Posted on Sep 28, 2009 | by Staff

WASHINGTON (BP)--A California couple has sued a San Francisco fertility clinic for destroying embryos after it inseminated the wife's eggs with the wrong man's sperm.

Robert and Katie Aschero have sued Laurel Fertility Care, claiming the clinic implanted the wrong sperm in creating seven embryos, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Clinic personnel destroyed those embryos, violating the contract the Ascheros had with Laurel, the suit contends.

Three of couple's original 13 embryos were created with Robert Aschero's sperm and implanted in his wife's womb, but they did not survive, according to the newspaper's Sept. 16 report.

Katie Aschero, 31, a nurse at San Francisco General Hospital, said she doesn't know if she would have used the incorrectly inseminated embryos but would have appreciated a chance to donate them to couples who want children, LifeNews.com reported.

"As a nurse and a health care professional, I can definitely say mistakes happen," Aschero told the Chronicle. "But for them to go on and destroy them without my permission, breaking contract, I could not get over."

The NBC Bay Area website quoted Aschero as saying, "I went to a company that, their whole purpose of being a company is to create life, and they destroyed life."

The Ascheros' attorney, Nancy Hersh, won a $1 million settlement in 2004 against another San Francisco fertility clinic after it implanted the wrong embryo into a woman but failed to inform her until the child was 9 months old, according to the Chronicle.
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Compiled by Baptist Press Washington bureau chief Tom Strode and BP editor Art Toalston.