{"id":262,"date":"2014-10-01T09:09:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/when-children-are-commodities.html"},"modified":"2015-03-01T22:10:28","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T04:10:28","slug":"when-children-are-commodities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/when-children-are-commodities.html","title":{"rendered":"When children are commodities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In today\u2019s paper<\/a>:\u00a0 a white Ohio woman, Jennifer Cramblett,\u00a0is suing a suburban Chicago sperm bank because, due to a misreading of the handwritten order, she gave birth to a biracial child.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Cramblett is suing Midwest Sperm Bank for wrongful birth and breach of warranty, citing the emotional and economic losses she has suffered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She had her lesbian partner say that, while they love the child and are themselves not racist, <\/p>\n

\u201c[she]\u00a0lives each day with fears, anxieties and uncertainty about her future and Payton\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Raising a mixed-race daughter has been stressful in Cramblett and Zinkon\u2019s small, all-white community, according to the suit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among other difficulties, the suit cites the need to go to a black neighborhood\u00a0to get the child\u2019s hair cut, the fear that her family is \u201cunconsciously insensitive,\u201d \u00a0and \u201cstress and anxiety . . . when she envisions Payton entering an all-white school.\u201d\u00a0 She also sees multiple therapists, who have advised the family to relocate to a racially diverse area.<\/p>\n

How did the mix-up happen?\u00a0 Crain\u2019s provides more detail<\/a>:\u00a0 The lesbian couple had selected donor #380 and received vials of sperm.\u00a0 While pregnant, she called to order more sperm and discovered that the sperm bank had read \u201c380\u201d as \u201c330.\u201d\u00a0 After the mixup was discovered,<\/p>\n

She later discovered that the sperm bank keeps paper, not electronic records, the suit alleges. \u201cTo the person who sent Jennifer vials of sperm in September 2011, the number \u2018380\u2019 looked like \u2018330,\u2019 and there are no redundancies to catch errors like the one the defendant made with respect to Jennifer Cramblett,\u201d says the complaint, which seeks monetary damages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, it\u2019s not clear to me whose fault this is, really.\u00a0\u00a0 It seems as if the issue is not with electronic vs. paper records but with the fact that the order form was filled out by hand.\u00a0 Is the suit actually alleging that ordering should have taken place online?\u00a0 That the form should have been\u00a0designed in such a way as to require the customer to fill out the requested donor number twice for clarity\u2019s sake, in the same way as resetting passwords are entered twice?\u00a0 For that matter, did the 380 look like a 330?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And when the sperm was delivered, was it not labeled in any way?\u00a0 Or did the customers fail to check the labeling at any point after they\u2019d received it?\u00a0 Because you\u2019d think that, if the product had no labels, this would be\u00a0the key fact, not the lack of electronic records.<\/p>\n

But besides that \u2014 what liability does a company have for not fulfilling a product order correctly?\u00a0 Both Crain\u2019s and the Tribune report that the sperm bank refunded the cost of the sperm.\u00a0 What kind of warranty does a sperm bank offer, or in what way are they liable for their product?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In the end, this is another illustration of the harm of viewing children as commodities, to be manufactured as desired by the parents, or intended parents.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t as extreme as intended-parents contracting with a surrogate demanding that she abort a baby with a health issue, or get rid of multiples, but it\u2019s part of the same story.<\/p>\n

(I tried to see if there were similar instances in the past.\u00a0 There was one, in the New York Times,<\/a> back in 1990, but with no report of the outcome of the lawsuit.)<\/p>\n

UPDATE: \u00a0I had commented on the Crain\u2019s article on their site, and now there\u2019s a follow-up comment:<\/p>\n

When I went through similar procedures, I was required by the doctor\/clinic to verify the donor number on the vial each time, and sign paperwork stating I had checked this. Even if their doctor didn\u2019t follow this procedure, they should have asked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And both articles say that the doctor\/clinic isn\u2019t a party to the lawsuit. \u00a0Perhaps that doctor is a family friend, or doesn\u2019t have deep pockets, or possibly any pockets at all, or perhaps this was actually a DIY insemination and they themselves failed to check the vials? <\/p>\n

Another update:\u00a0 here\u2019s the PDF<\/a> of the lawsuit.\u00a0 And indeed the donor number was written on the vials itself, according to the complaint itself, since it gives as a chronology insemination of multiple vials over multiple months, with one remaining vial, which was confirmed to be that of the wrong donor after the mixup was uncovered.\u00a0 So seven times she was inseminated with no effort to confirm the donor number.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today\u2019s paper:\u00a0 a white Ohio woman, Jennifer Cramblett,\u00a0is suing a suburban Chicago sperm bank because, due to a misreading of the handwritten order, she gave birth to a biracial child.\u00a0 Cramblett is suing Midwest Sperm Bank for wrongful birth and breach of warranty, citing the emotional and economic losses she has suffered. She had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[183,199],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fertility-treatments","tag-same-sex-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen children are commodities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In today's paper:  a white Ohio woman, Jennifer Cramblett, is suing a suburban Chicago sperm bank because, due to a misreading of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/when-children-are-commodities.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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