White mother's biracial baby lawsuit against sperm bank is thrown out
Jennifer Cramblett sued the Midwest Sperm Bank after the bank apparently mixed up the sperm donors and impregnated her with sperm from an African-American donor. But now, the lawsuit has been thrown out.
Jennifer Cramblett sued the Midwest Sperm Bank after the bank apparently mixed up the sperm donors and impregnated her with sperm from an African-American donor. But now, the lawsuit has been thrown out.
The mixup occurred when Cramblett chose donor number 380, who was white, but received sperm instead from donor 330, who was black. The sperm bank said that the error occurred when an employee misread the numbers on the paper records system.
Cramblett had received a partial refund from the sperm bank, but she sued for a “wrongful birth” claim, saying that she was worried about how her biracial daughter would be treated in an area that was mostly white and very conservative.
“Jennifer’s stress and anxiety intensify when she envisions Payton entering an all-white school,” the lawsuit said. “Ironically, Jennifer and Amanda moved to Uniontown from racially diverse Akron, because the schools were better and to be closer to family.”
“Jennifer is well aware of the child psychology research and literature correlating intolerance and racism with reduced academic and psychological well-being of bi-racial children.”
However, attorneys said that most wrongful birth claims had to do with births in which the child had a defect that the parents should have been warned about. Since the child was born healthy, Cramblett did not have a case, though she could re-file the suit as a negligence claim.
Below is a clip from Cramblett’s interview with NBC in October 2014.
