Fertility Clinic Errors Lead to Lawsuits
People who have chosen in vitro fertilization (IVF) often face challenges before seeking this treatment. Women with cancer, endometriosis, or damaged fallopian tubes, sterile men, individuals who do not have a life partner but want to be a parent, and same-sex couples, balancing a non-traditional way of life, rely on IVF to expand their family.
According to data from Pew Research, the number of babies born through IVF is on the rise. Between 2008 and 2023 alone, the numbers increased by 33 percent.
Unfortunately, despite its popularity, IVF is not foolproof. Recently, lawsuits alleging negligence and medical malpractice against clinics and providers have been in the news, including stories of a particular heartbreak – embryo mix-ups. The mix-ups occur when the egg and sperm of selected donors are not handled properly, and the intended recipient does not receive the correct embryo. Here is a look at three such cases.
A Woman’s Dream is Destroyed
A single 38-year-old Georgia resident who chose to pursue motherhood on her own worked multiple jobs to pay for IVF treatment. She filed a lawsuit against Coastal Fertility Specialists on February 18. After giving birth and discovering she had received the wrong embryo, she was legally forced to give the baby to the biological parents.
Upon giving birth in December 2023, the woman immediately recognized the mistake because the child was of a different race than both herself and the donor she had chosen. Within weeks after giving birth, she conducted a home DNA test, which confirmed that she was not the baby’s biological mother.
According to news reports, the mother contacted the clinic shortly after receiving the test results to inform them of her findings, hoping the clinic staff could provide her with information about what had happened to her embryo, although she never intended to give the baby up. However, the clinic did not provide her with information. Instead, the staff informed the biological parents of the baby, who then sued for custody.
Teen Learns Her Dad Isn’t Her Dad
Another IVF lawsuit filed six months ago in Las Vegas involves a teenage girl who took a DNA test purchased from ancestry.com.
After the teen’s mother passed away, she wanted to learn more about her family background. Although her father was aware that she was conceived through IVF in the early 2000s due to her mother’s inability to conceive, both he and his daughter were surprised when the test results revealed that he was not biologically related to her.
After discovering this information, the pair contacted the Nevada Fertility C.A.R.E.S. clinic where the treatments had been performed years before. The clinic determined that the girl was born from an embryo created for another couple in Nevada.
On September 30, 2024, their attorneys filed the lawsuit against the clinic over the embryo mix-up, stressing that the clinic’s negligence caused both the father and daughter to suffer extreme and severe emotional upset. And, because they are not blood relatives, the teen’s father also moved forward with adoption proceedings to legalize the parent-child relationship.
Two Babies with No Genetic Link to Father
It was only after a pediatrician told a couple in North Texas that their child had a birthmark typically seen in children of Asian descent that they were prompted to investigate their DNA.
Neither the mother nor father knew of any Asian ancestry in their lineage. They had, however, undergone IVF about ten years earlier, resulting in a healthy boy in 2016 and a girl in 2018.
They decided to pursue a DNA test and learned that while the mother was related, there was no genetic link between the father and the children.
In February of 2023, the couple filed a lawsuit against Fort Worth Fertility, alleging mishandling of sperm that resulted in the use of an unknown donor. The couple is seeking a jury trial and $1 million in damages, but the parents stressed through their attorney that the recent turn of events did not make them love their children any less. Regarding the lawsuit, the attorney said, “ It’s about what happened, and finding out answers.”
Concerns Over IVF Errors
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has estimated that by the year 2100, well over 200 million people could be born with the help of IVF. In February, President Trump issued an executive order in part to “reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs’’ for IVF, which could further increase the number of families choosing IVF in the future.
This means that while embryo mix-ups are considered unusual and even infrequent, ensuring that clinics are safe is more important than ever. Mistakes like those mentioned above should not continue to happen.
Currently, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology are responsible for setting the standards for IVF clinics to follow, including clinics’ credentialing staff, laboratories following through on accreditations, and honoring the duty to disclose when errors occur. But are these standards sufficient? ASRM believes IVF procedures are heavily regulated. However, in an interview with ABC News, Dov Fox, a Herzog Research Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, where he directs the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics, described the standards under the ASRM as simply “recommendations” for doctors and clinics. He believes they are not enforced in “any meaningful way.”
Although Fox stressed that IVF in this country “is not the wild west,” at the same time, he wants more “enforceable measures to reliably keep things from going wrong or from making them right if and when they do.”
ABC News also interviewed Adam Wolf, an attorney who represents clients in fertility clinic lawsuits. He also believes more should be done to prevent mistakes in clinics. “Whether it is dropping eggs or embryos on the ground, or mixing the wrong sperm with the egg or switching embryos from Couple A to Couple B, those are things that are life-altering,” he said.
