An in vitro embryo exchange, a woman giving birth to the daughter of strangers. It happened in a Californian clinic where a couple, Daphna and Alexander Cardinale, had applied for assisted fertilization and who will now have to answer for it in court. The first suspicions came immediately after the birth, in September 2019, when the new parents realized that the girl did not look anything like them. Two months after the decision to carry out the DNA test, which confirms the suspicions.
Thus began the search for the couple who, in the same way, had fallen victim to the exchange of embryos and who had completed the pregnancy of their daughter. After several meetings, the two couples decide to proceed with the exchange of the girls, which took place legally and formally in January 2020 when the little ones are already four months old.
A difficult situation for the couple’s seven-year-old daughter to understand. The Cardinals then decide to sue the California Center for Reproductive Health (Ccrh) in Los Angeles, which they had contacted in the summer of 2018, and the In VitroTech Labs embryology laboratory. The charge against them is of medical negligence, general negligence and fraudulent concealment. Neither the clinic nor the laboratory responded to requests for comment, she explains Bbc.
During a press conference, Daphna Cardinale said she had been “robbed of the possibility of carrying my daughter” and that “‘the pain and confusion of my family cannot be underestimated”. Daphna added that “our memories of childbirth will always be tainted by the reality that our biological baby was given to someone else. And that I could not keep with me the baby I gave into the world “and that” I nursed “.
Alexander Cardinale recounts that he was expecting a blond child, like their first child, but was surprised to see that the girl was born with much darker skin, the lawsuit states, where it is explained that the father “” flinched against the wall, taking several steps back in the delivery room ” at the time of birth. “The horror of this situation cannot be underestimated”, reads the complaint, underlining that the family involved tried to get help from a mental health center for “symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder” . The Cardinals’ attorney, Adam B. Wolf, told the BBC that the other family involved also plans to sue, but will remain anonymous.