A Georgia woman is suing a fertility clinic after she says she was implanted with a stranger’s embryo.
Krystena Murray, 38, gave birth to a healthy black baby boy in December 2023, following IVF treatments. However, Murray is white, as is the male donor, who has “dirty blonde hair and blue eyes.”
After the woman says she told Coastal Fertility Specialists (CFS) of their error, the clinic notified the baby’s biological parents, who sued Murray for custody of the child. Murray says she gave up the five-month-old baby instead of continuing to pursue a legal fight she was told she couldn’t win. Murray has not seen the baby since.
“To carry a baby, to fall in love with him, to deliver him, to build that uniquely special bond between a mother and a child, all to have him taken away,” Murray said at a press conference on Tuesday. “I’ll never be the same woman, I’ll never fully heal or completely move on and part of me will always long for my son.”
Murray told ABC 7 this week that she still thinks about the child “every single day.”
“There’s not a day that I don’t wonder what he’s doing,” she said. “I raised him for five months, but I didn’t get to see his first steps. I don’t know what his first words are. I don’t know what milestones he’s hitting.”
“I have never felt so violated, and this situation has left me emotionally and physically broken,” Murray said at the presser.
The 38-year-old said she took the baby to doctor’s appointments, breastfed him, and loved him as her own after giving birth.
“I’m not privy to what type of person he’s becoming or how he’s growing and developing, and it is very hard, and I do think of him every single day and wonder how he is,” she said.
Murray recalled the moment she first saw the baby she birthed. “The first time I saw my son, like any mom, he was beautiful and literally the best thing I’ve ever seen, but it was also immediately apparent that he was African American.”
“I would like to say my first thought is, ‘He’s beautiful.’ My second thought was, ‘What happened?'” Murray continued. “Did they mess up the embryo, or did they mess up the sperm? And if they messed up the embryo, can someone take my son?’ That was all within the course of the first 10 or 15 seconds of me seeing him.”
Murray, who is now pursuing fertility treatment at another clinic, says she remains in the dark about what happened to her embryo at CFS.
The suit seeks a judgment in excess of $75,000, punitive damages, recovered attorney fees, and other costs and damages, ABC 7 reports.
