Well, first off it is a sad situation that she did not give birth to her husband's child. This is grounds for a lawsuit.
Second, this lady is obviously not White, at first glance she appears to be mixed race(which might not be, the article described her as Hispanic). I find it quite interesting that non-White races are starting to describe themselves as White.
Third, they make it clear they are all "White" but the second daughter isn't even when she is half of what the mother is, just like the first daughter, who is considered White. Infact, the second daughter looks exactly like the first but a few shades darker. It is clear this is a pair of racist parents.
This is a sad case indeed. I truly hope the darker daughter is not negatively affected by all of this as she grows older. Both girls look equally well loved and well adjusted in the photograph.
A lawsuit is definitely called for. I just wish this racial angle hadn't been brought up. The fact that the mix-up took place at all should be the primary focus in my opinion. Not color.
I agree with Christina and German Choc.
The mother here is not WHITE. Clearly she is not White. She looks Creole-Black to me and looks like people from my part of the world.
the mother considers herself white. She appears a little darker than me. She is more tan and I am more love.
1-The child is not that of the father and the lab made a mistake. This is not what the had an agreement to dowiththe lab. I am not calling the child a product, but look at it that way...The couple ordered and paid for their DNA, egg and sperm to be used for their baby. They have someone ele's. The child is hers. The child is not his. The child is half-sister to the other daughter. This couple has a win worth millions...emotional damages, I can't list all of the reasons they will win.
-The child could have come from her background. The mother is obviously Black somewhere. Dominican, so what. As a friend once decribed, everybody from the islands, and Creoles(Black U.S. Amer.) are the same, but the boat docked at a different place. That is all .
It may not be that probable tha tshe could have had a child so darker than her fist daughter. I do not know her family. How far back is the darkest person: mom, dad, maternal grandmother, et.c
I am sure the lab's lawyers will bringup that the mother is NOt a White woman and this child is of course hers, but is also or could be that of her husbands.
2-The child does not look, not meaning in color, like that of their/her other daughter. Ex. Eartha Kit is Black. Her husband was White. Their daughter is White in color, but looks just like Eatha Kit.
This couple's youngest daughter does not look like the mother nor father nor the oldest daughter. Sometimes one child will looks like mom and the other like dad.
2-The husband could have left. I am not knocking how people make their families. Not everybody can adopt. The father has to and wants to adopt this innocent child.
3-I have issues with this particular article on the couple because the child's color is emphasised.That makes them look bad.
I feel if the child was White, blue-eyed adn had white blond hair, they would not have been alerted and if they were, they would have not been so distraught. I know some of you said the couple did not say this and there are other articles.
4-The oldest daughter is not White in complexion. The other is clearly Black. I hope the couple can totally love this innocent child and make her whole and feel and live as a second and no choice to the oldest sister.
I do not know.
5-What happened to the guys sperm? Did the lab, in the mix up, use it for someone else? That is another part of the lawsuit.
Posted: Sun 15 Apr 2007 05:37 Post subject: Colorstruck
Colorstruck? Williams is a pretentious fool. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews made a contract with the fertility clinic that she be impregnated with her husband's sperm - not any sperm that happened to be lying around the lab. Williams feels racially insulted by the white/mulatto couple's distress, but if Mrs. Andrews had been married to a black man and gave birth to a blue-eyed blond after being accidentally impregnated by Scandinavian sperm, Williams and her comrades would howl that they deserved millions of dollars in damages.
Williams also ignores the issue of the clinic's incompetence. Who knows how often mistakes like this happen? Cases where the husband and the accidental sperm donor have very different racial phenotypes attract a lot of publicity, but they are only the cases where the mistake was discovered fairly quickly instead of many years later.
Diary of a Mad Law Professor by Patricia J. Williams
Colorstruck
[from the April 23, 2007 issue]
The March 22 New York Post offered a fascinating study in the contradictions of our culture. The top half of the front page was consumed by "a stunning mother-child portrait" of Angelina Jolie with her newest adopted child, or as the Post put it, her "Viet man." The lower half of the page was given over to a more lurid headline ("Baby Bungle: White Folks' Black Child") trumpeting "a Park Avenue fertility clinic's blunder" that "left a family devastated--after a black baby was born to a Hispanic woman and her white husband."
The story about Jolie's magical mothering of her rainbow brood was a fairy tale of happily ever after. The bungled baby story, meanwhile, was considerably less heartwarming: Long Islanders Nancy and Thomas Andrews had trouble conceiving after the birth of their first daughter. They employed in vitro fertilization and baby Jessica was born. Jessica is darker skinned than either of the Andrewses, a condition their obstetrician initially called an "abnormality." She'll "lighten up," said that good doctor. Subsequent paternity tests showed that Nancy's egg was fertilized by sperm other than Tom's. The couple has sued.
If this were the end, the story might simply fall within the growing body of other technological mix-ups resulting in what are sometimes called "wrongful birth" suits, for lost eggs, failed vasectomies and so on. There is a legally recognized expectation that a certain standard of care will be observed in the handling of genetic material. There are ethical difficulties with any of these cases. Just to start with, it's a bit of a conundrum to call the birth of a healthy child "wrongful." Therefore, courts tend to be conservative in framing monetary damages, lest they be understood as a property interest in perfection. Hence, awarding the costs of raising an unplanned child resulting from medical malfeasance is obviously less troubling than awarding damages for "the pain and suffering" of parenting a child who was "unwanted." Indeed, in the Andrews case, a judge permitted the malpractice claim to go forward but threw out the claim for the parents' mental distress.
What's distinctive about the Andrews case is that the parents also tried to cite (also without success) Jessica's pain and suffering for having to endure life as a black person. The Andrewses expressed concern that Jessica "may be subjected to physical and emotional illness as a result of not being the same race as her parents and siblings." They are "distressed" that she is "not even the same race, nationality, color...as they are." They describe Jessica's conception as a "mishap" so "unimaginable" that they have not told many of their relatives. (Telling the tabloids all about it must have come easier.) "We fear that our daughter will be the object of scorn and ridicule by other children," the couple said, because Jessica has "characteristics more typical of African or African-American descent." So "while we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her...each and every time we appear in public."
One wonders what this construction of affairs will do to Jessica, now 2, when she is old enough to understand. But here's the really interesting part. When I turned to other media accounts I found a picture of the family--from their 2006 Christmas card, no less. And Jessica looks exactly like her mother and elder sister. It is true that Jessica is slightly darker than her mother and that her hair is curlier than her sister's, but all three females are pretty clearly African-descended. As one of my students put it, if anything it is the paleness of the father's skin that marks him as the "different" one.
The picture underscores the embedded cultural oddities of this case, the invisibly shifting boundaries of how we see race, extend intimacy, name "difference." According to the Post, Mrs. Andrews is "Hispanic" and apparently, by the paper's calculations, one Hispanic woman plus one white man equals "a white pair." The mother is "a light-skinned native of the Dominican Republic," seeming to indicate that while she may not be "white," she's also not "black." Each narrative implies that if the correct sperm had been used, the Andrewses would have been guaranteed a lighter-skinned child. But as most Dominicans trace their heritage to some mixture of African slaves, indigenous islanders and European settlers, and as dark skin color is a dominant trait, it could be that the true sperm donor is as "white" as Mr. Andrews. But that possibility is exiled from the word boxes that contain this child. Not only is Jessica viewed as being of a race apart from either of her parents; she is even designated a different nationality--this latter most startling for its blood-line configuration of citizenship itself.
I might have consigned all of this to tabloid sensation had I not had conversations in recent days in which this case came up. Well-educated legal minds of all political stripes were arguing that there's nothing wrong in the parents' claim, that it's a private choice they made to have a family that looks "like" them and that they should get some money for the girl's "trauma" since, after all, it is harder to be black in this society. Some of the people arguing this have previously argued against affirmative action because our society is supposedly colorblind. Just look at Angelina! If this dreamy reasoning is any reflection of the culture at large, then its logic signals a privatization of civil rights: Discrimination is no longer a social problem that implicates all of us and our institutions as unloving or uninclusive. Discrimination becomes destiny, the normative response to biologized "abnormality."
It is ironic. There is a bill in the Georgia state legislature to make April Confederate Heritage Month. Not Southern heritage, but Confederate. Whatever romance that term may conjure in the collective imagination, it's important to remember that the Confederate Constitution was almost identical to that of the United States. The only significantly different provision was one that said: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." In an era when none of us are slaves but all of us are increasingly objects in the marketplace, it is sad and alarming that "Negro" features, however arbitrarily perceived or shiftily delineated, still lower the value of the human product, of human grace.
But as most Dominicans trace their heritage to some mixture of African slaves, indigenous islanders and European settlers, and as dark skin color is a dominant trait
I find it ironic the Professor Williams would make such an incorrect claim considering dark skin color of her family definitely did not dominate in her:
She is lighter than the Dominican woman and the first daughter. Shoot she is as light as the father. She might be threatened by a person of mixed ancestry darker than her claiming non blackness?
Last edited by Salsassin on Sun 15 Apr 2007 11:37; edited 1 time in total
The child is also clearly mixed
She looks like her sister, especially in the eyes and nose
Unless Mr. Andrews has a significant amount of recent African ancestry, I would say that it is obvious that the younger girl is not his biological daughter.
While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her. It is simply impossible to ignore."
Uh huh. Listen lady, no matter how you spin it, "Baby Jessica" is yours. There is no "while" about it.
Anyway, the darker daughter looks almost exactly like her older sister and mom. It's ridiculous how they're trying to play this out as if that baby is the only one in the family with SSA heritage.
The child is also clearly mixed
She looks like her sister, especially in the eyes and nose
Unless Mr. Andrews has a significant amount of recent African ancestry, I would say that it is obvious that the younger girl is not his biological daughter.
I'm responding to the statement that the child is 'Black', the child is clearly mixed.
While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her. It is simply impossible to ignore."
Uh huh. Listen lady, no matter how you spin it, "Baby Jessica" is yours. There is no "while" about it.
Anyway, the darker daughter looks almost exactly like her older sister and mom. It's ridiculous how they're trying to play this out as if that baby is the only one in the family with SSA heritage.
I feel bad for that little girl.
I agree, Jessica is going to have so serious issues if the parents continue to see a 'Terrible Mistake' each & every time they look at her.
Agree again, the mother, the older sister and Jessica are obviously mixed, and look alike.
Posted: Tue 06 Jan 2009 15:48 Post subject: Fertility clinic
Famu wrote:
Quote:
While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her. It is simply impossible to ignore."
Uh huh. Listen lady, no matter how you spin it, "Baby Jessica" is yours. There is no "while" about it.
Anyway, the darker daughter looks almost exactly like her older sister and mom. It's ridiculous how they're trying to play this out as if that baby is the only one in the family with SSA heritage.
I feel bad for that little girl.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews made a contract with the fertility clinic that she be impregnated with her husband's sperm - not any sperm that happened to be lying around the lab. Many blacks feels racially insulted by the white/mulatto couple's distress, but if Mrs. Andrews had been married to a black man and gave birth to a blue-eyed blond after being accidentally impregnated by Scandinavian sperm, wouldn't those same blacks howl that they deserved millions of dollars in damages? Black intellectuals would no doubt compare the mistake to antebellum slave rape.
There is also the issue of the clinic's incompetence. Who knows how often mistakes like this happen? Cases where the husband and the accidental sperm donor have very different racial phenotypes attract a lot of publicity, but they are only the cases where the mistake was discovered fairly quickly instead of many years later.
If you were or are part of a married couple and this happened to you, would you just say "Oh, what the hell"?
This is a sad case indeed. I truly hope the darker daughter is not negatively affected by all of this as she grows older. Both girls look equally well loved and well adjusted in the photograph.
A lawsuit is definitely called for. I just wish this racial angle hadn't been brought up. The fact that the mix-up took place at all should be the primary focus in my opinion. Not color.
I agree with you.
I know that in a situation like this they want the family to of the same blood. But the racial part is spotlighted.
"They also fear that that the unnamed African-American donor's sperm may have been used to dupe other couples, or that another couple may have gotten Thomas Andrews' sperm."
How do they know the person was African American, he could have been Latino.
Posted: Wed 14 Jan 2009 04:08 Post subject: Re: Fertility clinic
Powell wrote:
Famu wrote:
Quote:
While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her. It is simply impossible to ignore."
Uh huh. Listen lady, no matter how you spin it, "Baby Jessica" is yours. There is no "while" about it.
Anyway, the darker daughter looks almost exactly like her older sister and mom. It's ridiculous how they're trying to play this out as if that baby is the only one in the family with SSA heritage.
I feel bad for that little girl.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews made a contract with the fertility clinic that she be impregnated with her husband's sperm - not any sperm that happened to be lying around the lab. Many blacks feels racially insulted by the white/mulatto couple's distress, but if Mrs. Andrews had been married to a black man and gave birth to a blue-eyed blond after being accidentally impregnated by Scandinavian sperm, wouldn't those same blacks howl that they deserved millions of dollars in damages? Black intellectuals would no doubt compare the mistake to antebellum slave rape.
There is also the issue of the clinic's incompetence. Who knows how often mistakes like this happen? Cases where the husband and the accidental sperm donor have very different racial phenotypes attract a lot of publicity, but they are only the cases where the mistake was discovered fairly quickly instead of many years later.
If you were or are part of a married couple and this happened to you, would you just say "Oh, what the hell"?
I for one am not saying they should get over it. It was wrong, weither a mistake or on purpose and should be compensated somehow for it.
But by their statement, this MiXeD child is innocent and is still blood related to the sister and mother. If they continue to think and talk as they are, it will negatively affect the child as well as the sister.
Posted: Fri 16 Jan 2009 11:18 Post subject: Re: Fertility clinic
Powell wrote:
Famu wrote:
Quote:
While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her. It is simply impossible to ignore."
Uh huh. Listen lady, no matter how you spin it, "Baby Jessica" is yours. There is no "while" about it.
Anyway, the darker daughter looks almost exactly like her older sister and mom. It's ridiculous how they're trying to play this out as if that baby is the only one in the family with SSA heritage.
I feel bad for that little girl.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews made a contract with the fertility clinic that she be impregnated with her husband's sperm - not any sperm that happened to be lying around the lab. Many blacks feels racially insulted by the white/mulatto couple's distress, but if Mrs. Andrews had been married to a black man and gave birth to a blue-eyed blond after being accidentally impregnated by Scandinavian sperm, wouldn't those same blacks howl that they deserved millions of dollars in damages? Black intellectuals would no doubt compare the mistake to antebellum slave rape.
There is also the issue of the clinic's incompetence. Who knows how often mistakes like this happen? Cases where the husband and the accidental sperm donor have very different racial phenotypes attract a lot of publicity, but they are only the cases where the mistake was discovered fairly quickly instead of many years later.
If you were or are part of a married couple and this happened to you, would you just say "Oh, what the hell"?
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 168 } Location: Mid-Atlantic States; USA
Posted: Sun 18 Jan 2009 16:04 Post subject: Re: Fertility clinic
The clinic should perhaps set up a ten million dollar
trust for the family, stipulating that the family get
five percent of the funds annually until the child
reaches that age of twenty one. At that time the
trust could be set up to terminate with one half
of the remaining funds going to the family, and
the other half going to the child. I think this
set-up would help heal a lot of hurt feelings.
I'm not really up on this stuff, but that's my humble
take on how to handle this heartbreaking situation.
My heart goes out to each of them; the parents,
the children, their other loved ones, and all others
involved. It's a tough one. Now, that's for sure.
Posted: Mon 19 Jan 2009 19:57 Post subject: Re: Fertility clinic
Famu wrote:
Powell wrote:
Famu wrote:
Quote:
While we love Baby Jessica as our own, we are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her. It is simply impossible to ignore."
Uh huh. Listen lady, no matter how you spin it, "Baby Jessica" is yours. There is no "while" about it.
Anyway, the darker daughter looks almost exactly like her older sister and mom. It's ridiculous how they're trying to play this out as if that baby is the only one in the family with SSA heritage.
I feel bad for that little girl.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews made a contract with the fertility clinic that she be impregnated with her husband's sperm - not any sperm that happened to be lying around the lab. Many blacks feels racially insulted by the white/mulatto couple's distress, but if Mrs. Andrews had been married to a black man and gave birth to a blue-eyed blond after being accidentally impregnated by Scandinavian sperm, wouldn't those same blacks howl that they deserved millions of dollars in damages? Black intellectuals would no doubt compare the mistake to antebellum slave rape.
There is also the issue of the clinic's incompetence. Who knows how often mistakes like this happen? Cases where the husband and the accidental sperm donor have very different racial phenotypes attract a lot of publicity, but they are only the cases where the mistake was discovered fairly quickly instead of many years later.
If you were or are part of a married couple and this happened to you, would you just say "Oh, what the hell"?
Your comment had nothing to do with what I wrote.
Your only concern was with SSA ancestry and how the Andrews family may or may not feel about it. I say that SSA ancestry is not the issue. Negligence on the part of the company is the issue. You seem to be willing to let the company off the hook.
'
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