One of the issues was that the two mothers had picked out a sperm donor for their first child, and specified that they wanted to use sperm from the same donor again, so that their second child would have a family resemblance to their first.
The thing about how this illustrates systemic racism: the couple lived in basically an all-white town. The problems they had to confront illustrate some of the pressures that encourage segregation, even in the absence of Jim Crow laws. Formal desegregation policies are meant to counter these pressures, and some people choose to deliberately confront them. But, there are costs, such as the difficulties their daughter has faced growing up. The couple hadnât planned for this, and hadnât prepared for it.
Your whole post is premised on the idea that the only difficulties here are going to be from these parents being racist, and not from the idea that they are going to be raising a child of dark skin in a society with systemic racist actions. Not wanting to be thrust into that problem doesnât make you racist.
Theyâre not seeking an abortion, theyâre not looking to trade her in, theyâre holding the bank accountable for their mistake. Others have covered this already, but I suggest you read the article.
Edit: FoolishOwlâs post above me does a better job of making my point.
Imagine this scenario; you want a cake for your birthday party. You like chocolate, so thatâs what you order. But on the day of the party the bakery delivers a strawberry cake instead. Itâs not what you ordered, and maybe some of the guests wonât like it or are even allergic. Youâd probably be disappointed and frustrated, not with the cake itself but with the baker and the situation.
Now imagine that strawberry cake had been stuffed up your vagina without your consent. Iâm guessing there would be some anger.
As @catgrin pointed out, there are other deeper issues involved. If these samples are incorrectly labeled or unscreened, there could be serious defects in their samples. The place should be investigated as to the quality of their practice.
Try this: âHoney, you know all those mean people who said that you were lying about who your sister was, or teased you about being adopted? We didnât want that to happen to you, and the sperm bank promised they would help us. We were really angry when they broke that promise, because we knew people would be mean to you about it.â
It does neither of you any credit to pretend, against all evidence, that this was purely an aesthetic choice on the parentsâ part. They wanted to shield their little girl from harassment by actual racists.
Is that a problem? Eugenics got (and deserved) a very bad rap because the high profile implementations involved either lots and lots of involuntary sterilization and/or death camps. That presents a bit of an ethical problem.
In the case of a sperm bank, though, some prospective donors are just being turned away, or not chosen for use. Thatâs a pretty painless outcome.
From the parentsâ side, since they are in need of donor sperm, why wouldnât they make a best effort attempt to choose the best for their child? If they want to use a donor, they cannot not chose. They can choose âsurprise meâ; but that is still a choice. It might be easier to pretend that it isnât; but they cannot escape choosing. Iâd argue that it would be overtly unethical to, in the face of that choice, do your best to choose the best expected outcome for your child.
Sure, sperm bank selection processes are effectively eugenics (albeit without any larger scale systematic planning); but why not? The worst thing that happens to those not chosen is that they donât get to be paid donors, and ideally some children get better genetic outcomes.
The question of whether they are or arenât racist seems a bit orthogonal to their dispute with the sperm bank. Even if they were KKK dignitaries with assorted repulsive positions on the necessity of racial holy war and whatnot, they still seem to have a pretty clear-cut consumer protection (and potentially medical quality control) case.
Nothing allows you to screw up a customerâs order just because they wanted it for the wrong reasons.
They didnât want a âwhite babyâ they wanted sperm from a particular donor (the same as for their other child, in fact), which is not what they were given. They live in a white (and letâs face it, racist) area and are now going to have to move so that their child is in a more supportive environment, which is going to cost money. Those are the two issues.
a lot of people are focusing on the race issue, fair enough that is understandable, but the couple do state that they love their daughter and wouldnât change anything about her. if we take them at their word, and lets hope that is true, then that isnât the issue.
personally iâm appalled that the IVF clinic was so haphazard with their specimens. This is the kind of situation where there should be very stringent screening and records, there shouldnât ever be room for a âmixupâ and that fact that there was a mixup s a frightening indication of very poor procedural policies. In this case the results werenât bad just unexpected, but with recessive genetic diseases and issues there could have been some very serious unintended consequences which would have been unacceptable. the IVF clinic should indeed be held accountable and should be subjected to an official investigation and have their procedural policies reviewed by a third party.
In April 2012, five months into her pregnancy, Cramblett, 36, called Midwest Sperm Bank LLC outside Chicago to reserve sperm from the same donor in the hope that Zinkon, 29, would someday also have a child.
Thatâs when Cramblett learned from a sperm bank employee that she had been inseminated with sperm from the wrong donor, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against Midwest Sperm Bank in Cook County, Illinois.
So they found out that it was the wrong donor before Cramblett gave birth and had the kid anyway. I think that they can probably make a reassuring story for this little girl out of that fact.
The desired sample was #380. The delivered one was #330. Looks to me like a pretty common human error of misreading two similar digits. Which couldâve been written poorly, given the âeaseâ of writing on labels on (presumably) round containers.
These errors happen in many other fields, often with lethal results.
A possible workaround is not using sequential numbers, but adding at least one checksum digit.
