A US woman sued an IVF clinic after unknowingly carrying and giving birth to a baby who was not biologically hers.
Krystena Murray, 38, from Georgia, underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment at Coastal Fertility Specialists in May 2023. She gave birth to a baby boy and immediately noticed something was wrong—the child was African American, while she is white and had chosen a sperm donor with a similar appearance.
“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.
After Murray gave birth to the child, she sought an at-home genetic test and discovered she was not related to the child. She notified the fertility clinic, which then notified the child’s biological parents.
Despite knowing, Murray formed a deep bond with the child. “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,” she said.
“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.”
The child’s biological parents started custody proceedings, according to NBC News. Murray voluntarily gave up the child when he was a few months old.
“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.
“Errors like this should never occur in a fertility clinic, this is the cardinal sin,” said Wolf.
Coastal Fertility Specialists acknowledged the mistake and issued an apology, calling the incident an “isolated event” with no other patients affected. “The same day this error was discovered, we conducted an in-depth review and implemented additional safeguards to ensure such an incident does not happen again,” the clinic said in a statement to NBC News.
Although rare, Murray’s case is not the only case of a switched embryo. There have been several lawsuits in recent years brought against US fertility clinics over embryo-switching errors.
IVF is a procedure during which a woman’s eggs are fertilised by a man’s sperm in a laboratory before the embryos are implanted into a woman’s uterus. Given the delicate nature of the procedure, strict protocols are essential to prevent errors that can have life-altering consequences.
