Kevin McMahon was the third of four children, but he didn’t look like his siblings, and he always felt something was off. His siblings would often joke that he was “the mailman’s kid.” After his niece took an at-home DNA test, Kevin’s sister, Carol Vignola, discovered the reason why.
Kevin McMahon had been switched at birth. Birth records at Jamaica Hospital, where Kevin was born, show that another baby boy was born on the same day within hours of Kevin to another couple with the last name — McMahon. Carol’s DNA results showed that she was a direct relative of that man, named Ross. Kevin, now 64, has filed a lawsuit against the hospital.
“Two Caucasian mothers with the same last name, both giving birth to baby boys on the same day. They were switched before the birth certificates were even signed,” explained Kevin’s attorney Jeremy Schiowitz.
He added, “There’s no mystery as to what happened. Jamaica Hospital switched the babies. The DNA proves it. The mystery is, how did they let this happen?”
While Kevin loves the siblings he grew up with, their childhoods were not easy. Their mother was an alcoholic, and the children were cared for by their paternal grandmother — except for Kevin, who was sent to live with a family friend.
“I was treated differently by my grandmother,” he said. “She didn’t like me, and in time, I took that to mean I wasn’t likable.”
He feels he would have had a lot in common with his birth parents, but they both died before the switch was discovered. “I feel I could have shared so much with my birth parents, and I didn’t get to do that,” he said. “It certainly would have changed the whole course of my life.”
He blames the hospital for making “one calamitous mistake” that changed everything for him.
Kevin’s story is an example of how important it is for children and adults to know their biological families and have a sense of biological identity. Being taken from his biological parents, though raised by people who believed he was their biological son, led to an identity crisis for Kevin. He always knew that there was something not quite right between him and the family he was raised with, even though everyone involved believed they were genetically related.
Research shows that being separated from one’s birth family can cause post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. The Association for Psychological Science reported in 2018, “When children are separated from their parents, it can have traumatic repercussions for kids’ lives down the line.” Bonding between mother and child begins in the womb, where preborn children develop a preferential response to maternal scents and sounds that continue after birth, according to Myron Hofer, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychology at Columbia University until his 2011 retirement.
While adoption organizations have changed course to focus on open adoptions, allowing adopted children to know their biological families, the fertility industry is creating children to be intentionally separated from their biological family and birth mothers through the use of surrogacy and sperm/egg donation. The industry is knowingly causing trauma in children to meet the desires of adults who are paying top dollar for babies to be created for them in a lab using donor sperm, donor eggs, or both. Those children are then carried by surrogates, with whom they bond while in the womb, before being intentionally and immediately taken from them at birth.
It’s the purposeful infliction of trauma — not unlike the trauma Kevin experienced.
