New York

White New Jersey Parents Sue Fertility Clinic After Noticing Their IVF Child Had Developed ‘Asian Features'

The couple ended up getting a divorce, citing the stress of the fertility clinic mix-up

What to Know

  • A couple in New Jersey are suing Saint Barnabas Medical Center after DNA test showed the man isn't the child's biological father
  • Two years after the white couple had their daughter through in-vitro fertilization, they noticed she had developed "Asian features"
  • Their lawyer says they love her and but they want financial compensation and to find out the child's genetic father

Two years after a white couple in New Jersey gave birth to a baby girl through in-vitro fertilization, they realized that she had "Asian features" -- and now they want to know the identity of the girl's biological father. 

Although the parents say they love their daughter and wouldn't change anything, they're suing the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in what is the latest mix up at fertility clinics across the country, according to the family's lawyer David Mazie.

DNA results showed that there was 0% possibility that the northern Jersey man was the child's biological father. Mazie says the discovery was heartbreaking for two people struggling to have kids by themselves. 

"They love her. She's their daughter and they wouldn't change anything from that perspective but it was devastating to find this out," he said.

The couple ended up getting a divorce, citing the stress of the fertility clinic mix-up, Mazie said. They are demanding financial compensation from the medical center as well as a list of sperm donors so they can find the child's biological father.

They want "to find out her genetic history and possibly have a relationship with her genetic father, who has no idea as we sit here right now, that he was this child's father," Mazie tells News 4.

The clinic says it is taking the matter very seriously and it's "thoroughly examining the alleged incident, which is said to have occurred in 2012."

The parents' lawsuit comes two months after a New York couple claimed in a lawsuit that a California fertility clinic got the wife pregnant with someone else’s babies.

The couple said in a federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York that after years of failed efforts to have children and spending over $100,000 to get pregnant at CHA Fertility, doctors used embryos that belonged to two other couples who had also received treatment there.

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