The potential child is the most important person involved in this mixup. He has a right to know who his genetic father is for many reasons. He's going to grow up believing in an inaccurate medical history, which will possibly put him at risk for some things he doesn't know about and make him think that he's at risk for things that he isn't. Not only that, his relationship with his father will be based on a lie.

Even without this court case it's possible that one day, maybe after the parents are dead, the child will find out that he was conceived with donor sperm-- AFTER a lifetime of indoctrination by his church and devout, hypocritical parents to believe that fertility treatments are wrong. Imagine what such a revelation would do to the child. I feel so sorry for that kid.

When first we practice to conceive.

Transparency and honesty would solve most of this dillema. If Hayes had been told the truth immediately about the mix up, and also the Does, and each party including the clinic were able to weigh in, the Does could have made a more informed decision to continue (or not) with conception.

The clinic's behavior in this has been self serving and despicable. There definitely needs to be government oversight of the clinic. They were left to market forces and their self regulation to handle the situation and we see what resulted.

If Hayes is the baby's biological father then he has rights. These are not the normal circumstances of conception. So what. So the kid gets an extra birthday gift. Roll with it. Life becomes a John Irving novel and in turn becomes more interesting. I envy the child his/her uniqueness.

That night, Doe and Roe got a call asking them to return to the fertility clinic. When they came back the next day, the woman registered positive on a pregnancy test.

There is no way in hell that a woman can get a positive pregnancy test the day after she was inseminated. It takes hours just for the sperm to reach the egg, and several more days for it to implant in the uterine lining, and several more days for enough HCG to be produced in order to even register a positive blood test.

This case is making me side with the conservatives for once. If Hayes wasn't a self-centered jerk, he'd just make sure his name was on record somewhere in case the kid wanted to contact him later and then drop the whole subject. The fact that his sperm got misdirected doesn't give him the right to muck about in the family life of total strangers. Legal paternity gives a lot more rights than just the ability to mail off a birthday present each year, and he sounds like the kind of guy who'd be dragging the Does into court everytime they left him out of a parent-teacher conference.

For once, the law makes sense. The guy isn't the legal father and has no rights.

My recommendation: you and your wife can sue the clinic for emotional distress, collect your check and get on with your lives. Best of luck in conceiving.

And if it turns out that the missus is infertile, you can use the settlement money to hire a surrogate.

I don't have much sympathy for the liars: First the clinic, who lied to cover their asses (and their bank accounts); next the Does, who are more concerned about their social standing in their church than in the tenets of their faith.

Hayes? He's been honest the whole time, and his case brings up the question of what if it wasn't his sperm but his girlfriend's egg that ended up in Mrs. Doe's womb? What if it were both?

This is an ugly situation, but has a fairly simply solution: Have the clinic shower money onto Hayes and the Does. Hayes and the Does privately meet and let the lawyer set up some situation where Hayes and his girlfriend are appointed "godparents" to the socially conservative Catholic couple's kid. Give the kid a hefty scholarship fund too.

There's plenty of precedent already in the law for hospitals that screw up and switch babies after birth. A judge could very reasonably look at this as a template for what's to be done in this case.

They are the best entertainment in the legal system today.

. . . about Hayes' sincerity in this whole affair. I mean, his emotionalism about the situation would go a long way towards "proving" that he has suffered the sort of emotional damages which might eventually result in a heafty settlement with the fertility clinic. It might. . . be staged. He sees that his ship is about to come in, and so does all he can to trade up to the most expensive model possible.

In either case - what a mess.

This idea that it takes three to make a baby isn't new. A hundred years ago, an infertile wife might conceive by a lover; the husband so happy to have an heir he doesn't ask too many questions.

Or married mistresses, or date-raped women who married the boy next door right away?

The idea that a child has a "right" to know their biology assumes an awful lot, don't you think?

As I read our (California) textbooks that advocate abstinence and celibacy until marriage, as I watch the re-instantiation of the good girl/bad girl dichotomy, I can't help but think this return to 1950s morality is going to the same kind of "we're staying together for the kids, but we're really polyamorous" behavioral hybrid. Who knows who the parents are?

By the time this baby grows up, it can get genetic tests to determine it's real risk factors rather than making tree diagrams and guessing about probabilities, anyway.

The man who has to wonder whether this kid walking down the street is his? Come on! He NEVER had sex with a woman he lost track of? Because if that happened even once, there certainly already could be a kid (or kids) roaming around that were fathered by him.