Asian woman gave birth to my white son after IVF blunder
Clinic put embryo into wrong mother... then couple had to fight in court to get child back
A TEARFUL mother has told how an IVF clinic put her family ‘through a living hell’ after her embryo was implanted into a woman of a different race who then gave birth. Anni and her husband Ashot Manukyan are suing the fertility clinic in Los Angeles over the ‘unimaginable’ blunder.
One of their embryos and the embryo of another couple were implanted into the Asian woman, who gave birth to the ‘twin’ white boys.
Both boys were eventually returned to their respective biological parents following battles in the courts.
But Mrs Manukyan said the CHA Fertility Centre ‘robbed me of my ability to carry my own child’.
‘CHA put our families through a living hell, and our lives will never be the same,’ she said. ‘We fought to get our boy back and now we will fight to make sure this never happens again.’
She added: ‘I wasn’t there for his birth, I did not carry him, I did not feel him kick inside of me, I didn’t do the skin to skin, I didn’t breastfeed him. All of that was just robbed from me because of this company that messed up.’
The case has shone a light on the private IVF industry which is growing in the US and Britain but is largely unregulated.
Mr and Mrs Manukyan, 38 and 36, are suing in the Los Angeles superior court, accusing CHA of medical malpractice and negligence. Court papers say the
‘Put us through a living hell’
babies were born on March 31 to the Asian couple, known only by their initials AP and YZ.
The couple, who are of Korean origin, had been trying for a baby for seven years and had paid CHA $ 100,000 (£80,000), their own lawsuit said.
The pair, from New York, were expecting their own twin Asian girls.
In an interview Mrs Manukyan said: ‘They knew the day the babies were born because they had apparently called CHA and told them, OK we’re Asian and these children are white, they’re Caucasian. These children are definitely not ours.’
Days later, the clinic asked the Manukyans, from California, to take a DNA test which they called a ‘routine quality check procedure’. The suit says the test was anything but and when the results came in, the Manukyans were finally told the truth.
The tests also revealed the other boy belonged to a third couple who have not been identified.
Mrs Manukyan said the doctor told her: ‘ Think of it as a good thing. You have a son now.’
She continued: ‘I just lashed out. What about the [Asian] woman, you know? What is she going through right now? Thank God we got our child back but she ended up with nothing.’
It took a month of battling through the courts for the Manukyans to meet their son in a hotel lobby in Manhattan and during that time the Asian couple looked after him. ‘Nobody should meet their baby in the lobby of a hotel,’ Mrs Manukyan said.
The Manukyans named the boy Alec and said the Asian mother was a ‘lovely woman’.
Mrs Manukyan said: ‘I pray for her every day and God will give her her own beautiful babies one day.’ In a further twist, last year – before the mix-up – Mrs Manukyan had her first round of IVF during which she was mistakenly implanted with the embryo of a stranger. The pregnancy failed.
The lawsuit, which names the CHA co- owners as Dr Joshua Berger and Dr Simon Hong, claims the Manukyans still don’t know what happened to another of their embryos. The suit claims both Dr Berger and Dr Hong are responsible for the ‘unimaginable mishap’.
The Asian couple’s lawsuit says they were ‘shocked’ to see two non-Asian children at the birth. They are alleging 16 counts including medical malpractice.
The Manukyans say they spent a total of $120,000 (£96,000) on IVF and legal fees. Mrs Manukyan, who has a seven-year- old daughter, said: ‘It is all so cruel. We are human beings. We deserve dignity, the truth and answers.’
In Britain, 20,000 babies a year are born via IVF, which is offered through rationed cycles on the NHS – but only for women up to the age of 42.
Older mothers, and some who do not meet health criteria, have to turn to private clinics which charge up to £20,000 per cycle, leaving some to feel they are being exploited as their chances of having a baby are slim.
Marcy Darnovsky, of the USbased Centre for Genetics and Society, said: ‘This is a practice that’s growing in the private sector and there’s very little oversight.’
CHA did not respond to requests for comment.