Word: berman
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...half months after her first surrogate pregnancy began, as twin babies kick inside her, Beasley could not be much farther from a happy ending. She's mired in a bitter legal battle with Charles Wheeler and Martha Berman, the San Francisco attorneys who found her classified ad on the Internet and flew her over last March for a trip to a fertility clinic. Pregnant with one more baby than Wheeler and Berman wanted, Beasley says she has received only $1,000 of the $20,000 they originally agreed to pay her. The fate of the twins she's carrying...
Beasley acknowledges that Wheeler and Berman, who have refused to talk to the media, made it clear in their discussions that they wanted just one child. What's more, notes Stanford law professor Deborah Rhode, "theirs was a very extensive contract. There were 50 clauses providing for every contingency," including the case of a multiple pregnancy, a real possibility given that three donor eggs fertilized by Wheeler's sperm were implanted in Beasley's womb. The contract required Beasley to honor the couple's decision about whether to have a selective reduction, the termination of one or more fetuses...
Beasley claims she would have gone through with the selective reduction had Wheeler and Berman made the arrangements early in the pregnancy. But, as she tells it, there was a lengthy e-mail row between the two sides after Beasley returned to England: it was a petty affair in which each accused the other of going on vacation without warning, but it took weeks to mediate. By the time Wheeler and Berman booked Beasley's flight to California for the reduction, it was week 13 of her pregnancy, she says...
...that stage, Beasley felt that terminating a fetus was wrong. Plus, the late date increased the risk that both fetuses would be lost in the procedure. Her high blood pressure was already complicating the pregnancy. Beasley claims that Wheeler and Berman's lawyer, who declined to comment, presented her with two options: to terminate one fetus as requested or terminate both and still get paid...
...theory of a serial killer (several young women have disappeared from around Dupont Circle). Police have looked for similarities in the death of a government attorney named Joyce Chiang, 28, who was missing for three months before she turned up dead. They found the cases "unrelated." California Congressman Howard Berman, for whom Chiang once worked, moved heaven and earth to help the investigation, even pressuring FBI Director Louis Freeh. Two agents from the bureau's criminal unit are now working on the Levy case...