Egg Inseminated With Wrong Sperm, Embryos Destroyed, Couple Sues
A California couple has sued a San Francisco fertility clinic for destroying embryos after it inseminated the wife's eggs with the wrong man's sperm.
Robert and Katie Aschero have sued Laurel Fertility Care, claiming the clinic implanted the wrong sperm in creating seven embryos, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Clinic personnel destroyed those embryos, violating the contract the Ascheros had with Laurel, the suit contends.
Three of couple's original 13 embryos were created with Robert Aschero's sperm and implanted in his wife's womb, but they did not survive, according to the newspaper's Sept. 16 report.
Katie Aschero, 31, a nurse at San Francisco General Hospital, said she doesn't know if she would have used the incorrectly inseminated embryos but would have appreciated a chance to donate them to couples who want children, LifeNews.com reported.
"As a nurse and a health care professional, I can definitely say mistakes happen," Aschero told the Chronicle. "But for them to go on and destroy them without my permission, breaking contract, I could not get over."
The NBC Bay Area website quoted Aschero as saying, "I went to a company that, their whole purpose of being a company is to create life, and they destroyed life."
The Ascheros' attorney, Nancy Hersh, won a $1 million settlement in 2004 against another San Francisco fertility clinic after it implanted the wrong embryo into a woman but failed to inform her until the child was 9 months old, according to the Chronicle.
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Do not think that was a 'life lost'. Yet the point is moot because this is not a wrongful death suit, rather it is a breach of contract suit.
The only part of this story which seems to have anything to do with the right-to-life argument in any manner is the fact that it was reported by The Baptist Press.
Like rice and angel, I'll watch to see how this plays out (and how it gets spun by the partisans.)
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
Its good once in awhile to see them get caught in their arrogance. I too would be interested in seeing how this plays out.
The egg was hers and therefore any viable growth would have been her property so they destroyed valuable property,whats a viable egg worth these days? I guess well find out!
What is the legal position of the clinic? Whose sperm was it? Would it have been ethical to do anything with fertilized eggs that weren't under the consent of the sperm donor? Was the sperm donor anonymous or was the sperm the property of another patient?
Destorying the fertilized eggs was not a destruction of life in the legal sense so the ideological or religious position is irrelevant.
Sounds like the clinic may have definitely done the most ethical thing. They ROYALLY screwed up, but taking the potential lawsuit may have been worth it considering the possible outcomes of doing anything else with the embryo.
I'm not saying that it WAS ethical to destroy the eggs, because I don't know the full story, but these people are basically claiming that the egg is theirs and therefor the sperm inside doesn't matter. I can't wait for this to play out.