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Embryo Mix-Up
SCRAMBLED EGGS, BUSTED HOPES ; PARENTS FIGHT TO NIX BIRTH MOM'S VISITS
New York Post; New York; Feb 13, 2000; DAREH GREGORIAN;
The parents of a switched-before-birth baby are desperately fighting court-ordered visits with the woman who bore their son -- insisting the sessions make it impossible to become "a normal family."
Speaking out for the first time since a medical mix-up at a Midtown fertility clinic changed their lives forever, Robert and Deborah Rogers told The Post their forced visits with Donna Fasano -- the white Staten Island woman who gave birth to their black son, Akeil, along with her own son, Vincent -- are "a farce."
"Let us get on with our lives," her husband pleaded. Last May, Donna and Richard Fasano gave the Rogers custody of Akeil, then 4 months old, after getting them to sign an agreement the boys would be raised as brothers. The Rogers backed out of the deal -- "I would have signed anything to get custody of my son," Robert said. The complicated relationship between the couples started in December 1997, when they met in the waiting room of Dr. Lillian Nash's fertility clinic and made small talk. The couples saw each other once more, on April 21, 1998, when the women underwent the painful process of having their eggs extracted for in-vitro fertilization.
Nash told them Deborah wasn't pregnant, but that "as a result of some confusion," one of her embryos had also been implanted in 37- year-old Donna Fasano. And Fasano was pregnant, she said. After the startling admission, the Rogers hit a wall of silence. The clinic rebuffed all their questions, wouldn't say what the tests showed and said the Fasanos considered any attempt by the Rogers to contact them "harassment."
"Our feeling was they were all saying, This is a young black couple. They don't have much money. They're not going to follow up on this. They managed to scrape a few dollars together for this procedure, but they can't afford a lawyer or anything,'" Robert said.
Brooklyn lawyer Rudolph Silas took their case after several other lawyers turned them down, and sent investigator Anthony Stone to hunt for the Fasanos. He found them last March.
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