A 38-year-old American woman has filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic after the wrong embryo was implanted in her, causing her to give birth to a child that was not biologically hers.
She later had to surrender the baby to its rightful parents.
Krystena Murray, from Savannah, Georgia, turned to in vitro fertilisation to fulfil her dream of becoming a mother, using a sperm donor to conceive.
In December 2023, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy—but immediately knew something was wrong. The child was Black, while both she and the donor were white.
Ms Murray said she contacted the clinic, Coastal Fertility Specialists, and discovered that doctors had implanted another patient’s embryo in her instead of her own.
She said the baby’s biological parents were notified, and they demanded custody.
According to the New York Times on Wednesday, Murray contacted Coastal Fertility Specialists, the clinic where she had undergone IVF treatment, and soon learned that doctors had mistakenly implanted another patient’s embryo into her.
The clinic then notified the baby’s biological parents, who demanded custody.
Ms Murray voluntarily gave up custody of the five-month-old boy to avoid a legal battle, describing the situation as having left her “emotionally and physically broken.”
She said: “My child was ultimately taken from me as the clinic had implanted an embryo from a stranger into my womb. I’ve never felt so violated.”
After handing the child over in court, she told Sky’s US partner network NBC News: “I walked in as a mum with a child — a baby who loved me, was mine, and was attached to me — and I walked out of the building with an empty stroller, while they left with my son.”
Ms Murray’s lawsuit, filed in a Georgia court, states that the clinic’s “extreme and outrageous” mistake forced her into becoming “an unwitting surrogate, against her will, for another couple.”
She said: “The situation has left me emotionally and physically broken. I grew him, I raised him, I loved him. I saw no difference — it felt the same as if he were my own genetic embryo.”
Coastal Fertility Specialists, which runs an IVF clinic in Savannah and four others in neighbouring South Carolina, described the incident in a statement to NBC News as an “isolated event.” The clinic apologised for “an unprecedented error that resulted in an embryo transfer mix-up.”
The clinic added: “We are doing everything we can to make things right for those affected by this incident.”
Murray said she had no reason to suspect anything was wrong when she began treatment in early 2023. She underwent injections to stimulate egg production, which were later retrieved and fertilised in a lab using donor sperm.
The wedding photographer said she became pregnant on her second embryo implantation attempt, unaware it was not her own embryo.
She added: “I considered the risks of IVF going in. Never once did I consider that I might birth someone else’s child and have them taken from me.”
