What is with this man's sperm? One furious man is suing his ex-girlfriend and the sperm bank that let her use some of his frozen sperm to conceive a baby without his permission. But hold on, it's more complicated than that. Way, way more complicated.
We almost feel like we need to draw a timeline or a diagram to explain how this all went down. But here goes.
Layne Hardin and a woman named Kathy LeBlanc had a son together. Hardin had a vasectomy, but before he did he froze some of his sperm in case he and LeBlanc wanted to have more children later. He signed a contract saying he was leaving his frozen sperm to LeBlanc. Hardin and LeBlanc broke up. Hardin started dating another woman, Tobie Devall. They visited the sperm bank together at least once, though it's not clear what they did there. Devall went to the sperm bank alone and was inseminated with Hardin's sperm. At some point Devall and Hardin broke up, we're assuming.More from The Stir: Sperm Donor Who Fathered 7 Kids in 10 Weeks Has Something Moms Can't Resist
And now Hardin is incensed that his ex-girlfriend got pregnant with the sperm he intended for his other ex-girlfriend. "Salt just continues to go into the open wound just every day," he told KTRK. "It's the ultimate. I don't think you can do anything worse in society today."
Oh, we can think of a few worse things you can do in society today.
But that aside, can you blame the sperm bank for being a little confused? There's too many ex-girlfriends for them to track, for one thing. I mean, who shows up at the bank with two different women?
True, Hardin did go through the trouble of writing out that contract specifying only ex-girlfriend #1 could use the sperm, but still. James Edwards, representing Texas Andrology Services, says the clinic was just doing what they thought they were supposed to do. "You don't go back over and over again and say, 'Hey, did you change your mind?'"
But the absolute worst thing about this whole debacle is that there is a 5-year-old child involved.
Devall's use of Hardin's sperm resulted in a pregnancy, and now Devall is raising the boy herself. Hardin has never even met him. That's bad enough -- but to sue the woman on top of that? Sue the woman who is raising your offspring, by herself ... that's pretty low, isn't it?
I hate to think how the boy would feel if he found out what his biological father was trying to do! Obviously he has no relationship with the man, and Devall shouldn't have used his sperm. There are PLENTY of shoulda-woulda-couldas in this story. But now that a small human being is involved it sure doesn't seem like suing is the most compassionate, sane, humane thing to do. Does it?
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Image via KTRK