--- title: Sperm Bank Mixup: White Mom Gets Black Donor Sperm and Sues description: Lesbian parents tell the TODAY Show that they love their mixed race daughter but are suing their sperm bank to prevent future mixups. canonical: https://time.com/3455896/white-mother-black-sperm-lawsuit/ author: Belinda Luscombe article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-02T13:58:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:06.122Z og:title: Sperm Bank Mixup: White Mom Gets Black Donor Sperm and Sues og:description: Lesbian parents tell the TODAY Show that they love their mixed race daughter but are suing their sperm bank to prevent future mixups. og:url: https://time.com/3455896/white-mother-black-sperm-lawsuit/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf718cf180c42b176/6986a68f36176044b390e31b/sperm-bank.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3475 og:image:height: 1955 og:image:alt: A medical worker works on a dish ready f og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Sperm Bank Mixup: White Mom Gets Black Donor Sperm and Sues twitter:description: Lesbian parents tell the TODAY Show that they love their mixed race daughter but are suing their sperm bank to prevent future mixups. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf718cf180c42b176/6986a68f36176044b390e31b/sperm-bank.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # African American Donor's Sperm Mistakenly Sent to White Mom > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Oct 2, 2014 1:58 PM UTC  A medical worker works on a dish ready for intracytoplasmic sperm injection on Febuary 2, 2011 at the Erasmus Hospital in Brussels. Belgium is an ideal haven for French lesbians, who cross the border each year to benefit from artificial insemination as France refuses them. AFP PHOTO GEORGES GOBET (Photo credit should read GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images) A medical worker works on a dish ready for intracytoplasmic sperm injection on Febuary 2, 2011 at the Erasmus Hospital in Brussels. Belgium is an ideal haven for French lesbians, who cross the border each year to benefit from artificial insemination as France refuses them. AFP PHOTO GEORGES GOBET (Photo credit should read GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images)Georges Gobet—AFP/Getty Images  by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/)  ## Belinda Luscombe Editor at Large Oct 2, 2014 1:58 PM UTC The Midwest Sperm Bank sent Jennifer Cramblett of Uniontown, Ohio, the wrong sperm. She’d requested sperm from donor number 380 and received instead sperm from donor number 330\. Ms. Cramblett and her partner are now suing the sperm bank. What makes the story a whole lot more complicated is that donor number 330 is African American. “On August 21, 2012, Jennifer gave birth to Payton, a beautiful, obviously mixed-race baby girl,” says the lawsuit. “Jennifer bonded with Payton easily and she and Amanda love her very much. Even so, Jennifer lives each day with fears, anxieties and uncertainty about her future and Payton’s future.” Among the issues that are causing these anxieties are the prospect of sending her mixed race child to an all-white school, traveling to a black neighborhood—where she feels unwelcome—to get Amanda’s hair done and the lack of acceptance by her extended family, who, according to the suit, are already having issues with the whole same sex couple arrangement. Ms. Cramblett told _The Today Show_ that she and her partner Amanda Zinkon love their daughter very much, but she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else’s family. “I’m not going to let them get away with this,” she said. She’s primarily angry, she says at what she considers the sperm bank’s cavalier attitude and “lack of concern for me and my family…if they had some compassion and just said sorry. But they didn’t.” So far, the Midwest Sperm Bank has declined to comment. (This might be a good time to direct Ms. Cramblett’s attention to [Chocolate Hair, Vanilla Care](http://www.chocolatehairvanillacare.com/), a website used by many transracial adoptive families. 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