A California couple has sued a fertility clinic, complaining that they ended up with a baby girl instead of the boy they had wanted. Albert and Anthony Saniger filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against HRC Fertility, as well as fertility specialist Dr. Bradford Kolb, claiming breach of contract, medical malpractice, negligence, fraudulent concealment and violation of the Unfair Competition Law and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act.
The Sanigers married in 2013, with the goal of having exactly two children, both boys. According to CBS News, the couple had chosen names for their wished-for sons, and even reserved Gmail accounts for them.
Eventually, the Sanigers sought out HRC, which caters to the LGBT community, and explicitly said they only wanted male embryos implanted into their surrogate. They were told by HRC they would get to choose the embryos they wanted to implant, but the suit claims the fertility business instead “negligently, recklessly, and/or intentionally transferred a female embryo to the Sanigers’ gestational carrier.”
READ: Why pro-life couples should opt for adoption over IVF
The suit claims the two men spent $300,000 on creating embryos through their sperm and donor eggs, and on finding a surrogate mother to carry the children. In 2021, the baby girl was born, and the pair are allegedly furious. Their lawsuit seeks unspecific damages, as they now are seeking to create two more children so they can still get their sought-after pair of boys.
HRC released a statement responding to the lawsuit, arguing that every child has value, regardless of gender.
At HRC Fertility, our mission is to provide world-class care. We have helped thousands of people, including the couple involved in this lawsuit. The couple ideally desired a baby boy but were blessed with a healthy girl. To their dissatisfaction, we have sought to address their concerns. Every child has value and limitless potential regardless of gender.
We hope the Sanigers find love and value in their healthy child while so many across the country are struggling with reproductive issues. Since 1988, we have remained and continue to remain, dedicated to helping hopeful parents build families through assisted reproductive technology, compassion, expertise, innovation, cutting edge research and personalized care.
The Sanigers are not the first customers to complain that they didn’t get what they wanted from IVF, nor are they the first to treat the children they created through IVF and surrogacy as products to be bought, sold, traded, and destroyed at their own whims. A lesbian couple also sued a fertility clinic when they gave birth to a boy instead of a girl as preferred. A straight couple went through IVF multiple times, but when their only remaining embryos were all female, they tried to trade with another couple so they could have a boy, as their already-born son wanted a brother, not a sister. Still other couples have fought over embryos as “property” in divorce. Still others have turned embryos into jewelry when they decided they didn’t want to have any more children born.
What none of these couples seem to understand or care about is that these embryos aren’t meaningless blobs in a petri dish; they are human beings at the very beginning of their development. And yet thanks to IVF, these tiny humans have been turned into property, products to which a person feels entitled, in the exact specifications they want. Rather than acknowledging the child as an individual human being, IVF turns the child into something akin to a designer handbag. It’s the ultimate dehumanization, to be treated like objects to be created at will and then discarded when not wanted.
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