A white Florida couple who gave birth to a Black baby after an IVF mix-up at a fertility clinic will continue raising their daughter under a custody agreement reached with the child’s biological parents.
Tiffany Score and Steven Mills had their daughter, Shea, in December after undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment through the Fertility Center of Orlando in Longwood, Florida.
However, immediately after giving birth, the couple realized their baby girl was not biologically related to them, as she was a different race, Fox 13 reported.
The parents said that they loved their baby girl and wanted to raise her, but felt a moral obligation to find her biological parents. DNA testing successfully matched the child’s biological mother, identified only as Patient 004.
According to court documents, Patient 004 was the only patient in the March 2020 retrieval group from which Score and Mills’ daughter was likely developed. Her self-reported ethnicity also matched Shea's, and a DNA test later confirmed she was the baby’s biological mother.
Both sets of parents reached a custody agreement, according to a June 12 court filing. The details of the agreement, as well as the identity of Shea’s birth mother, were not made public, but Score and Mills were granted permanent custody of Shea.
The decision came after Score and Mills filed a lawsuit in April against the Fertility Center of Orlando in Longwood and Dr. Milton McNichol following the embryo mix-up.
With the suit, the couple hoped to locate their child’s biological parents and learn what happened to their embryo. They also received an emergency injunction to preserve the clinic’s records, according to the report.
The clinic said it is cooperating with an investigation to determine the source of the embryo mix-up. A pop-up on the clinic’s website notes that it went out of business on May 20.
Score and Mills are now looking to transfer a single embryo left at the clinic that is labeled with their names. According to the April court filing, the couple is also looking to see if they can sue the clinic for malpractice.
