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A white woman is suing a Georgia fertility clinic after she was unknowingly implanted with the wrong embryo and conceived a Black child, per NBC News.
On Tuesday (February 18), Krystena Murray, 38, filed a lawsuit, alleging that she “unknowingly and unwillingly carried a child through pregnancy who was not biologically related to her." Murray didn't discover the child wasn't hers until the infant was born, according to the suit. She then had to release custody to the baby's biological parents months later, the suit states.
Murray said she found her sperm donor through Coastal Fertility Specialists, which operates in vitro fertilization clinics in Georgia and South Carolina. According to the lawsuit, Murray chose a sperm donor who was white with blond hair and blue eyes, features that resembled her.
Murray was implanted with an embryo and gave birth in December 2023. She immediately "knew something was very wrong" because the boy she delivered was a "dark-skinned, African American baby," the lawsuit states.
“The birth of my child was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life, and honestly, it was. But it was also the scariest moment of my life,” Murray said in a statement. “All of the love and joy I felt seeing him for the first time was immediately replaced by fear. How could this have happened?”
Murray said she bonded with the baby and treated him as her own, hoping it was just a "sperm mix-up, not an embryo mix-up." A DNA test later confirmed that the baby wasn't related to her.
Murray's attorney informed Coastal Fertility Specialists about the incident in February 2024. The clinic identified the baby's biological parents, who sued for custody.
The woman voluntarily gave the baby to his biological parents in court.
“I walked in a mom with a child and a baby who loved me and was mine and was attached to me, and I walked out of the building with an empty stroller, and they left with my son,” Murray said.
“I grew him, I raised him, I loved him. I saw him no different than if he were mine, my own genetic embryo,” she added.
Murray’s attorney said it's still unclear whether his client's embryos were given to another couple or if they are still in storage at the clinic.
“This is the cardinal sin for fertility clinics, to transfer the wrong embryo into one of your patients. It should never happen,” attorney Adam Wolf said.
The lawsuit accuses defendants Coastal Fertility Specialists and Dr. Jeffrey Gray, its director of the embryology laboratory, of negligence among other allegations.
In a statement, Coastal Fertility Specialists said it “deeply regrets the distress caused by an unprecedented error that resulted in an embryo transfer mix-up.”
“This was an isolated event with no further patients affected. The same day this error was discovered we immediately conducted an in-depth review and put additional safeguards in place to further protect patients and to ensure that such an incident does not happen again."
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