Baby M

Bébé M (born on March 27th, 1986) is the name which one gave to the child in a lawsuit which proceeded in America between a surrogate mother which had rented its belly and the biological father of the child.

Mary Beth Whitehead, the surrogate mother, had been inséminée artificially with the sperm of William Stern. As opposed to what everyone believed (and it was well what had been alleged in the contract of surrogate mother), the woman of Stern, Elizabeth, was not sterile, but there was a possibility that she had a Multiple sclerosis. A fellow-member of its doctor had informed it that his own wife, who also suffered it from multiple sclerosis, had undergone a temporary paralysis during her pregnancy (Steinbock, 1988). March 27th, 1986, Whitehead gave rise to a girl, whom it called “Sara Elizabeth Whitehead” and it refused to give it to Stern. In 1987 a court of the New Jersey allotted the guard of Mélissa to Stern (thus they had called it), but this decision was broken on February 2nd, 1988 by the Supreme court of the New Jersey which returned the business to the court of the family businesses and, temporarily, the Lower House of the court entrusted to William Stern the guard with right of access for Mary Beth Whitehead.

The lawsuit caused an great attention because it showed that the possibilities of reproduction with intervention of a third person had legal and social consequences completely new. The dilemma with which a mother was confronted who had put a child at the world after a contractual agreement and a biological engagement was him also put at the day. The camp of the feminists was seen divided: for the ones the women had all the rights on their body, but they were also sensitive to the possibility of an exploitation. This maternity of replacement was violently criticized.

Mary Beth Whitehead wrote later a book on its experiment.

Consequences

An article in the edition of March 28th, 1999 of Daily Mail Sunday revealed that Elizabeth Stern suffered from multiple sclerosis and was to use a wheel chair. Mary Beth Whitehead Gould said to the correspondent that Elizabeth Stern was a “egoist” to draw up a contract intended to make come a child in the world whereas it was sick. The article noted that Melissa called Mary Beth Whitehead Gould “Mom” and Elizabeth Stern “Betsy”. Stern refused any asserting interview of their concern for the private life of their daughter and they threatened of legal proceedings against a program of televised news if one used a photograph of Melissa obtained from Mary Gould.

When it had reached 18 years, in March 2004, Melissa Stern put an end officially to all the maternal rights of Mary Beth Whitehead and made recognize the parental rights of Elizabeth Stern by a procedure of adoption.

As from September 2007, Melissa was a junior at the University George Washington with the religious studies like principal matter. She hopes to become Pasteur and did not exclude to have children with her one day. She said that she had found strange to study the case of Baby M in her course of bioethics at the university

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