A major mixup at a Georgia fertility clinic forced one woman to make the heartbreaking decision to give up a baby she carried to term and raised for months. Now, as she tries to move on from her pain, she is seeking justice.
Krystena Murray filed a February 18 lawsuit in a Georgia state court against Coastal Fertility Specialists. According to NBC News, Murray, who is white, says in her suit that she had no idea the baby she carried to term was not hers biologically. Although Murray chose a blonde-haired, blue-eyed sperm donor, it was not until she delivered a “dark-skinned, African American baby” in December 2023 that she realized something wasn’t quite right.
Murray says she didn’t post pictures of her new Black baby on social media, but she continued to care for him as her own hoping that it was just a sperm mixup at the clinic. But in January 2024, an at-home DNA test kit confirmed that Murray wasn’t biologically related to her baby. According to CBS News, she told the clinic about the issue in February 2024. Coastal Fertility Specialists tracked down the baby’s biological parents who sued Murray for custody. After raising the baby for over three months, Murray made the agonizing decision to give him to his parents. In her lawsuit, Murray is asking for $75,000 and other damages.
“I walked in a mom with a child and a baby who loved me and was mine and was attached to me, and I walked out of the building with an empty stroller, and they left with my son,” she told NBC News.
In a statement, Coastal Fertility Specialists apologized for the mixup adding that no other patients were impacted by the confusion.
“This was an isolated event with no further patients affected. The same day this error was discovered we immediately conducted an in-depth review and put additional safeguards in place to further protect patients and to ensure that such an incident does not happen again,” they said in part.
While Murray knows she did the right thing, she says she is still haunted by the trauma of having to say goodbye to the baby she thought was hers.
I’ll never fully recover from this,” Murray told CBS News.