red herring to create a legal subterfuge of created damages in order to collect monetary retribution from the clinic. Heaven forbid if any birth defects had developed too!
Please don't select me for the jury box or your case could go south quickly during deliberation as the award would be miniscule even assuming the best possible outcome too. Get a life!
Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014 | 11:01 p.m.
Jennifer Cramblett is interviewed at her attorney’s home in Waite Hill, Ohio, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014. Cramblett 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’d intended.
CLEVELAND — An Ohio woman and her partner have sued a Chicago-area sperm bank after she became pregnant with sperm donated by a black man instead of a white man as she'd intended.
Jennifer Cramblett was five months pregnant and happy with her life in April 2012. She and her partner had married months earlier in New York, and within days of their nuptials she had become pregnant with donor sperm at a fertility clinic in Canton.
Cramblett, 36, and her partner, Amanda Zinkon, 29, were so elated that they called Midwest Sperm Bank LLC outside Chicago to reserve sperm from the same donor in the hope that Zinkon would someday also have a child.
But that's when Cramblett received some disturbing news, says a lawsuit filed Monday against Midwest Sperm Bank in Cook County, Illinois. She learned from an employee at the sperm bank that she had been inseminated with sperm from No. 330, a black donor, and not No. 380, a white donor she and Zinkon, who are white, had chosen.
"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.
Telephone calls to Midwest Sperm Bank were not returned on Wednesday. It's unclear who the sperm bank's attorney is.
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 her skin color.
The lawsuit says Cramblett also is worried about how Payton will be treated in her "all-white, and often unconsciously insensitive family."
Therapists have recommended that Cramblett, Zinkon and Payton move to a more a racially diverse community with good schools, the lawsuit said.
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.
