Box of Rocks
Article by Andrea Widburg in The American Thinker
Lesbian couple sues a fertility clinic for the wrong type of baby
Designer babies don’t always live up to their billing. When Heather Wilhelm-Routenberg, who hates men, agreed to be artificially impregnated with an egg from her lesbian “wife,” Robin Routenberg-Wilhelm, provided the resulting baby was female. Unfortunately, the clinic made a mistake. To her credit, Heather carried the baby to term and does love her son...but she’s still suing the clinic for the trauma of putting a baby boy into her life and, worse, making a big news story about it.
The New York Post has the story about what happened when Heather and Robin (“Robbie”) agreed to have a child, even though their XX chromosomes precluded the one from impregnating the other. Heather said that she couldn’t bear to have a boy child because she’d been sexually assaulted twice in college. (The one-out-of-four lie to the contrary, few women are sexually assaulted even once at college; it makes you wonder what college Heather attended.)
The original plan was for Robbie to carry a baby with Heather’s egg, as opposed to Heather carrying a baby with Robbie’s egg. (Again, this kind of nonsense arises because two people with XX chromosomes not only can’t make a Y chromosome, they can’t make anything at all.) Heather was afraid of hospitals and medical procedures but agreed to carry a baby with Robbie’s DNA provided it was a girl. Instead, Heather’s sonogram revealed a boy:
It scared the s–t out of me. I don’t know how to explain this — it felt like there was an alien living inside of me.
I said to Robbie, “If this is someone else’s kid, we will have to give it back.”
Our OB offered us the option to abort. I respect others’ decisions, but that was never a choice I could make in these circumstances. I was hoping beyond hope someone would have our baby and we would switch after birth and it would be this happy story.
Again, many kudos to Heather for going through with what was, for her, a very traumatic pregnancy.
However, there’s that misanthropy in the background:
We didn’t want to have a boy because of the assaults and because of the socialization of boys — there’s constant socialization of what it means to be a “real man.” People say, “Oh, he’s a boy, let him hit you,” and all the camouflage and guns don’t help. It reinforces masculinity, and that’s a reminder of the assaults every time.
After the baby was born, Heather couldn’t bond with it and couldn’t even bear its touch. Can you imagine the trauma for that little baby?
Still, to her credit, Heather has learned to love the child who isn’t just some generic man but is her little boy:
The baby is a year and a half now, and I think about the mistake all the time. He’s a lovely kid. He smiles just like Robbie, he has Robbie’s dimples, and that makes it easier. Our son is made of magic. He does things to be funny — he’ll use certain tones of voice and laughs to make us crack up. He’s hilarious, and he’s been an easy baby.
As of this point in the narrative, although I disapprove of this designer baby fad for couples who have chosen a relationship that, as a matter of basic human biology, could never have a baby, Heather did all the right things. And then, she just couldn’t let it go.
Despite discovering that she hadn’t given birth to a generic, icky man, but to her own unique child, Heather and Robbie are still resentful. Says Robbie:
It’s not only about the in-utero and birth experience, it’s about the socialization that a boy has in the world — even while we fight against these social norms, this repeated narrative of forced masculinity — and we did not sign up for that. [snip] This is the only child we will have with my genetic material and it was a terrible experience. That changed when we met him and had an opportunity to hold him. We both love our child but we have had to work harder than anyone should have to work to make sure we are all alive.”
And so these two women not only filed a lawsuit but are publicizing it via one of America’s most-read publications:
Now, with the help of Eric Wrubel of Warshaw Burstein, LLP, Heather and Robbie are suing CNY on 11 counts including breach of contract, medical malpractice and battery.
One day, the little Wilhelm-Routenberg (or Routenberg-Wilhelm) boy will know that his two mommies never wanted him, had to force themselves to love him, and will always resent his existence. What extraordinary, cruel narcissism. For all their professions of love for their son, Heather and Robbie are committing one of the most hateful acts imaginable, and all because they tried to play God.
