SAVANNAH, Georgia — A 38-year-old woman is suing the fertility clinic she used to conceive a child after the wrong embryo was implanted in her, resulting in a shocking discovery as soon as the infant was born, according to a lawsuit.
The suit, filed Tuesday in Georgia state court, alleges that Krystena Murray “unknowingly and unwillingly carried a child through pregnancy who was not biologically related to her,” something she learned only once she delivered the baby boy. Murray then had to give custody of the baby to his biological parents five months later, adding to her trauma, the suit says.
Murray, a wedding photographer who lives in Savannah, had decided to conceive and raise a child with the help of a sperm donor through Coastal Fertility Specialists, which operates in vitro fertilization clinics in South Carolina and Georgia.
The lawsuit says that Murray selected a sperm donor who resembled her: the donor was white with dirty blond hair and blue eyes. Coastal Fertility transferred an embryo to Murray in 2023, but when she gave birth in December of that year, Murray immediately “knew something was very wrong,” the lawsuit says, because the boy that she delivered was a “dark-skinned, African American baby.”
“The birth of my child was supposed to be the happiest moment of my life, and honestly, it was. But it was also the scariest moment of my life,” Murray said Tuesday at a news conference, adding that she was instantly terrified that the baby would be taken from her. “All of the love and joy I felt seeing him for the first time was immediately replaced by fear. How could this have happened?”
Nonetheless, Murray bonded with the baby and loved him as her own — even after doing a DNA test, the lawsuit says.
“I hoped that it was just a sperm mix-up, not an embryo mix-up,” Murray said in an interview with NBC News. But the DNA results confirmed that the baby was not biologically related to her.
She knew she had to tell the clinic, so in February 2024, Murray’s attorney informed Coastal Fertility Specialists. The clinic then identified and contacted the baby’s biological parents, who are not named in the lawsuit. They confirmed through a DNA test of their own that the child was theirs, then sued for custody, the legal complaint says.
Murray voluntarily handed over the baby to his biological parents in court on an agonizing day.
“I walked in a mom with a child and a baby who loved me and was mine and was attached to me, and I walked out of the building with an empty stroller, and they left with my son,” Murray told NBC News.
“I grew him, I raised him, I loved him. I saw him no different than if he were mine, my own genetic embryo,” she added.
Murray’s attorney, Adam Wolf, a partner at the law firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, said that Murray has not been able to get answers as to whether any of her own embryos were transferred to another couple or if they are still in storage at the fertility clinic.
“We don’t know, at present, the current situation of Christina’s embryos,” Wolf said at Tuesday’s news conference.
“This is the cardinal sin for fertility clinics, to transfer the wrong embryo into one of your patients. It should never happen,” he added.
The lawsuit names Coastal Fertility Specialists and Dr. Jeffrey Gray, its director of the embryology laboratory, as defendants. In a statement on behalf of the clinic and Gray, Coastal Fertility Specialists said it “deeply regrets the distress caused by an unprecedented error that resulted in an embryo transfer mix-up.”
“This was an isolated event with no further patients affected. The same day this error was discovered we immediately conducted an in-depth review and put additional safeguards in place to further protect patients and to ensure that such an incident does not happen again,” the statement read in part.
Tuesday’s suit accuses the defendants of negligence, among other allegations, and seeks damages and a jury trial.
“She was turned into an unwitting surrogate, against her will, for another couple,” the complaint says of Murray.
IVF clinic mix-ups are believed to be extremely rare, but Murray’s case is not the first of its kind. In 2019, a New York couple sued a California fertility clinic alleging doctors implanted embryos that belonged to two other couples, a discovery the plaintiffs made after giving birth to twins. In 2021, two couples sued a different California clinic after a mix-up there led the couples to spend several months raising each other’s biological children before they swapped. The cases have since been settled.
While industry groups offer some guidelines on IVF processes, there is no federal regulation of IVF in the United States to prevent mix-ups from occurring, said Dov Fox, a law professor at the University of San Diego, where he directs the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics. There is also no federal requirement for U.S. clinics to report such mishaps.
“When it comes to assisted reproduction, no agency or authority tracks or polices this kind of substantial and needless error,” Fox said.
There is also no standard recourse guaranteed to all patients and couples who are affected by such errors.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a trade organization, said it could not comment on Tuesday’s lawsuit because it did not know the specifics of the case but said reproductive medicine is a “complex combination of federal, state, and professional self-regulation.” On its website, the group says that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regulate various aspects of IVF, such as the medical devices used and the quality of laboratory testing.
Wolf, whose firm specializes in fertility cases, urged greater oversight of the IVF industry similar to what other developed countries have.
“Until IVF clinics are subject to real regulations, reporting requirements and mandatory certification programs for lab staff, these types of errors will continue to occur,” he said in Tuesday’s news conference.
Murray called the baby boy she gave birth to “the most beautiful human” she has ever laid eyes on and said she will always consider him her son.
“I spent my entire life wanting to be a mom. I loved, nurtured and grew my child, and I would have done literally anything in my power to keep him,” she said.
Priya Sridhar reported from Savannah, Georgia. Elizabeth Chuck reported from New York.
