Happy Families

I read this story, (typically it comes from the New York Post, which loves this kind of thing) with growing dismay and pity for two little girls who’re growing up with a pair of self-denying bigots for parents. The story speaks for itself:

The Andrews family. [video here]

BLACK BABY IS BORN TO WHITE PAIR
By TODD VENEZIA

March 22, 2007 —

Should a couple be entitled to sue because a fertility clinic mistakenly impregnated the woman with sperm other than her mate’s? Click ‘Discussion Board’ beneath the photo to tell us what you think.

A Park Avenue fertility clinic’s blunder has left a family devastated – after a black baby was born to a Hispanic woman and her white husband, the couple charges in a lawsuit.

The mistake, made during in-vitro conception, wasn’t discovered until Jessica Andrews was born – and it became clear she didn’t look anything like her mom, Nancy, or dad, Thomas, the suit says.

The baby’s complexion was much darker than that of her mom – a light-skinned native of the Dominican Republic – or dad.

“Jessica doesn’t look like them,” said the couple’s attorney Howard Stern, of Long Island.

When Thomas and Nancy Andrews asked their doctor, Manhattan obstetrician Martin Keltz, what was going on, he allegedly told them that Jessica’s condition was an “abnormality,” and assured them she would “get lighter over time,” according to the couple’s suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

[…]

The family is so distraught that they have not even told many of their relatives about the situation. The Andrews fear the natural father may try to come forward and claim rights to the girl, the suit says.

The family is so distraught that they have not even told many of their relatives about the situation. The Andrews fear the natural father may try to come forward and claim rights to the girl, the suit says.

“[Jessica] will never know or be able to determine the identity of her actual father, and will consequently never be able to know her full medical history and condition,” the suit also claims.

[…]

The Andrews, however, fear that because of the circumstances of her birth “she may be subjected to physical and emotional illness as a result of not being the same race as her parents and siblings,” according to their suit.

Oh, right – but not from having had her parents reject her so publicly?

Anyone who watches television, reads newspapers or listens to radio knows what a mediafest this made-for-tabloid confluence of race, immigration, medicine and crime is likely to become. That the Andrews, who surely must know this too, don’t seem to have thought much about putting their children through it is very revealing.

The story doesn’t say how much they’re sueing for but I ‘d imagine it’s a substantial amount. These people have fucked-up values and not just about race.