A Georgia woman is suing a fertility clinic after she gave birth to a child that was not hers, only to eventually give the child up to his biological parents – in effect making the woman an unwitting surrogate.
After undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, 38-year-old Krystena Murray gave birth to a “beautiful” baby boy and immediately realized something was wrong. The child was African American. Murray is white and chose a sperm donor with an appearance similar to her own.
“I was happy. I was a mom. He was beautiful and perfect, but it was also very clear something was wrong,” Murray said at a press conference announcing a lawsuit against the clinic, Coastal Fertility Specialists.
After Murray gave birth to the child, she sought an at-home genetic test and discovered she was not related to the child. She notified the fertility clinic, which then notified the child’s biological family.
“My baby is not genetically mine – he doesn’t have my blood, he doesn’t have my eyes, but he is and will always be my son,” said Murray. “I will never fully heal or completely move on and part of me will always long for my son and wonder what kind of person he’s becoming.”
The child’s biological parents started custody proceedings, according to NBC News. Murray voluntarily gave up the child when he was a few months old.
“She vividly remembers the shock when she saw her baby for the first time,” said Adam Wolf, her attorney, at a press conference announcing a lawsuit against the fertility clinic. “Whereas Kristina is a Caucasian woman who chose a sperm donor with a similar appearance, the baby she delivered was African American,” he said.
“Errors like this should never occur in a fertility clinic, this is the cardinal sin,” said Wolf.
Coastal Fertility Specialists said in a statement to NBC News that Murray’s was an “isolated event with no further patients affected”. The statement continued: “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.”
Although rare, Murray’s case is not the only time news of a switched embryo has emerged. An Ohio woman was caught in a mix-up and carried another couple’s child to term in 2011. A New York couple sued a California-based clinic in 2019 over an embryo mix-up. And two California women gave birth to each other’s babies the same year.
A recent study by private reproductive medicine doctors found that of 205 IVF “incidents”, embryo mix-ups were by far the most common, accounting for 95% of errors. The authors said: “over reliance on manual protocols, irregular/skipped audits, and human error were responsible for IVF incidents reviewed.”
The news of the most recent mix-up comes as the Trump administration is seeking to “aggressively” lower the cost of IVF, the process in which doctors implant a fertilized embryo in a woman’s womb.
