White mother sues sperm bank for reparations for her black child

[angus]

Your choice of the word "reparations" is exceptional.

Not really.  At least not in the United States.  We're a very litigious society, and folks sue for reparations all the time.  It's sometimes called restitution, but I think that is if you steal something.  If you just piss somebody off, and they can get a psychiatrist to testify that it causes you lots of grief and anguish, it's called damages.  She's calling it "damages" in another article I read.  Also, war damages are usually called reparations.

Apparently they meant to get the vial from Donor Number 380, a white guy, but somehow somebody got the vial from Donor Number 330, a black guy.  She talks like they did this intentionally, but in another article they say it was a mistake.  The couple want to use the damage money for "ongoing counseling" for the girl.  I think we probably have way more data on mixed race children than children with two mothers.  This woman has other big problems as well:  "Ms Cramblett says her family has difficulty accepting the fact that she is gay and encourage her to hide her sexual orientation when she is around them."  I hope that the child turns out fine, but I imagine that she'll have greater demons than being a mixed-race child, which I don't really see as a problem in and of itself.  It's only a problem once her mother starts going on in front of her about how she ordered a blonde baby but got the brunette, and I have little doubt that this will happen at some point.

[angus]

The race mistake is a big deal IMO because the child is obviously gonna be curious about that, and that will probably force her parents to tell her where she came from before she's old enough to handle it

Do you really think that the most salient childhood epiphany regarding her parents, once she starts to meet other parents, will be that they're both white?

[angus]

Isn't this all just one big example of why any concept of human beings being different races is very, very bad?

Sure, categorization by race generally causes more problems than it solves, but this thread isn't really about that particular phenomenon.  

To me, this is a "shit hits the fan" sort of story, potentially.  And not the kind of shitstains you get when you eat grilled meat and then take a big dump in your fist and throw it at a fan.  This is as if you had menudo and three day old pico de gallo for breakfast, thai food for lunch, and vietnamese food, not quite thoroughly cooked, for dinner, and then you had a bad stomach ache, then shat in a big bowl, and then threw that brown liquid a the fan.

I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, and moreover I don't know if anything will come of this, but it seems like the sort of affair that might just set same-sex adoption back a decade.  Sure, the problem isn't all this bigoted woman's fault.  It is partly--indeed maybe mostly--the fault of the idiots who confused 330 with 380.  I do think that it is reasonable to expect a white child if you look at photos of a million donors and pick the one with blue eyes, yellow hair, and pale pink skin.  If and when someone confuses Kunta Kinte for Jans Jansen you probably have a right to become lurched.  Now, as a parent I'd expect that the mother--and as I understand it she is the biological mother--to love her child no matter the shade of her daughter's eyes or hair or skin color, but as a consumer I think she has a reasonable expectation of fulfillment of contract.  (Of course, there are no guarantees, because we don't understand genetic science as much as we allow ourselves to think we do, which is a good thing, because if we really did it'd be a really creepy world.)  She seems to have been screwed.  On the other hand, this is her daughter!  She is no better than the parents of Jon Benet Ramsey (remember her?!)  WTF did you expect, exploiting your child like that?

Still, the nasty bulldyke might not be such a bigot in the first place is the world wasn't the way it is, which is why I felt compelled to make the state the aside.  On that point I think you're right.

[angus]

I hope nobody thinks I've been cuckholded, but I'm sure it's happened.

Pretty much what we're all thinking.

I always felt a little freakish around my immediate family as well.  I have blue eyes and light pink skin and yellow hair.  Well, it's getting pretty white by now, but generally still more yellow than white.  My father, brother, sister, and mother all have have brown eyes and brown hair, although my mother has very light skin.  In my extended family (cousins, etc.) there are blondes, but not in my nuclear family.  As a child I wondered if people thought that I didn't belong, or that they found me somewhere and took me with them.  Probably this girl in the story will go through something like that.  I got over it eventually.  If her mother doesn't traumatize her, then this girl will as well.

This woman has a right to certain expectations.  (I married a very intelligent and well educated woman for a reason:  sons get their smarts from the mother, not from the father; I didn't actually know that till I was older, but I always instinctively was attracted to the smartest girl in the class growing up.)  The woman in the article signed a contract and the company did not keep up its end of the deal.  It'd be as if Johnny played a better fiddle than the devil, and one of the little imps mistakenly laid a pewter fiddle at his feet when the contest was over.  oops, sorry about that.  This is actually worse, because the composition of the fiddle can be changed whereas the child's genetic makeup is immutable.  The woman has a right to be angry with them.  She doesn't have to be such a dick about it.

[angus]

I suppose that it is possible.  Sensationalism sells.  I shouldn't judge her so harshly till I walk a mile in her moccasins, but it seems to me that a child who learns that her mother was so upset that she sued somebody because the child was too dark is going to grow up to be an adult with a serious inferiority complex. 

There's also the possibility that the woman has learned a valuable lesson that many consumers learn:  cut out the middle man.  Next time she'll take out an ad on Craig List and oversee it directly.  "Blonde, blue-eyed, tall, male, musician/supermodel wanted for insemination of lesbian.  Twenty thousand dollars for successful impregnation.  Payment upon positive pregnancy test.  Serious inquiries only."

[angus]

If the company didn't follow through with the contract as far as I'm concerned they are liable in reimbursing damages to the couple.

hate it when that happens. 

[angus]

...The girl is going to grow up naturally understanding that families can have 2 moms, 2 dads, or 1 of each...

My weak attempt at humor failed.

I still think that she's a bigot, and, more importantly, potentially damaging the child's self esteem by acting upon this so forcefully.  It seems odd for a parent to place so much priority on matters other than the child's well-being.  Nevertheless it is her right to seek damages.