The genetic parents of a switched-before-birth black baby delivered by a white woman have won custody of the child, it was revealed yesterday.
Richard and Donna Fasano handed over little Joseph to Robert and Deborah Rogers of Teaneck, N.J., during “a very emotional, very strained, very difficult” meeting at the Fasanos’ Staten Island home on May 10, said Fasano lawyer David Cohen.
Both couples had gone to a Manhattan fertility clinic last April in an attempt to conceive.
The Rogers’ attempt failed, but they later learned a doctor there had accidentally – and successfully – implanted Fasano with their fertilized eggs, as well as her own.
On Dec. 29, Fasano, 37, gave birth to twins – one black and one white.
The mixup left both families devastated – the Rogers knew they had a child and couldn’t see him and the Fasanos loved the baby and didn’t want to give him up.
“It was very difficult,” Cohen said. “This woman had carried the baby to term and had cared for him for four months.”
The Fasanos finally agreed to give Joseph to the Rogers after DNA tests proved they were his genetic parents.
“The baby’s beautiful and doing very well,” said the Rogers’ lawyer, Rudolph Silas. “He’s adjusting. He’s healthy and gaining weight, and becoming more attached to his mother.”
Silas said his clients are slowly recovering from the emotional ordeal of the past year and that Robert Rogers has gone back to work teaching high school.
Cohen would only say his clients are having “a very difficult time.”
The Fasanos, who work in finance, have said they want the boys to be raised as brothers, and both sides said they’ve worked out a visitation schedule that will allow them to see each other.
“We’ve worked out an agreement everyone can live with,” Cohen said.
The couples met three times before the handover.
Silas called the relationship between the two pairs of parents “bittersweet. Only time will tell how it develops. Hopefully, over time, it will become a genuine, warm relationship.”
Both families are suing Dr. Lillian Nash and her Midtown fertility clinic for the embryo mixup.