A Georgia woman is suing a IVF 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.
Krystena Murray, from Savannah, Georgia, turned to in vitro fertilisation to fulfil her dream of becoming a mother, using a sperm donor to conceive.
After undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, 38-year-old Krystena Murray gave birth to a “beautiful” baby boy in December 2023 and immediately realized something was wrong. The child was Black, while both she and the donor were white.
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“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.
Murray said she later sought an at-home genetic test and discovered she was not related to the child. She notified the fertility clinic, Coastal Fertility Specialists, and discovered that doctors had implanted another patient’s embryo in her instead of her own.
The clinic then notified the baby’s biological parents, who demanded custody. Ms Murray voluntarily gave up custody of the five-month-old boy to avoid a legal battle, describing the situation as having left her “emotionally and physically broken.”
“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.”
She said: “My child was ultimately taken from me as the clinic had implanted an embryo from a stranger into my womb. I’ve never felt so violated.”
After handing the child over in court, she told Sky’s US partner network NBC News: “I walked in as a mum with a child — a baby who loved me, was mine, and was attached to me — and I walked out of the building with an empty stroller, while they left with my son.”
Ms Murray’s lawsuit, filed in a Georgia court, states that the clinic’s “extreme and outrageous” mistake forced her into becoming “an unwitting surrogate, against her will, for another couple.”
She said: “The situation has left me emotionally and physically broken. I grew him, I raised him, I loved him. I saw no difference — it felt the same as if he were my own genetic embryo.”
“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, which runs an IVF clinic in Savannah and four others in neighbouring South Carolina, described the incident in a statement to NBC News as an “isolated event.” The clinic apologised for “an unprecedented error that resulted in an embryo transfer mix-up.”
The clinic added: “We are doing everything we can to make things right for those affected by this incident.”
Murray said she had no reason to suspect anything was wrong when she began treatment in early 2023. She underwent injections to stimulate egg production, which were later retrieved and fertilised in a lab using donor sperm.
The wedding photographer said she became pregnant on her second embryo implantation attempt, unaware it was not her own embryo.
She added: “I considered the risks of IVF going in. Never once did I consider that I might birth someone else’s child and have them taken from me.”
