If you found out that the sperm-donor father of your child was a mentally ill felon, would you sue?

No . I would pay extra. WITH all the CRAP that he has been through , and he survived to be 39. I would congratulate him. It is nothing special getting a PH.D, and having an I.Q. of 160 isn’t very special (hell I have an I.Q. of 165). Now living with disabilities and staying alive now that’s something special.

I would serious consider suing.

If the only question was what is the effect on the child I would not sue. My best friend in high school found out that he was adopted when he was sixteen years old. It did a number on him.

If you don’t care about the kid and want to get paid you have a good case.

Fuck yes, I would sue.

And anyone who hides from a kid the fact that he’s adopted until he’s sixteen deserves a slap in the face.

Goddamn right I’d sue. That’s a serious case of misrepresenting the product you’re selling.

I would absolutely not sue. What a way to devalue your child! I believe in being totally honest with your child about their origin from the beginning, but age appropriately. Said child does not need to know about the flaws of the donor until they are much older.

I would hope that the sperm bank and the donor would be prosecuted for fraud, but the most involved I might get would be to say, in a deposition, that I was informed of certain things (that later turned out to be untrue).
What an awful idea that would be. Ugh.
Anybody else remember Cecil Jacobsen?

And really, would you sue the other parent of your child if you found out that they had had cosmetic surgery/braces/lasik surgery before you met them and they didn’t tell you?

@canidmajor The sperm bank should be doing a background check. He was a felon, and diagnosed previously with psych problems, and didn’t have the college degree he claimed to have. That is all easily checked. Especially the college degree and the felony conviction.

@JLeslie: I agree that the sperm bank absolutely should be held responsible for this, read my 2nd paragraph. But I would not sue, because I believe that that would send a bad message to a child (that was so wanted that a sperm bank was utilized) that they were somehow substandard. Any “differently conceived” child already has an extra burden to bear. Anything not perceived as “normal” has the potential to add difficulty to a child’s life, for the parents to say that they found any part of it to be substandard hurts the child.

@canidmajor Maybe if it’s done when the child is still an infant the child is less likely to know. But, should they know?

I see your point, believe me. It’s like what do you tell a child born from rape?

It’s bad enough when the father is a loser jerk and the mother eventually left the father. Is the mother supposed to stifle about all the bad shit the father did? I have mixed feelings about that.

Sue whom? The guy or the sperm agency?

Sue for what? What’s the offense?

More importantly, what if you won? What would you do, return the kid? Would you love the kid less?

There may be issues here, but they aren’t going to be solved by a lawsuit.

@elbanditoroso Sue the doctor who represented the sperm to be from a man with certain attributes. He was paid to do a job, and he did not do it.

@JLeslie – suppose you won the suit, what is the money compensating you for?

@elbanditoroso First, she probably would be getting back money she paid for the service. Second, money doesn’t really compensate in many circumstances, except that it can make life easier financially when it was made harder in another way. Money is also a way to punish the person. The case will possibly bring the wrong doing to the public, although the mother (it could be a couple, not just a mother) might prefer not to make it very public. The demand, the suit, could be not for money, but for something else if the person chooses.

Intelligence probably does run genetically and there is evidence of an anger gene, so if the child winds up having difficulties, money will help pay for whatever treatment he might need, or help supplement his income if he winds up with a low paying job as an adult.

Hopefully, the kid is smart, well adjusted, and happy. Having a psychotic biological parent certainly doesn’t mean the child is doomed.

You never know what you are going to get when you have a baby. You can’t order them out a f*ing catalogue and these services that market themselves that way are shameful. No, I wouldn’t sue. I’d be too busy raising my kiddo.

It’s misrepresentation of a product. In an interpersonal relationship you get the chance to filter the options and breed with a chosen person based on your preferences.

Fertility clinics charge lots and lots of money for their product.

If you paid $40 for a steak dinner and found out it was dog meat, you would, at least, want your money back.

If I “ordered” the DNA of a mentally stable college professor, and paid for that DNA, and instead received a genetic predisposition to serious mental illness, you’re goddamn right I’d want my money back.

That’s coming from someone with bipolar, narcissism, and schizophrenia in their gene pool.

Reason #1 why it’s best to actually know the father. I have issues with some of this though. A single donor can father hundreds of kids who eventually will want to know who daddy is. It’s really not fair to them.

@ARE_you_kidding_me: Re:your statement about fairness – do peruse this thread as it presents some perspectives from people who have personal experience with the process.

Having a Nobel prize. Now that is rare. I would raise the bar from ph.d. or I.Q. I would sue only on that it is not what I asked for. I would be greatful to have any children.

@canidmajor That was just one person but I can say that I would want to know if it was me.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Do you feel the same about adoption? Now, a lot of adoptions are open, but there are still a lot that aren’t.

Of course

My father was adopted. He was adopted at five years old, and remembers that his birth mother had red hair, so we tend to think it wasn’t a stroller-on-the-orphanage-doorstep surrender of the child.

Unfortunately, his adoptive parents were already aging when they took him in, and died in their late-80s. His oldest brother passed away about ten years ago, in his mid-70s. Literally everyone who knew anything about that adoption is long dead.

It’s quite terrifying to not know why your dad was orphaned at five years old. My mother’s father died in his early 40s of heart disease. Did my paternal grandparents have that, too? Am I a cardiac ticking time bomb? I’ll never know until it’s too late.

In the cases of accidental pregnancy or adoption or whatever, yeah, you don’t get the full information. But that’s not the same thing as donated sperm.

I wouldn’t want my child to feel that I devalued half of what made them to the point that I asked for my money back. Genetics are a crap shoot. I ended up with an autoimmune disease neither of my parents had. My son ended up with hair and colouring exactly like his paternal grandmother who does not resemble the father at all. When you get the sperm donor, I’m sure they don’t offer pictures of their parents. You can order sperm off the internet, or you can date a guy for a couple of years and perhaps end up with a few more details of the vast number of possibilities. Either way, still a crap shoot.

It sounds horrible to say this, but this has nothing to do with how you value the child.

The fertility clinic is a business selling a product. They sold the hypothetical “you” a product, claiming it was one thing, and gave you something other than what you purchased.

Shrugging your shoulders and saying “Well, at least I have a kid” is what shysters hope you will do.

I’d go so far as to say that you would have a duty to bring up charges, lest they continue this masquerade.

What else are they lying about? Are they even doing HIV tests on this sperm before inseminating unsuspecting women? Are they allowing people with Down syndrom to donate?

I think @Seek gave the best answer explaining the fee is for a service, and if the promised service wasn’t delivered there should be some sort of recourse.

@Seek Traumatic family history is quite unsettling. Similar to you, my grandfather was put in an orphanage. Later, he emigrated with his siblings to America. There was schizophrenia in that group of siblings. My maternal great grandfather died in his late 30’s from a heart attack, and one of his sons died in his late 30’s also. The other in his 40’s. Weird similarities. I do assume I am a cardiac ticking time bomb, but also my father was diagnosed with heart disease at 46, so I have it on both sides of my family.

I always figured since my husband’s family is so dissimilar to mine, both being from different parts of the world, and their idiosyncracies, I probably had a good chance my kids would be “normal.” Lol. Just writing normal makes me laugh, because to me dysfunctional is pretty much normal.

@cazzie It’s a crap shoot, but I wouldn’t likely make a baby with someone who has a history of alcoholism, or if it is in their family. I’d rather stack the odds that my children are less likely inclined. There is no guarantee of course. Anyone can become an addict, but I do believe in a genetic tendency.

I can’t tell you how many women I know who have sons hate seeing their exhusband in their kid. I think most of it is just learned behavior, but some things might be rooted in genetics. It’s a crap shoot, but it’s not like most people would choose just some random person off the street to contribute genetic material to their offspring.

@JLeslie I guess I had no business having a child, then. My ex had a son with autism already, so should have aborted when I found out I was having a boy? Alcoholism was not his problem. It was undiagnosed add/pdd-nos. The substance use was a form of self medication. He has an IQ over 160. I don’t believe alcoholism is hereditary but the propensity for addiction of any sort is. My son’s paternal grandfather is an award winning, renowned scientist and my son is a frick n genius. See, crap shoot. Not clinical. No such thing as a perfect child or genetic pool. Nazis tried. People took unkindly to it.

@cazzie Not such a crap shoot. Your son is brilliant and on the autism spectrum. Sounds like he inherited some of those traits. I’m certainly not saying children like your son should not be born. Again, I myself have some genes I’d prefer my own child not deal with, but I was very willing to take that gamble.

If our genes did not serve some evolutionary purpose we would not have them.

You talk about taking a gamble but try to deny it’s a crap shoot. You contadict yourself.

I guess it’s more accurate to say there are no guarantees, rather than say it’s a crap shoot. You can try to stack the deck, but no promises.

Nope. And there is no ‘prefect’ kid. And I find the idea behind these services that they are selling a marketed commodity, disgusting. The system is so open to fraud and ridiculous claims, I feel like the end user is more of a sad mark than old ladies buying face cream for wrinkles, and that’s not what we are talking about here. We are talking about a LIFE. A little human being that deserves better than to have half of his dna bought off a shelf with an ingredients list full of ridiculous false expectations.

I’m not against the use of sperm donors, I just don’t like the way it is marketed.

I was born with a congenital heart defect. If I had children there’s a fair chance they wouldn’t inherit it, but there’s also a fair chance that they would. So yeah, it’s a gamble, but it’s not one that I’m going to take. I’m not going to have a kid of mine getting this (and that’s beside my just straight dislike of children and refusal to take responsibility for one). But if my wife and I were to, say, purchase from a sperm bank to have a child via in-vitro fertilization or what not, damn right I’d look for someone free of such defects and I’d be pissed to learn they ether lied or weren’t screened properly and had a family history of defects like mine. Damn right I’d sue as well.

@cazzie You’re not against sperm donors, but you don’t want any sort of background checks, regulations, or best practices, to come into the process? I’ll go ahead and assume you would want health things like HIV screened for, but everything else doesn’t matter? They can pay prisons full of men for sperm and you’re good with that for the baby you want if you needed a sperm donor?

I don’t see anything wrong with wanting a baby that might be similar looking or similar in whatever the person chooses to themselves and their family, sans some of the things that make life harder like a genetic disease or a genetic propensity to develop a certain trait.

When we make babies with our chosen partner we are choosing the genes. There is always a choice except in the case of rape or lying incompetent managers/owners of sperm banks. You got to choose, why shouldn’t a single woman or a couple who needs the help of a sperm do or not have at least some choice also?

I’m not talking about a perfect kid. No one here is. We all have challenges and faults and no one is judging one life over another.

atJLeslie…. How do you even read that into what I’ve been saying? MORE regulation and MORE checks and LESS empty marketing. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

@cazzie You said you don’t like how it is marketed. More regulation isn’t going to change selling sperm with the idea that you are getting sperm from tall, dark, and smart. Or, blond, blue eyed, and athletic. There will always be a component of choosing whose genes you will be creating the new life with.

Right, forcing women to have an internal ultrasound and being shown a video about how the fetus is a person when she is seeking to end a pregnancy…. that is much more likely than educating a woman about how the genetic material she is about to accept into her body has certain scientific uncertainties as to the outcome of the life she is hoping to produce and become her family forever….. right…. So absolutely true about Life IN America. May you live in interesting times.

And here’s where the thread begins to take a hard right turn into territory that is utterly irrelevant to the subject.

but it ISN’T! Not at all. Why can’t we just get people educated on subjects rather than do shit to their emotions?

@cazzie Wait. What? You think women think they are guaranteed a certain type of baby with certain features and attributes because they chose sperm from a man with certain attributes? How stupid do you think Americans are? The agency probably is supposed to run a background check and they obviously didn’t.

Some features like a red head might be able to pretty much guarantee red haired babies, and two blue eyed parents will get blue eyed babies, but short of those there isn’t much you can really hope to secure regarding physical features. Maybe blonde hair is even “recessive” to red? I’m not sure?

What can be “guaranteed” if done responsibly is the baby won’t have sickle cell, or CF, or Tay Sachs, or some of the other diseases a person who has that in their family might be worried about.

@cazzie “Why can’t we just get people educated on subjects rather than do shit to their emotions?”

What? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to convey here, but to be frank, the most emotional seeming posts in this thread so far have been coming from you.

Relevant. ....

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/08/the-baby-was-wrong-color-but-that-reason-for-lawsuit/ZCxZswYlTdM0mSEz1TkSbP/story.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/07/the-real-problem-with-sperm-banks.html

Suing would be my option, for punitive damages. It would have several benefits: sending a message to other facilities that they have to do better. Letting this facility know that they’re not getting away with this. Making them improve their methods so that hopefully this happens less or not at all in the future.

@cazzie I agree there should be some more regulations. Even with more regulations mistakes will happen. The regulations will help people win the lawsuits and possibly put the license of the doctor in more jeopardy. So? There is still the question of whether to sue, and how it might affect the child. The suit is about the sperm bank not delivering the sperm they represented. The sperm from your article was not from a white man as it was represented. For that, she can sue.